w:aliases (Style Name Aliases)

Defines a comma-separated list of alternative names for a style that authoring applications may use to locate the style.

Parent elements

w:style

Description

w:aliases provides one or more alternative display names for a style. These aliases are comma-separated and allow the style to be found by multiple names in search or via programmatic lookup, without changing the canonical style name (w:name).

It is defined in ECMA-376 Part 1 §17.7.4.1.

Attributes

Attribute	Type	Possible Values	Description
`w:val`	`xsd:string`	Comma-separated list of style name strings	One or more alias names for the style.

Examples

<!-- Style can be referenced as "Body Text", "BodyText", or "bt" -->
<w:style w:type="paragraph" w:styleId="BodyText">
  <w:name w:val="Body Text"/>
  <w:aliases w:val="BodyText,bt"/>
  <!-- pPr and rPr omitted -->
</w:style>

using DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Wordprocessing;

var style = new Style(
    new StyleName { Val = "Body Text" },
    new Aliases { Val = "BodyText,bt" }
)
{
    Type = StyleValues.Paragraph,
    StyleId = "BodyText"
};

Notes

Aliases are case-insensitive for matching purposes in most implementations.
Whitespace around comma separators is ignored.
Aliases do not affect how the style appears in the UI — the w:name value is always the display name.