Edit a the text in a Shape(textbox) that is placed somewhere on a Word Doc VBA - vba

Question

I'm trying to create a way for a word document to have certain textfields data to be replaced with other data. In my case, textfields are shown as a part of shapes and the textfields themselves don't have name's to them so I wanted to possibly do it by their shape ID. So for example I have a 5 Textboxes next to each other and say I want to edit the 4th textbox to say something since it's blank without affecting the other textboxes. What would I need to do?
Though Process: Because all the files have the same format, if I can figure out the id of that shape or textbox, I can directly reference that id and change the textfield that way. The text in the field is all random so I can't do a specific find word and replace so that's why I'm trying to do it by id or even just by having it do a count of the number of shapes on the page of a word document.
Tip: I turned on paragraph markers to see the textboxes more clearly.
Example of Code I've written so far:
Sub TextBox()
'find a specific textbox and edit it
Dim doc As word.Document, rng As word.Range
Dim shp As Shape, iShp As word.InlineShape
Set doc = ActiveDocument
Dim textbCount As String
Dim textbId As String
'textbCount = ActiveDocument.Shapes.Count
'textbId = oShape.ID
Dim sr As ShapeRange
Set sr = shp.TextFrame.TextRange.ShapeRange(5)
For Each shp In sr
If shp.ID = 0 Then
'oShape.TextFrame.TextRange.InsertAfter shp.ID
'shp.Delete
Debug.Print shp.Type
Debug.Print shp.ID
End If
Next shp
If ActiveDocument.Shapes.Count > 0 Then
For Each shp In ActiveDocument.Shapes
If shp.AutoShapeType = msoShapeRectangle Then
If shp.TextFrame.HasText = True Then
'shp.TextFrame.TextRange.GoToNext (wdGoToField)
'shp.Delete
'shp.Delete
shp.TextFrame.TextRange.InsertAfter textbCount
Exit For
End If
End If
Next shp
End If
End Sub

Answer 1

This is code you could use, I was able to just figure out the answer. What the code does is checks that the word document that you are trying to read is open and then it first checks to see if there are any shapes at all on the document which is the c > 0 because textboxes are categorized as shapes. Then it does a For Each loop going through all the shapes on the entire document and each shape has it's own unique identifier.
I already tested this for if templates that have the same format of textboxes, they will typically share the same identifier, so if you say have 2 word documents with each 20 textboxes and its a carbon copy of the other just with different text in the boxes almost like they took this blank document and then used it as the base template, it's highly likely that the ID's between the 2 documents are the same if opened separately, if they are combined into 1 document is when the ID's will change so that your not referencing the same data.
To continue on with the code, it will next check all the textboxes for a #, this can be changed out for anything, but for my case I wanted to find out which boxes by their ID I would be using since the word doc won't tell you, so because no where else on the document had #'s, I used those to find where the boxes were. Once you know the ID, you can just reference the boxes directly instead of using the #'s but you need to first know which ones have them.
Next the code will print to the "Immediate Window" which is like a debug window that you can open either in the view tab or by ctrl + G if your one windows and what it will print is the shape ID for each shape that has the # and then print whatever text is in that box which should include the # there along with whatever text is there in that box.
Now if you want to add text to the text box, I didn't include it in my example, or even replace the text. Just make an if statement for if shp.ID = 16 for example then inside that If Then statement say shp.TextFrame.TextRange.Text = "" or if you have a string you want to pass in, replace "" with whatever string that is and in the double quotes you can either leave that blank to make that textbox your referencing blank or you can put text in it to make it say something.
If your doing a project, like I was, and it requires checking a lot of these textboxes to reference the string to another textbox so basically one textbox determines the other. Use For Each shp In oShp a lot or your equivalent to that and check each ID and store it in a string variable and then do a separate For Each to reference those string variables to make new if statements or declarations since you you'll need to go through all the textboxes at least once to grab whatever data might be contained in them since it goes through the For Each sequence one at a time.
Dim shp As Shape
Dim oShp As Object
Dim doc As Document
Dim c As Integer
Dim objWord As Object
Dim objDoc As Document
'Set doc = ActiveDocument
Set objWord = GetObject(, "Word.Application")
objWord.Visible = True
Set objDoc = objWord.Documents.Open("C:\Users\word.docx") 'Set this to wherever the word file is located along with the name of the word file so "C:\Users\worddoc.docx" is an example you could do
'Set objDoc = objWord.ActiveDocument
Set doc = objWord.ActiveDocument
Set oShp = doc.Shapes
c = ActiveDocument.Shapes.Count
'Set text1 = shp.TextFrame.TextRange
If c > 0 Then
For Each shp In oShp
If InStr(shp.TextFrame.TextRange.Text, "#") Then
Debug.Print shp.ID
Debug.Print shp.TextFrame.TextRange.Text
End If
Next shp
Debug.Print c
End If