I'm working on a VBA macro to automatically add hyperlinks within a drawing file, so that when a certain word is mentioned in the text, I can link to another page in the drawing.
According to MSDN and Visio's help, a Hyperlink object can be associated with a cell, characters, row, or section object. However, I can't find any way to actually associate a hyperlink with anything but a shape.
So the question is, how can I hyperlink a single word within a paragraph of text in a single shape in Visio?
I'm only familiar with two ways to trigger a hyperlink navigation within Visio:
Add a Hyperlink to a shape and click on the shape (or select the hyperlink from the shape's context menu).
Add a call to the Hyperlink shapesheet function in a cell formula. Making a change that triggers that cell's recalc would then follow the hyperlink.
The best idea I can think of, and it isn't very good, is:
Make sure your shape is a group - if it isn't, convert it to group.
Change the group's properties to SelectMode=visGrpSelModeMembers1st and DisplayMode=visGrpDisModeBack.
Drop a new shape, sized and centered over the word in question. Make the new shape transparent (partial transparency here could be used for highlighting).
Change the DblClick event's formula to "Hyperlink("yourURLhere")".
Add that shape to the group.
Now, double-clicking on the word should actually involve double-clicking on the new subshape, which will trigger the hyperlink. This is really only viable if your shape is designed to work with this idea - many out-of-the-box shapes will not work well here, as steps 1 and 2 can have ugly side-effects.
I hope someone else knows a more elegant way around this problem.
Related
Context: I'm setting up a macro to format textboxes independently of current template or textbox defaults, in Word 2016. To be clear, No, I cannot depend on the "Set Textbox Defaults" option.
The design I have to replicate puts a linear gradient on the outer textbox's border, going from a dark color at the top to white at the bottom. Pretty simple, right? Except I can't figure out how to tell VBA to accomplish this.
Normally I record a macro to see which properties to change, but the Macro recorder isn't saving any edits to the Shape format.
Manually I got as far as outputting the .Pattern used on the textbox.Line object via Debug.Print: Word returns -2 (msoPatternMixed) which is "Not supported" according to Microsoft's reference docs.
I don't know how to get any further.
Could anyone share some example code that'd let me set the line gradient through VBA?
Or: tell me how to force the Macro Recorder to save the changes I'm making in the Format Shape dialog? It's incredibly annoying that it refuses to show me anything.
Thanks!
In VBA for PowerPoint, I want to applying bullet-point style from the slide master to selected text boxes. Is this even possible? I've been searching the internet for ages on this, and can't seem to find anything even close.
I can select or place text boxes on the slide in VBA, but I want to use the bullet-point layout as defined on the slide master - I just don't know how to select it, and once selected I assume I use the Shape.PickUp and Apply (or is there another way of doing this that I haven't thought of?)
Any help greatly appreciated.
David.
To avoid an XY problem, here's what I'm trying to accomplish: when a shape is selected, I want detail text about that shape to appear on the screen.
I first tried using Shape Data, but it supports only single-line name=value pairs. My detail information is an arbitrary, multiline text blob.
My next thought was to used the shape's ScreenTip (aka tooltip) to hold the text data, then write some VBA code to handle the _SelectionChanged event. When a shape is selected I want to copy it's ScreenTip text into the text of another object (my details panel).
I got the _SelectionChange event-handling working, but poking around the Selection object in the debugger I can't find any property of the selected object that exposes the ScreenTip information.
Is Visio's programming API too anemic to support his kind of thing? Is there another way I might be able to do this? Is there another tool that might be better for this (preferably free)?
Visio's API is capable of doing this, handily.
It seems you're not aware of Visio's shapesheet, which is where the screen tip text is stored, along with pretty much anything you'd want to know about a shape.
To access the screen tip text you simply read the Comment cell from the selected shape's shapesheet:
Application.Selection(1).CellsU("Comment").ResultStr(visNone)
This code will return the comment text.
You're on the right track using the SelectionChange event, though of course you're checking that the selection count = 1, or at least >0.
I'm beyond the limits of my kindergarten-level VBA skills so would like to ask if anyone here can help me write a VBA script to help me work stepwise through my Word document and adjust the anchoring position of all the AutoShapes in the document.
I have a 400-page book in Microsoft Word with at least one and sometimes several marginalia (sidenote) on each page in a thin column to the left of the main body text column. These sidenotes are a concise 'pointer' to a particular point made in the body text and need to appear directly to that point's left.
Each sidenote is in its own AutoShape (within a textbox in that shape). The AutoShapes were placed by the author in an inconsistent way. Mostly they are anchored to a position on the page.
However, I need to repaginate. This will cause the body text to flow differently and I need the sidenotes to flow with it (approximately or exactly)!
So before I repaginate I want to make sure I anchor each AutoShape to the paragraph it belongs to and not to the page it is currently on.
I don't know if that can be done automatically, since I don't know how Word could deduce a purely spatial relationship between an AutoShape and a paragraph.
So I'm guessing I have to make do with a "semi-automatic" process. Something like this:
Press a button to start VBA script
Select next AutoShape
Prompt for user to enter cursor in body text where anchor is to be placed
Resume macro
Place anchor for that AutoShape in that position
Change vertical position paramater of AutoShape to "relative to paragraph"
and "0 mm"
(Alternative, not 0 mm but another value deduced to more
accurately position AutoShape)
Change width parameter of AutoShape to
a particular fixed value 37 mm (some of them were a little
inaccurately drawn)
End cycle and go back to beginning to
Select next AutoShape
Hope that is all understandable.
I've tried to record a VBA script to do some of this but have no idea how to build in the user prompt.
Any help much appreciated!
Craig
You may be better off creating a macro that works on one shape at a time, or anchor all the shapes manually (which you're almost doing anyway) and then write a macro to take care of the various parameters and settings you want.
If you really want to prompt the user while the macro is running you'll need to look into modeless dialogs (not possible on the Mac). See this link: http://www.bettersolutions.com/vba/VXV113/SE846743531.htm
Basically, you'd have to create your own dialog and then show it modelessly so that the user could still place the cursor before hitting OK. If you're new to VBA, this could be difficult to set up.
While searching for solutions to this, I found a post on another forum from someone trying to do something very similar. He was developing a set of tools for editors using Word and until I find the ultimate solution I am using his "Shapes" tool which allows me to change parameters on each AutoShape I select at-a-click instead of opening up and closing a dialogue box each time, plus selecting a different tab each time... His tools can be downloaded at his Editors' Toolkit website.
Friends,
I'm using VBA to create Lotus emails populated from an Excel spreadsheet, and I'm stuck on a really silly point.
When I create a new section in the note, business rules require me to give it a border. They've been doing this manually for years and are used to doing this from the Notes UI. They create a new section, then go to its properties and then change it to have a border (please see the border and style part in the properties window in this screenshot).
I can't figure out how to add this border through VBA. Any ideas? I've tried changing the TitleStyle, but that only affects things like fonts and color. I have everything else done, just stuck on the border!
Thanks!
Mike
The NotesRichTextSection class doesn't give you any way to change the border, unfortunately. Rich text items in Lotus Notes aren't supported very well via the API, so often you'll find a mismatch between what you can do on the client vs. what you can do in code.
There might be a workaround if you're up for trying it. First you need to create a simple form in Notes that has a rich text field, let's call it Body, surrounded by a section. Setup the section to appear however you want, with the border set, etc. You'll also need another hidden text field, called Title, and you'll set the section's title to be computed based on that Title field.
Then in your VBA code you're going to create a new NotesDocument based on that form. You'll set the Title field, and you'll add content into the Body rich-text item. Then you'll need to call the ComputeWithForm method followed by the Save method. Finally, you can use the RenderToRTItem method on the document to put the entire document into your original note's rich text field. Make sense?
No guarantees that will work from VBA, but I've done similar things in the past using LotusScript and it did the trick.
You could just set the borders of the cells you are copying using the Borders() property.
Example:
Range("B2:C4").Borders.LineStyle = xlDash
Range("B2:C4").Borders(xlEdgeBottom) = RGB(255,0,0)