w:vAlign (Vertical Text Alignment)

Specifies the vertical alignment of content within a page (in a section) or within a table cell.

Parent elements

Description

w:vAlign controls vertical alignment of content in two distinct contexts:

Section (w:sectPr) — aligns the text block vertically on each page of the section.
Table cell (w:tcPr) — aligns cell content vertically within the cell.

It is defined in:

§17.6.23 for the section context.
§17.4.84 for the table cell context.

Attributes

Attribute	Type	Possible Values	Description
`w:val`	`ST_VerticalJc`	`top`, `center`, `both`, `bottom`	Vertical alignment mode.

Values

Value	Description
`top`	Content starts at the top edge.
`center`	Content is centered vertically.
`both`	(Section only) Content is vertically justified (spread evenly between top and bottom margins).
`bottom`	Content ends at the bottom edge.

Examples

<!-- Vertically center page content (cover page) -->
<w:sectPr>
  <w:vAlign w:val="center"/>
  <w:pgSz w:w="12240" w:h="15840"/>
</w:sectPr>

<!-- Vertically center content in a table cell -->
<w:tc>
  <w:tcPr>
    <w:vAlign w:val="center"/>
  </w:tcPr>
  <w:p><w:r><w:t>Centered cell</w:t></w:r></w:p>
</w:tc>

using DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Wordprocessing;

// Section vertical alignment
var sectPr = new SectionProperties(
    new VerticalTextAlignmentOnPage { Val = VerticalJustificationValues.Center }
);

// Table cell vertical alignment
var tcPr = new TableCellProperties(
    new TableCellVerticalAlignment { Val = TableVerticalAlignmentValues.Center }
);

Notes

In the section context, w:val="both" is equivalent to “vertical justification” and distributes paragraphs evenly between the top and bottom margins.
In the table cell context, the both value is typically not supported by most processors; use top, center, or bottom for cells.
The default vertical alignment for both sections and cells is top.