w:showingPlcHdr (Showing Placeholder Text)

Indicates that the structured document tag is currently displaying its placeholder text rather than actual user-entered content.

Parent elements

w:sdtPr

Description

w:showingPlcHdr is a toggle element that flags an SDT as currently displaying placeholder text (hint text). When present and true, the content inside w:sdtContent is the placeholder content referenced by w:placeholder, not a real value.

It is defined in ECMA-376 Part 1 §17.5.2.37.

When the user enters data into the SDT, the authoring application removes w:showingPlcHdr and replaces w:sdtContent with the actual content.

Attributes

Attribute	Type	Possible Values	Description
`w:val`	`ST_OnOff`	`true`, `false`, `1`, `0`, `on`, `off`	Enables or disables the placeholder mode. Omitting `w:val` is equivalent to `true`.

Examples

<w:sdt>
  <w:sdtPr>
    <w:alias w:val="Name"/>
    <w:placeholder>
      <w:docPart w:val="DefaultPlaceholder_-1854013440"/>
    </w:placeholder>
    <w:showingPlcHdr/>
  </w:sdtPr>
  <w:sdtContent>
    <w:r><w:t>[Click or tap here to enter text]</w:t></w:r>
  </w:sdtContent>
</w:sdt>

using DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Wordprocessing;

// Check whether an SDT is showing placeholder text
bool isPlaceholder = sdtElement.SdtProperties?
    .Descendants<ShowingPlaceholder>().Any() == true;

// Remove the flag when setting actual content
sdtElement.SdtProperties?
    .Descendants<ShowingPlaceholder>()
    .ToList()
    .ForEach(e => e.Remove());

Notes

When programmatically populating an SDT, always remove w:showingPlcHdr after setting the content.
The presence of w:showingPlcHdr does not prevent the content from being read — it is purely a semantic flag.