Hi,
Yes, element.InnerText will work, so long as you don’t have tracked revisions, in which case it will not.
Also, frankly, I do not use the strongly typed classes in the Open XML SDK. Instead, as you can see in Open-Xml-PowerTools, I always use LINQ to XML, which is the best XML programming API ever invented, IMO.
In general, with these types of issues, you need to understand the markup in depth, and you need to understand the tools. Please watch screen-cast #13 in the following series:
Introduction to Open XML
And of course, you may want to watch others in that series as well.
Best, Eric