Open a Word 2013 legacy Open dialog in a specific folder - vba

Question

I have a simple Word macro that shows the legacy Open dialog.
Sub LegacyOpen()
DoEvents
Dialogs(wdDialogFileOpen).Show
End Sub
I’m now trying to get it to open in a specific folder.
"C:\Users\Paul Schroeter\Documents\Microsoft Word Documents".
After about an hour I have not found an macro argument or example of how to get it to do what I want it to do.
If you wonder why I need to do this, it’s because every time I use “Search documents” in the legacy Open dialog, it resets the Open dialog path to "C:\Users\Paul Schroeter\Documents", which is driving me insane, because I then have to change it back to the folder where I actually keep my Word documents.

Answer 1

A number of the built-in Word dialog boxes have "dialog box arguments" corresponding to some of the controls/settings in the dialog box. A list can be found here. These are not part of the Intellisense and are late-bound into the object model. The developer needs to know they exist and how to look them up and use them.
One of these built-in arguments is to set/read the file full name from the File/Open dialog box. In VBA the arguments are usually used in a With block. Putting the argument before the Show or Display method executes the setting before the dialog box is shown to the user. If it's placed after the method, then it's used to read the user's choice.
Sub WordFileOpen()
Dim dlg As Word.Dialog
Dim sPath As String
Set dlg = Application.Dialogs(wdDialogFileOpen)
sPath = "C:\Users\Paul Schroeter\Documents\Microsoft Word Documents"
With dlg
.Name = sPath
.Show
End With
End Sub

Answer 2

If you consider something different than Dialogs collection you could use FileDialogs property. Here is working example:
Sub OtherWindowType()
Dim FD As FileDialog
Set FD = Application.FileDialog(msoFileDialogFilePicker)
With FD
.AllowMultiSelect = False
.InitialFileName = "c:\" '...your path here
.Show
End With
'if you want to open the file...
If FD.SelectedItems.Count > 0 Then
Documents.Open FD.SelectedItems(1)
End If
End Sub