How to set Excel “Print Titles” with OpenXML

Question

How can I set the "Print Titles" property of a spreadsheet with OpenXML, to have a row show at the top of every printed page?

Answer 1

The property is directly saved in the SpreadsheetPrintingParts object, however, this doesn't appear to be fully integrated into OpenXML as of yet, and requires passing a base64 string in to the variable. ( see here ) The content of this string appears to be tied to the machine the file is opened on, which didn't work for my implementation - I wasn't able to create a non-corrupt file through SpreadsheetPrintingParts.FeedData() .

Instead, I found this post which stated giving the row the defined name "Print_Titles" has the same effect. I was then able to create a defined name through OpenXML with the following code:

public void SetPrintTitleRows(int startRowIndex, int? endRowIndex = null)
        {
            var localSheetId = _localsheetId++;    //LocalSheetIds are 0-indexed.

            var definedName = new DefinedName
            {
                Name = "_xlnm.Print_Titles",
                LocalSheetId = localSheetId,
                Text = String.Format("\'{0}\'!${1}:${2}", _sheetName, startRowIndex, endRowIndex ?? startRowIndex)
            };

            if (_workbookPart.Workbook.DefinedNames == null)
            {
                var definedNamesCol = new DefinedNames();
                _workbookPart.Workbook.Append(definedNamesCol);
            }

            _workbookPart.Workbook.DefinedNames.Append(definedName);
        }

Points to note:

1. DefinedName.LocalSheetId is zero-indexed, as opposed to Sheet.Id which is 1-indexed
2. DefinedNames is once per workbook, but can contain multiple DefinedName objects for different sheets.