I'm working on a macro for Word which detects key words in the text while these are typed.
for example, I want that a Table will be added when the user types \table or something like that.. very similar to lyx context, but yet nothing like it.
The table example is very simple compare to the ideas I want to implement with this.
I'm looking for an event in VBA that will be triggered whenever the used types something.
There is an event called WindowSelectionChange (Reference: Event - Document Edited) but it triggers only whenever the SELECTION is changed, meaning only when the user selects another area in the document with the mouse cursor, or whenever the user moves with the keyboard arrows in the document, but doesn't triggers when the user types text (or press Enter, Space, etc...).
Seems an answer is explained here:
What events can I use to monitor users typing in Word?
Shortly - no events on type text in word: use either Windows API hooks, or assign key bindings to all keys.
Related
I'm trying to write some code which executes as you type in Word.
Which events should I observe to catch individual words or characters? Ideally I'd rather not observe keystrokes through some dll calls. I assumed the Word object model would expose some classes with native VBA events, but the only two event objects:
Word.Document
Word.Application
don't have any events that leap out at me. (Document_Change event doesn't seem to do what I want)
Is there a native way of executing a code when the text content of the document changes?
Word provides no events for capturing the user's typing.
That leaves:
"keyboard hooks" at the Windows API level.
Or assigning a VBA macro to each and every possible key combination
(a KeyBinding).
I am using a VBA userform to randomly generate values to be sent into a Word document to provide random questions on various math topics (for my students).
This seems to work well except that when I exit the userform (me.hide) and the values are sent and focus is back in the document, the previous values are still briefly visible every time I move the mouse.
This only happens for an instant. The correctly sent values appear if there is no mouse (or window slider) activity taking place. If I view another application and do some activity there and then return to the Word document the display is fine as well.
The flipping of values is visually annoying. Has anyone out there encountered a similar issue?
To reproduce:
Create a Word document with an ActiveX Textbox and button. The button activates a userform which also contains a Textbox and a button to send the Textbox value back to the Textbox in the document.
In my case, when the button in the document is clicked the form opens and the value does get returned to the Word document, but when rolling the mouse or moving the slider at the edge of the window the previous value in the text box briefly flickers into view. Here is the code from the document button:
Private Sub cmdOk_Click()
ThisDocument.TextBox1.Value = TextBox1.Value
Me.Hide
End Sub
I am using Word 2016 and Windows 10.
I tried to use the "new" Word textboxes but I do not know how to communicate with them from a userform. It is so simple using the "old" text boxes.
ActiveX controls were designed for VBA UserForms. It's possible to insert them on the surface of a Word document or Excel spreadsheet, but they don't always behave optimally. Content controls (and the legacy form fields), on the other hand are designed for the surface of a Word document.
In order to write to a content control you can use code like this:
ActiveDocument.SelectContentControlsByTitle("name").Item(1).Range.Text
Closer to what you're trying to do with identifying the content controls could be:
ActiveDocument.SelectContentControlsByTitle(TextBox1.Name).Item(1).Range.Text = TextBox1.Value
Why it's so complicated: The team that designed content controls wanted to avoid the problems people ran into with bookmarks and form fields, that a name could not be duplicated in a document. It's possible to give the same name to multiple content controls. So it's not possible to identify a content control using Document.ContentControls("name").
Instead, Document.SelectContentControlByTitle needs to be used, which returns an array of content controls. If there's only one (or if you want only one), then you can add on .Item([index]) to get the single content control directly.
Rather than type in a static name, you can query the UserForm's textbox control for its name, if that makes things easier for you.
I have an document in word, which has some fields to be filled, and an button to which I want to assign a macro. When that button is clicked, that same form with empty fields needs to be appended to the end of document, including the button (which can be clicked again and do the same thing).
Here is the document I have:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_2kyqxMx5x4UkxfOHJhOGVPdnc/view?usp=sharing
The main problem with what you want to do is dynamically linking the button to the macro code to be executed. The most obvious type of button to use is the legacy ActiveX control in the Ribbon's Developer tab. But that requires its own procedure entry in the document's ThisDocument class module. While it's possible to add code to modules "on the fly" this involves disabling a security option.
A more straignt forward approach is to use the MacroButton field. This creates a clickable text within the document. It can display text or a graphic (so that it looks like a button) and is assigned the name of any public Sub that takes no parameters:
{ MACROBUTTON NameOfMacro Click here }
Ctrl+F9 to insert the field code brackets; Alt+F9 to toggle between field code and field result.
Graphics in Word 2010 and later:* The was a change to the graphics engine in Word 2010 which affects the behavior of graphics objects in the MacroButton field. Clicking the object triggers the Ribbon utility for working with graphics - the field code no longer "hides" the graphic. There are a number of ways you can work around this:
Use an IncludePicture field (which works with the old graphics format) to bring in an outside picture file. Once the linked picture is in the field it can be converted to a static picture by selecting the IncludePicture field and pressing Ctrl+Shift+F9. Word respects the old graphic format and the picture is click-able.
{ MacroButton NameOfMacro {IncludePicture "C:\\Path\\picture.jpg" } }
Use the old *.doc file format. Note that this will restrict some of the things that can be done with the document, but it will force use of the old graphics engine.
Instead of a MacroButton field, use the WindowBeforeDoubleClick event or WindowSelectionChange event to run the code.
*With the exception of unlinking the IncludePicture field (which I discovered myself), this information came from this discussion on the Microsoft Answers site
If you want to run the macro with a single rather than a double-click (the default) you need to run the following line of code. This applies to the entire Word application and needs to be run everytime Word restarts. You could put it in an AutoNew macro in the template / AutoOpen macro in the document:
Application.Options.ButtonFieldClicks = 1
The simplest way to store the entire content you want to insert repeatedly is as a Building Block (formerly known as AutoText).
BuildingBlocks are stored in templates. If your document is being created from a template, that would be the logical place. Another possibility would be a special template you use for this purpose. Normal.dotm can also be used but keep in mind this does sometimes get removed.
(Note: if you're using a template for the document that would also be the best place to store the macro attached to the macro button.)
Once this is set up, all your code needs to do is insert the BuidlingBlock at the end of the document.
I'm looking for an event that's raised when a user selects text in the preview pane of an email. E.g. you're viewing an email in the preview pane and select some text. I didn't see anything in the object reference to this effect, but the namespace is so large, it seems like there's always some object somewhere that does exactly what I need, which I'm not aware of.
Overall, what I'd like to do is see if the selected text matches a pattern and if so, insert a sub-menu in the right click menu (the one that says Copy, Who Is, Synonyms, Translate..). Help with this would be appreciated too. I believe the CommandBar is "text", but I'm unsure how to go about accessing this via name.
The Outlook object model doesn't provide anything for that.
For example, I want the Title fields in the body and the page headers of the document to be updated automatically whenever the Title field in the document properties panel is changed. I know how to update the fields, but I want to know the name of the event that will tell me when the document properties have changed.
Your help will be appreciated. Thanks.
I also asked it on the MSDN Forums.
You can certainly check for these kinds of things in some of the events, such as DocumentBeforeClose or WindowSelectionChange, but this may be overkill. Instead, you could just use fields - they will update automatically. For example, go to Insert and then click on Quick Parts and then Field... Go to the Document Information section in the dropdown on the left and choose Title. Then, insert that and go back to the Home tab on the Ribbon and set its style to Title.
You also mention you also want page headers - are those properties you're setting in the Document Panel?
Word doesn't have any events like that. The best you might be able to do is use the selection change event, which will happen fairly often, but then you have to check all the propertiers of all the documents.
I think you're trying to do something that Word doesn't normally do. There are certain times when fields are updated and that's it. Teach you users how it works.