Saving custom Word document using FilePicker in Windows Store app - windows

Question

I am making a Windows Store application and I want to allow users that press an "Export To Word" button to have all the data that they have input into the app to be displayed in a Word document and saved to a desired location on their computer. The code below is a test segment of code that almost does what I am after, however after saving the document and opening it using Word rather than the app, it cannot open the file due to it being corrupted apparently. However when you open it in Notepad the text is displayed as I want.
private async void exportToWord_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
await ExportToWord();
}
private async Task ExportToWord()
{
// Create the picker object and set options
Windows.Storage.Pickers.FileSavePicker savePicker = new Windows.Storage.Pickers.FileSavePicker();
savePicker.SuggestedStartLocation = Windows.Storage.Pickers.PickerLocationId.DocumentsLibrary;
// Dropdown of file types the user can save the file as
savePicker.FileTypeChoices.Add("Word", newList<string>{".docx"});
// Default file name if the user does not type one in or select a file to replace
savePicker.SuggestedFileName = "Test";
Windows.Storage.StorageFile file = await savePicker.PickSaveFileAsync();
MessageDialog mD;
if (file != null)
{
// Prevent updates to the remote version of the file until we finish
// making changes and call CompleteUpdatesAsync.
Windows.Storage.CachedFileManager.DeferUpdates(file);
// write to file
await Windows.Storage.FileIO.WriteTextAsync(file, createContentsOfFile());
// Let Windows know that we're finished changing the file so the other
// app can update the remote version of the file.
// Completing updates may require Windows to ask for user input.
Windows.Storage.Provider.FileUpdateStatus updateStatus = await Windows.Storage.CachedFileManager.CompleteUpdatesAsync(file);
if (updateStatus == Windows.Storage.Provider.FileUpdateStatus.Complete)
{
mD = newMessageDialog("Connect exported to:" + file, "Export Successful");
}
else
{
mD = newMessageDialog("Could not save file. Try again", "Export Unsuccessful");
}
}
else
{
mD = newMessageDialog("Operation canceled because the file could not be found. Try again", "Export Unsuccessful");
}
await mD.ShowAsync();
}
private string createContentsOfFile()
{
return "Testing...";
}
I believe the issue is that I am outputting plain text to the Word document but it needs to be in a certain format to be output correctly and be displayed in a Word doc. Is there any way of doing this in Windows Store apps?
Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

I'm not aware of any Word doc components available for Windows Runtime apps (Microsoft doesn't provide one, but there could be a third party component I'm not aware of).
You can get documentation on the docx format and for simple text it may not be too complex (I'm not sure), or you can use another format which Word can open.
If you don't need formatting I'd probably stick with txt.
If you need small amounts of formatting then rtf is a good option. It is fairly simple to generate yourself or the RichEditBox can export RTF format text which you can then save into a .doc file and open in Word.