MS-Word VBA reference identification - vba

I have a custom content control in Microsoft Word from a third party I am trying to resize the width and height of. Normal content control selection via VBA is not working because this control has no Title or Tag. However, if I manually select the object and resize it programmatically using "Selection.ShapeRange.Height = x" or ShapeRange.Width it does work. So to do it all programmatically I need to determine the name of the "selection" without having to manually select it.
Is there a way to "inspect" the complete reference to the currently selected object in word, so we can then get a starting point to work with it in VBA?

It's hard to know what type of object your dealing with. I tested this by inserting a blank ActiveX image control, selecting it and then running the macro. The code has two methods but one is commented out.
Sub FindName()
MsgBox (Selection.Fields.Item(1).OLEFormat.ClassType)
'MsgBox (Selection.InlineShapes.Item(1).OLEFormat.ClassType)
MsgBox (Selection.InlineShapes.Item(1).Field.Index)
MsgBox (Selection.InlineShapes.Item(1).AlternativeText)
'Show current name
MsgBox (Selection.Fields.Item(1).OLEFormat.Object.Name)
'Set new name
Selection.Fields.Item(1).OLEFormat.Object.Name = "Image5"
'Re-display name to show that it changed
MsgBox (Selection.Fields.Item(1).OLEFormat.Object.Name)
End Sub
The result was this:

Related

Conditional visibility on MS Access Form - how to write in VBA or Macro

I have some very (very) basic MS Access knowledge. I'm trying to expand a bit into either VBA or macros as I'd like to put in some conditional visibility for my form. Basically, I have a checkbox. If it's checked, I want three or four more fields to pop up. Someone was able to point me to a basic VBA formula of if (this checkbox) = true then, (fieldx).visible = true, else, (fieldx).visibility = false, end if.
But I'm so new to this that I need more help and explanation. I tried putting it in but couldn't get it to work (no error message, just nothing changed at all).
Specific questions:
-Does this formula seem right?
-If I want multiple fields to be visible, can I combine them into one formula or should I create a new "if" statement for all?
-Where do I enter this code? I'm running the Office 365 version. For all I know, I'm not even putting it in the right place.
-How do I determine the field names to replace the (this checkbox) and (fieldx) in the formula? I tried entering the name I title the fields as, but with the spaces in the name I got an error message, and without the spaces nothing happened. Is there a specific naming convention to turn the field names into formula-appropriate titles? Is the name listed somewhere?
-Once I get the formula entered, is there something I have to do to get it to run/take effect? I tried saving, closing and reopening with no changes.
-Is this the best way to go about this?
If there's anything else you think I should know, I would love to hear it - but please keep in mind I'm very new to this so if you could keep it at "dummy" or ELI5 levels of explanation, I'd appreciate it!
after creating a form with 4 textboxes and a checkbox put the form in design mode (lower right corner has design mode selected, select a textbox and hit property sheet on the ribbon (or f4).
On the property sheet note the visible property. set the visible property to false. Now the textbox will be invisible when the form starts.
Tip you can select all the textboxes at the same time and set their properties all at once.
Every control on the form and even the various parts of the form have properties you can set and play with. For instance you can give any name you want to any control. On the property sheet go to the other tab and set the name property.
Tip: choose a name you you will remember without having to look it up and describes the controls function.
Next select the checkbox (not the checkbox's label). On the property sheet go to the event tab and select the on click event. hit the ellipsis and choose code builder. Access is Event Driven. We want the textboxes to appear when the checkbox is selected so we put that code in the checkbox click event.
after choosing code builder we get the code window where we can browse among all the events for all our forms. for now all you should see is something like:
Private Sub mycheckbox_Click()
End Sub
So insert some code to handle the checkboxes like:
Private Sub mycheckbox_Click()
If mycheckbox = True Then
txtbox1.Visible = True
txtbox2.Visible = True
txtbox3.Visible = True
txtbox4.Visible = True
Else
txtbox1.Visible = False
txtbox2.Visible = False
txtbox3.Visible = False
txtbox4.Visible = False
End If
End Sub
now when the checkbox is not checked no textboxes are visible.
but when the checkbox is checked they appear

How to find the label of a shape on a Powerpoint slide

Can someone please point me in the right direction to finding the label Powerpoint uses for each shape, active x control, etc... I've researched till I'm blue in the face. Here's what I'm talking about:
I have a very simple slideshow that asks a question in a text box. Just below the question I placed an active x control text box to get the user's answer. All I want to do is take the answer and append it to a text file. Here's the code:
Public Sub WriteAnswerToFile(slideNum As Integer, shapeNum As String)
Dim filePath As String
Dim objFSO As FileSystemObject
Dim objFile As Variant
filePath = "C:\Batch Files\Powerpoint\ButtonPushes\AnswerFile.txt"
Const ForAppending = 8
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set objFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile("C:\Batch Files\Powerpoint\ButtonPushes\AnswerFile.txt", ForAppending)
objFile.WriteLine (Application.ActivePresentation.Slides(slideNum).Shapes(shapeNum).TextFrame.TextRange)
objFile.Close
End Sub
From each slide, I pass the slide number and the shape designator to the sub routine. The shapeNum is a string because I found that it worked (no better reason than that) for me to pass something like "TextBox 1" as the param. It all works absolutely great if I know the Shape(designator); as in Shape(TextBox1). For the life of me I cannot figure out how to pass the text input by the user into the active x control text box. I have no idea what the designator is. The property sheet for the text input box calls it TextBox1. The Code sheet calls it TextBox1. When I pass that parameter, it prints the question I asked, not the answer, to my text file. I don't know how to call the input text box in my code.
My code prints "How did you hear about us?" to my text file when my code runs with Call WriteAnswerToFile(2, "TextBox 1"). I'm sure that textbox is called textbox 1; it's the first textbox on the slide. I just don't know what Powerpoint labels the user input box.
If there is some sort of Powerpoint scripting or layout page that will define all the shapes in the slidewhow, I'd sure like to be pointed that direction.
You just need to refer to the form part of the Object since this is not a normal shape.
objFile.WriteLine (Application.ActivePresentation.Slides(slideNum).Shapes(shapeNum).OLEFormat.Object.Text)
To clarify from your comment. I think that you have two "Text Box 1". One is "TextBox 1" (note the space) which is the normal textbox and the ActiveX control is "TextBox1" (no space).
If I create a new blank slide and first add a normal text box and then an ActiveX textbox and then run the following code:
For Each shp In Slide2.Shapes
Debug.Print shp.Name
Next shp
The Immediate window will show the following:
TextBox 1
TextBox1
By chance I happened to stumble upon the simplest answer to my question of "finding the label Powerpoint uses for each shape, active x control, etc.."
I am using the Office 16 (Office 365) suite that contains Powerpoint and would not be certain this feature is avaiable to other versions.
On the Home tab in Powerpoint there is an Editing submenu that contains a Select function. As pictured here:
When you click on Select, another submenu appears that shows a Selection Pane function. If you click on that, the selction pane shows up on the right hand of the screen. In that pane you will see all of the objects on the current slide and the names Powerpoint has given to each of them.
It shows there, the discrepancy I was having with calling TextBox(Space)1 and TextBox(NoSpace)1.
This works to be much more expedient for me to grab the name of the shape I want to call in my VBS Scripts.
I am thankful; however, for the time and frustration #Diederik Sieburgh saved me in allowing me to move forward with my project as it is now 2 weeks later that I stumbled upon this information.

how to clear a picture content control with macro in ms word

I have created a form where the user has the option to reset (clear) the form. I was able to clear everything from the form (textbox's, combobox's & checkboxes), but not sure how to clear a picture if one was inserted without deleting the entire option. I've tried using the bookmark method,however, with not success. the bookmark is selected then delete. Which cause the code not to recognize the Inlineshape (hence - Run-time error '5941 "the requested member of the collection does not exist".
ActiveDocument.Bookmarks("picture").Select
Selection.InlineShapes(1).Delete
Selection.InsertAfter ""
You code makes no mention of content controls, however
Dim oCC As ContentControl
Set oCC = ActiveDocument.SelectContentControlsByTitle("Picture1").Item(1)
If oCC.Range.InlineShapes.Count > 0 Then oCC.Range.InlineShapes(1).Delete
where 'Picture1' is the title of the picture content control, should do the trick.

Explanation of vba code in a word document having .docm extension

I have a Microsoft Word document with .docm format. A first glance it does not contain any macros (as when clicking the following on the ribbon; View -> Macros -> View macros pops up a window having an empty list).
But when enabling the Developer ribbon tab, and clicking the Visual Basic icon there, and then selecting the Document and ContentControlonEnter from the dropdowns in the VB window the following code appears:
Private Sub Document_ContentControlOnEnter(ByVal ContentControl As ContentControl)
Dim i As Long, j As Long
With ActiveDocument
If ContentControl.Title = "Classification" Then
ContentControl.DropdownListEntries.Clear
For i = 1 To .ContentControls.Count
If Left(.ContentControls(i).Title, 5) = "Level" Then
j = j + 1
ContentControl.DropdownListEntries.Add Text:=j & " - " & .ContentControls(i).Range.Text
End If
Next
End If
End With
End Sub
Selecting the other options in the dropdowns give only "blank" code (that is they contain only function declarations followed by theEnd keyword).
My question is what is the code meant to do?
*
Details:
The Word document in question contains hyperlinks to parts of the same document and a couple of links to Word files and Excel files of the same folder. It also contains lots of content control boxes, which I'm guessing is the focus of the code (as the code contains the ContentControl keyword)
Content controls can trigger macros when the user enters and exits them. Microsoft made the design decision that all content controls should trigger the same "events" - Document_ContentControlOnEnter / Document_ContentControlOnExit - and that the code in the event needs to check which content control was entered / exited.
Content controls are considered as part of the Document because the Document can trigger events. That's why they're in (and MUST be in) the ThisDocument class module.
(Note: View Macros can only show you PUBLIC SUB procedures with no arguments that are located in "normal" code modules. Any Private Sub, any Function, anything that takes a parameter and anything in a class module will not appear in that list. So you can't use that list to determine whether a document contains any code.)
The If ContentControl.Title = "Classification" Then checks which content control was entered. (Note: it usually makes more sense to use Select Case rather than If, especially when the event needs to distinguis between multiple content controls.) What's inside the If only executes if it was a content control with the Title "Classification". (Note that more than one content control can have the same Title, so more than one content control could run the code.)
If another content control is entered, the event is still fired, but nothing happens (in this case).
Catalin Pop correctly explained that the code is, in essence, "resetting" the drop down list.
Legacy Form fields use a similar pattern - macros can fire when the user enters/exits an form field. But the design for that was you had to create a Public Sub and assign that to the form field in the Properties.
I think the logic here is quite simple.
Basically the code searches for a content control named Classification within the entire document.
After it finds it, it clears all of its drowdown entries - like a reset.
After the cleaning part it again searches through the entire document for all content control that start with word "Level" and it collect the text for those controls and their order in appearance.
With this info collected it then fills the dropdown optios for the classification control above. (e.g. 1 Level X, 2 Level Y.. - based on what it finds in the document for controls starting with Level in their name)

excel spreadsheet referencing an activex control

I am using Excel 2013. I have added an activex control to my spreadsheet. The control is a checkbox which I have named chkAD1. My spreadsheet is called "timeseries_AD".
I am trying to reference the checkbox to check its value however without any joy. I have tried the lines below,
worksheets("timeseries_AD").OleObjects("chkAD1").Value
This results in the error message "unable to get the OLEObjects property of the worksheet class".
I have read that an activex control has two names. One is the name of the shape that contains the control the other is the code name. I'm not sure which one I have changed. I clicked on my control and in the Name Box renamed it to "chkAD1". Is that the shape name or code name I have changed?
UPDATE - Apologies
Sorry the control I added is not an activex control it is actually a form control.
I tried this and it worked for me.
When I check the box I get a messagebox that says TRUE.
And when I uncheck it I get a messagebox that says FALSE
Private Sub CheckBox1_Click()
MsgBox CheckBox1.Value
End Sub