TOC default text changes color when "Update Field" is clicked

Question

TOC default text changes color when "Update Field" is clicked

Connor Shore 70

I have a question why the color changes in a specific document when "Update Field" is clicked. Our application creates output from a template. In the download link is the template file (TocUpdateIssueTemplate.docx) and the output generated from that template (TocUpdateIssueOutput_BeforeUpdate.docx). The output visually looks identical to the template as you can see. However, if you go to the line "No table of figures entries found" and right click on it and select "Update Fields" you will notice the text changes from blue to black. The resulting docx is TocUpdateIssueOutput_AfterUpdate.docx). The ooxml of the before and after document look pretty much identical except the <w:color> element has been removed in document.xml. The weird thing is, if you do "Update Fields" in the template document, the text remains the same color and the <w:color> element is not removed in the ooxml. Is there something in the output documents that cause this to happen when update is clicked or is this a weird one off issue? Any help is appreciated. Thank you!

Link to files: https://windwardstudios.box.com/s/aly9emyf1bpoz6yf5y6961c3f08zrpqp

Let me know if you need any clarification or have any issues with the files.

Connor

mkaszewiak 90 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2025-04-05T09:29:23.42+00:00

Hello Connor Shore

Thank you for posting your question. One of our engineers will respond soon to assist.

Mariusz Kaszewiak

Microsoft Corporation

2 answers

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mkaszewiak 90 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2025-04-05T09:29:23.42+00:00

Hello Connor Shore

Thank you for posting your question. One of our engineers will respond soon to assist.

Mariusz Kaszewiak

Microsoft Corporation

Answer 1

mkaszewiak 90 Microsoft Employee Moderator

Hi @Connor Shore I investigated files you have shared and it looks to me that issue was caused at the code level when file(TocUpdateIssueBeforeUpdate) was generated from the template you have provided.

When I used this simple code to generate file from your template issue doesn't occur. Could you please test it on your site and let me know how it works for you.

string templatePath = @"C:\source\TestFiles\TocUpdateIssueTemplate.docx";

        string outputPath = @"C:\source\TestFiles\DocFromTemplate.docx";

        MemoryStream memoryStream;

        using (memoryStream = new MemoryStream())

        {

            using (WordprocessingDocument generatedDoc = WordprocessingDocument.CreateFromTemplate(templatePath, false))

            {

                MainDocumentPart? mainDocumentPart = generatedDoc.MainDocumentPart;`

                generatedDoc.Clone(memoryStream);`

                File.WriteAllBytes(outputPath, memoryStream.ToArray());

            }

        }

Best regards,

Mariusz Kaszewiak

Connor Shore 70 Reputation points

2025-04-08T13:49:23.3733333+00:00

Hi Mariusz,

Thank you for your response, while your approach does work unfortunately our application is a bit more involved since the basis of it allows the user to import data from multiple datasources and output to different formats (office, pdf, html, etc) so we build our own internal document object model and then manually write out elements depending on the format. Is there anything wrong with the ooxml that we produce that could possibly cause the weird behavior of the color being switched upon "Update Fields" being clicked?
Matt Binsfeld 0 Reputation points

2025-04-08T19:24:29.42+00:00

This code is just blindly copying the file, so of course the file behaves the same. We are creating a new docx by writing out our OOXML that we need to have this same behavior.

Answer 2

mkaszewiak 90 Microsoft Employee Moderator

Hi @Conor Shore Thank you for the clarification. I am currently investigating the issue and will update you as soon as I have some findings.

Matt Binsfeld 0 Reputation points

2025-04-11T16:57:24.0733333+00:00

Hi Mariusz,

Any update on this?
mkaszewiak 90 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2025-04-12T09:44:15.6066667+00:00

Hi Conor,

Unfortunately, there is no update yet. We are discussing the issue internally with our product team. I will inform you as soon as I have any updates.

My apologies for the delay.

Best regards,

Mariusz Kaszewiak
mkaszewiak 90 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2025-04-18T12:40:06.57+00:00

Hi Conor

My apologises for the delay unfortunately I still don't have an update. I want to assure you that we are investigating your issue and will update you as soon as possible.

Best regards,

Mariusz Kaszewiak
Matt Binsfeld 0 Reputation points

2025-04-18T14:33:01.1633333+00:00

Hi Mariusz, we discovered that the Table Of Figures style is applied to these tables every time they are updated. By setting the correct formatting on that style we were able to prevent the formatting change on update.
mkaszewiak 90 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2025-04-18T15:10:48.7533333+00:00

Hi @Matt Binsfeld I am glad to hear that you managed to resolve the issue. It is interesting that "table of figures" had effect on colour change because as I can see it was set to blue as well but is more likely because is based on paragraph.
Thank you for letting me know I will close the issue on our end. All the best

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TOC default text changes color when "Update Field" is clicked

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