Hi SMithywill
The main limitation of OPen XML in respect to Word is that there is no automatic updating of field codes. For example, if your process required knowing the number of pages after you've edited the document, or on which page something appears, then Open XML
would not work for you.
As far as I can tell from your description, Open XML should work for your task. The list of Styles is available in the Open XML package and the styles are linked to the places in the text where they are used.
Have you checked the resources on OpenXMLDeveloper.org?
Here's an extract of XML taken from a sample document for a paragraph formatted with the style Heading1:
<w:p><w:pPr><w:pStyle w:val="Heading1"/><w:rPr></w:rPr></w:pPr><w:r>
<w:t>Heading 1</w:t></w:r></w:p>
You can see the w:pStyle element which tells you what style was used.
The information for the style will be in a separate XML part. The style information for Heading1 looks something like this:
<w:style w:type="paragraph" w:styleId="Heading1">
<w:name w:val="heading 1"/><wx:uiName wx:val="Heading 1"/>
<w:basedOn w:val="Normal"/><w:next w:val="Normal"/><w:
link w:val="Heading1Char"/><w:rsid w:val="00124892"/>
<w:pPr><w:keepNext/><w:keepLines/>
<w:spacing w:before="480" w:after="0"/>
<w:outlineLvl w:val="0"/></w:pPr><w:rPr>
<w:rFonts w:ascii="Cambria" w:fareast="Times New Roman" w:h-ansi="Cambria"/>
<wx:font wx:val="Cambria"/><w:b/><w:b-cs/><w:color w:val="365F91"/>
<w:sz w:val="28"/><w:sz-cs w:val="28"/></w:rPr></w:style>
So, basically you're looking for a style element with the styleID attribute of Heading1
Cindy Meister, VSTO/Word MVP