How to add a custom field provider to MS Word? - vba

Question

Foreword: I want to allow users to define high quality document templates and then inject there data from our information system and print the result. I think MS Word is a great starting point, because this work is aimed to business letters etc., not data reports.
Question: Is it possible to add a custom field provider to MS Word?
I don't have English MS Word, so I must try to describe what I mean in a few sentences. Normally we can insert "fields" like author name, current date etc. These fields work seamlessly. We can switch view of fileds between data and definition. Definion of author field looks like this: { AUTHOR \\* MERGEFORMAT }.
Now I want to inject external data into documents and let user specify where to put them. A user should define a document template and mark spots where external data should be injected. Since Word users generally aren't IT experts, the easiest way for them is to use some macros or "insert field" option to do it. So I want to define my own set of fields and connect Word to my custom field and data provider. How to do it? I am unable to find any documentation on this.
I think this approach is better than using sql database connection or something like that, because I want to let the external source define list of known fields and their values, not the docx document itself. Also, data source won't actually be an sql database.

Answer 1

Yes you can do this by using Custom Document Properties as placeholders and then use some VBA code to set those properties to whatever you want. You can get the data via ODBC or from an Excel spreadsheet or from a text file.
First of all, experiment manually by going into File, Properties and creating some custom properties. Give them a value and then, in the document, insert some DocProperty fields. If you can't find DocProperty in your language version of Word then look through a list of the fields like Author etc. Since field names are visible to end users they might have been translated.
Then in order to complete your document template, create a VBA function that uses SetProperty. Read this article for more details. It is up to you whether the VBA is triggered by opening the file or whether you add a menu item to do that.
No need for special controls or any commercial add-ons. I'm going to add a VBA tag to your question since this is really a VBA programming question. In fact, this has been possible since Word for Windows 1.0.
Using SetProperty in VBA is a bit more complex now. I got the following snippet of code from this forum posting.
object docProps = wdDoc.CustomDocumentProperties;
Type docPropsType = docProps.GetType();
object Prop = docPropsType.InvokeMember("Item",
BindingFlags.Default |
BindingFlags.GetProperty,
null, docProps,
new object[] {propName} );
Type PropType = Prop.GetType();
PropType.InvokeMember("Item",
BindingFlags.Default |
BindingFlags.SetProperty,
null, docProps,
new object[] {propName,propValue} );

Answer 2

Absolutely, this is the exact kind of scenario that Content Controls and CustomXMLParts were built for (Word 2007/2010 only, not earlier .doc format).
Most of the Word Developer Center home page deals with these two: Content Controls and CustomXMLParts. If you go this route, you'll find the Word Content Control Toolkit an invaluable resource as well, especially when just starting out.
From an end-user perspective, it could be as simple as just creating buttons on the Ribbon for insertable Content Controls via a template or document add-in (VSTO or VBA).

Answer 3

If you want a fairly decent prebuilt solution, check out Windward reports.
Yeah, the name makes it sound like a reporting tool, but in reality, it's exactly what you're describing. They have a Word add in that allows users to easily mark up a word doc with fields to be inserted from your data source.
I built a very similar system for a law firm. Windward didn't do quite everything I needed it to do, but at the same time, it's pretty powerful.