I'm using this script: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/11902/Convert-HTML-to-Plain-Text To convert some outlook HTML to plain text. It nearly works, the only thing that it leaves behind is the CSS which outlook places in html comment tags ` ` in addition to ` ` tags (which are removed) This is the original text: ``` <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; font-size:11.0pt; font-fa…

Regular Expression - Remove HTML comment spanning multiple line breaks

c#, regex, replace, vb.net

Solution

Your second regular expression for three reasons:

- You need to use `.` to match any character.

- The `*` is greedy. You want `*?` to match lazily.

- You need `RegexOptions.Singleline`.

Try this:

result = Regex.Replace(result, "<!--.*?-->", "", RegexOptions.Singleline);

I would strongly recommend that you do not use regular expressions to parse HTML. You will save yourself a whole world of pain if you instead use HTML Agility Pack.

Problem

I'm using this script: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/11902/Convert-HTML-to-Plain-Text To convert some outlook HTML to plain text. It nearly works, the only thing that it leaves behind is the CSS which outlook places in html comment tags `` in addition to `<style>` tags (which are removed) This is the original text: ``` <html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:x="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 14 (filtered medium)"> <style></style> </head> <body lang="EN-GB" link="blue" vlink="purple"> <div class="WordSection1"> <p class="MsoNormal">tesst<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:dimgray;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB">JOE BLOGS</span></b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:dimgray;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB"> </div> </body> </html> ``` This is the resulting text: (note the HTML comment has not been removed) ```  tesst   JOE BLOGS ``` I have tried adapting the StripHTML() function with the additional replaces - but these did not work either. ``` result = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(result, "()", String.Empty, System.Text.RegularExpressions.RegexOptions.IgnoreCase) result = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(result, "", String.Empty, System.Text.RegularExpressions.RegexOptions.IgnoreCase) ``` Please help - this was a 2 minute job that i've been stuck on since lunch facedesk Cheers Edit 1: also tried the following - still no joy ``` result = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(result, "", String.Empty, System.Text.RegularExpressions.RegexOptions.IgnoreCase) result = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(result, "", String.Empty, System.Text.RegularExpressions.RegexOptions.IgnoreCase) ``` Edit 2: I noticed this question was getting a lot of views, anyone reading this should definitely think twice about taking the regExp approach, instead i recommend using Lynx (OpenSource text based browser) to convert HTML to plain text, i asked a similar question here and i provide sample code in the edits based on the answers that should get you started using lynx.exe from within a .net application. This is the method we ended up using and haven't had any problems since.

Original source

Regular Expression - Remove HTML comment spanning multiple line breaks

Solution

Problem

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