How to use UserForm CheckBox to change Control Content CheckBox in Word Document? - vba

Question

I created an UserForm with a checkbox 'cbxYes' and a Content Control checkbox 'docCbx' in the Word document. I want to be to check off the checkbox 'cbxYes' in UserForm that then changes the Content Control checkbox in the Word document.
So the input is from the UserForm checkbox and the output is the Content Control checkbox.
I have tried multiple searches on how to do this, but I could not find exactly what I needed. Most of the searches were related to Excel. And honestly, I don't know what I'm doing. Please. The correct help is greatly appreciated.
Private Sub cbxYes_Click()
Dim oCC As ContentControl
If cbxYes.value = True Then
cbxYes.value = "True"
ActiveDocument.docCbx_Yes.value = True
Else
cbxYes.value = "False"
ActiveDocument.docCbx_Yes.value = False
End If
End Sub
The error I got was:
run-time error '438': Object doesn't support this property or method.

Answer 1

The code shown in the question would be for ActiveX checkboxes, rather than content controls. (Just to make things really complicated, Word also has checkbox form fields that need yet another code syntax.)
There's no way to refer directly to a content control name via the Document object - it must be done over the ContentControls collection. Content controls can be assigned a Title and/or a Tag in the Properties dialog box.
More than one content control can have the same name or title, which makes the code a bit complicated. Querying Document.ContentControls("Title") returns a collection (all the content controls with that title).
If you know which one, then it's possible to pick it up directly (rather than working through a collection) using the Item method, specifying that it's the n content control (the index in the order of content controls). This is usually used when one knows there's only the one.
Note, please, also, that in order to "check" or "uncheck" a content control checkbox the Checked property should be use. So:
Private Sub cbxYes_Click()
Dim oCC As ContentControl
Set oCC = ActiveDocument.SelectContentControlsByTitle("docCbx").Item(1)
If cbxYes.value = True Then
'cbxYes.value = "True" not needed
occ.Checked = True
Else
'cbxYes.value = "False" not needed
oCC.Checked = False
End If
End Sub

Answer 2

Assuming that "docCbx" is the title of the content control you can replace
ActiveDocument.docCbx_Yes.value = True
by
For Each oCC In ActiveDocument.SelectContentControlsByTitle("docCbx")
If (oCC.Type = wdContentControlCheckBox) Then
oCC.Checked = False
End If
Next
and the equivalent, but using False, for the other branch of your code. The above code will update all checkbox type content controls with that name (the names do not have to be unique within a document), except controls that have been marked as "Contents cannot be edited" - they will remain unchanged. It deals with the situation where there aren't any content controls with that name by doing nothing.
If "docCbx" is the value of the Tag, you would need the following instead:
For Each oCC In ActiveDocument.SelectContentControlsByTag("docCbx")
If (oCC.Type = wdContentControlCheckBox) Then
oCC.Checked = False
End If
Next
If docCbx is something else, I would suggest that instead you give Titles and/or Tags to your content controls and use the above approach. Otherwise, you should modify your question to state precisely how you are naming the control "docCbx".
You get the error because adding content controls to a document does not create new members of the document object, whereas adding a form control to a user form does create new members of the Form object. (Documents do in fact have a mechanism that works more like the Form object but it has been deprecated for a long time.)