w:placeholder (SDT Placeholder Text)

Specifies a building block (document part) whose content is used as placeholder text in a structured document tag when no value has been entered.

Parent elements

w:sdtPr

Child elements

w:docPart

Description

w:placeholder references a document part (building block) that supplies the placeholder/hint text shown inside an SDT when it is empty or when w:showingPlcHdr is true. The placeholder is typically styled differently (e.g. greyed out) to indicate that no actual value has been entered yet.

It is defined in ECMA-376 Part 1 §17.5.2.26.

The child w:docPart element holds the name of the building block in the document’s glossary part (glossary/document.xml). The special value DefaultPlaceholder_-1854013440 is used for the default Word placeholder text.

Attributes

None. The placeholder content is specified via the child w:docPart.

Child Elements

Element	Description
`w:docPart`	References the building block by name.

Examples

<w:sdtPr>
  <w:alias w:val="Company Name"/>
  <w:tag w:val="companyName"/>
  <w:placeholder>
    <w:docPart w:val="DefaultPlaceholder_-1854013440"/>
  </w:placeholder>
  <w:showingPlcHdr/>
  <w:richText/>
</w:sdtPr>

using DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Wordprocessing;

var sdtPr = new SdtProperties(
    new SdtAlias { Val = "Company Name" },
    new Tag { Val = "companyName" },
    new SdtPlaceholder(
        new DocPart { Val = "DefaultPlaceholder_-1854013440" }
    ),
    new ShowingPlaceholder(),
    new SdtContentText()
);

Notes

The building block referenced by w:docPart must exist in the document’s glossary part; if missing, applications fall back to a generic placeholder string.
When the user types into the SDT and replaces the placeholder, w:showingPlcHdr should be removed.