Specifying location of new inlineshape in Word VBA? - vba

I'm working on a document "wizard" for the company that I work for. It's a .dot file with a header consisting of some text and some form fields, and a lot of VBA code. The body of the document is pulled in as an OLE object from a separate .doc file.
Currently, this is being done as a Shape, rather than an InlineShape. I did this because I can absolutely position the Shape, whereas the InlineShape always appears at the beginning of the document.
The problem with this is that a Shape doesn't move when the size of the header changes. If someone needs to add or remove a line from the header due to a special case, they also need to move the object that defines the body. This is a pain, and I'd like to avoid it if possible.
Long story short, how do I position an InlineShape using VBA in Word?
The version I'm using is Word 97.

InlineShape is treated as a letter. Hence, the same technique.
ThisDocument.Range(15).InlineShapes.AddPicture "1.gif"

My final code ended up using ThisDocument.Paragraphs to get the range I needed. But GSerg pointed me in the right direction of using a Range to get my object where it needed to be.

Related

MS Word Ignores Content Control Inside a Rich Text Box

Is there a reason why my MS Word VBA macro is ignoring a dropdown list I placed inside a shape (a rich text box)? I've tried referring to it by tag, name, number, etc. I even had the macro tell me the count of content controls:
MsgBox(ActiveDocument.ContentControls.Count)
I get 0.
Nothing works. If I take it out of the shape, it works fine. MS Word gives me a count of 1 item. But for some reason MS Word won't acknowledge it inside the shape. Any help on how to do this?
Edited as my previous post was completely wrong.
Each textbox in the main text story is a Shape which you can access using an index number. A shape has various properties but text etc. is in its Textframe, if it has one. But in that case the Range you need is not called Range but TextRange. So, e.g. the first contentControl in Shape 2 is
ActiveDocument.Shapes(2).TextFrame.TextRange.ContentControls(1)
You will probably need to iterate through your shapes and you may need to verify that a given shape is a textbox and/or that it has a TextFrame.
If your text box is in another Story such as a header or footer, you will probably need to identify the relevant StoryRange.

How can i set the name of a textbox in publisher?

I want to set the name of the text box so it can be easily accessed by code.
e.g
I am looking for an editing field similar to this
Thanks
There's a properties Window that can be accessed for each of the controls on the UI. There you may rename the controls. (Since you do not seem to have a VBA code yet and you want to rename the control from UI)
The other alternative. Record a macro, do some changes to the textbox (e.g. resize, change text etc). Then check the programme assigned default name of the textbox from the VBA editor. As you said, you can access the control via this default name and utilizing your VBA code (as you said), rename the textbox.
If you really want to be editing a worksheet object in Publisher you will have to get the OLEobject of the Shape and interpret it as an Excel.Application.
If you are just looking for a placeholder solution for Publisher documents, you could simply create a textbox that contains a certain string, then loop through all pages, all shapes on each page where HasTextFrame = msoTrue, and compare shape.TextFrame.TextRange.Text to your placeholder string. If it's the one you're after, you can do anything you want with the shape in question.
Sorry for the vague answer, but your images don't work anymore.
Edit: you can work with Shape.Name for your comparison (you mentioned this property in a comment), but I have no idea how you'd set the value from the interface, without using VBA, in the first place, so if you're making templates the approach I outlined above might be easier for users (see https://msdn.microsoft.com/EN-US/library/office/ff939233.aspx for Shape.Name). There is also a .Name property for page objects (https://msdn.microsoft.com/EN-US/library/office/ff940382.aspx), so you should be able to do something like ActiveDocument.Pages("page_name").Shapes("shape_name").TextRange.Text = "your content" once you've figured out how to actually set the name values
Edit 2:
You can also try to use search and replace as per Replacing Text in Microsoft Publisher Using Powershell if you don't need to do anything advanced beyond placing some text
Edit 3: Given the title of your question, unless you can figure something out with Publisher's interface, you can set the .Name property of the selected text box (or other shape) with dim shape = Selection.ShapeRange.TextFrame.Parent and shape.Name = "your_name". You can set the name of the selected page with ActiveDocument.ActiveView.ActivePage.Name="your_name". (Create a VBA macro that prompts you for names and you should be good to go)

Update a field in Word 2013 using VBA

I created a word document where I use fields (with Document properties) in the text, in the Footers but I also created an Word Art object with the Title-field in it.
I can Update the fields in the document using:
ActiveDocument.Fields.Update
For the Footers I use the PrintPreview
ActiveDocument.PrintPreview
ActiveDocument.ClosePrintPreview
But none of those updates my Field in the Word Art Object.
How can I update this?
A wordart object is a shape, is it really the case, that a word art object can contain a field instead of just overlaying? Can you put out some more information/ did you double check if the field may have been updated but the content stays the same?
I have found a suitable work arround in Word for my problem.
It is not realy neccesary to use Word Art, I can use the same with "Text Effects and Typography"
I am still curious if there is a real solotion for this, but for now it works dor me

Make Word's automatic spell-checking pick up dictionary changes

In MS Word it's possible to add words to a custom dictionary so they're recognized. If a word is not recognized, Word automatically puts a red squiggly line underneath it. If you add that word to the custom dictionary, this line disappears. What I'd like to do is perform this process automatically via a macro. It appears that one has to manually open the dictionary file and write the new word, as there is no method on the Word Dictionary object to add words to a given dictionary. This is no problem, except that Word doesn't automatically pick up the new word and remove the red squiggly lines underneath the newly-added word. I've even tried clearing the custom dictionaries and adding them back in, but it doesn't seem to reload the dictionary until you manually run a spell check. Sample code for this follows:
Dim x As Dictionary
Dim fname As String
fname = "C:\Users\me\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\UProof\md.dic"
' code to add word to dictionary goes here
With CustomDictionaries
.ClearAll
.Add fname
.ActiveCustomDictionary = CustomDictionaries.Item(fname)
End With
Is there any way to make Word recognize the newly added word(s) in a custom dictionary without running the interactive spell check? It does this silently if you manually add words, but I can't seem to replicate this behavior in VBA. I'd like the red lines to go away automatically just like they do when you manually add words.
I haven't exactly solved the problem, but I think I figured out a work around. You can get a collection of Range objects which represent spelling errors using ActiveDocument.SpellingErrors. I'm going to search this collection for text matching the word I've added to the dictionary, and then set .NoProofing = True on the object. This appears to make the red lines go away, and having added the new word to the dictionary will prevent them from coming back the next time I open the document. I haven't fully tested this approach, but it looks promising.
EDIT
This approach is flawed, as additional instances of the word which are entered during the same session will have the red squigglies underneath them because they haven't been explicitly ignored and the spell check isn't yet using the updated dictionary. If you just pull up the custom dictionary dialog manually and click OK, something happens in the background to re-read the dictionary. I just can't figure out how to do this in code.

Using VBA in MS Word 2007 to define page elements?

I'd like to be able to create a page element which I can feed text and it will form itself into the preferred layout. For instance:
{MACRO DocumentIntro("Introduction to Business Studies", "FP015", "Teachers' Guide")}
with that as a field, the output should be a line, the first two strings a certain size and font, centred, another line and then the third string fonted, sized and centred.
I know that's sort of TeX-like and perhaps beyond the scope of VBA, but if anyone's got any idea how it might be possible, please tell!
EDIT:
Ok, if I put the required information into Keyword, as part of the document properties, with some kind of unique separator, then that gets that info in, and the info will be unique to each document. Next one puts a bookmark where the stuff is going to be displayed. Then one creates an AutoOpen macro that goes to that bookmark, pulls the relevants out of the keywords, and forms the text appropriately into the bookmark's .Selection.
Is that feasible?
You're certainly on the right track here for a coding solution. However, there is a simpler way with no code - this is the type of scenario that Content Controls in Word 2007 were built for and with Fields/Properties, you can bind to content controls (CC). These CC can hold styles (like centered, bold, etc.). No VBA required.
The very easiest thing to do is to pick 3 built-in document properties that you will always want these to be. For example, "Title" could be your first string, "Subject" your second string and "Keywords" your third. Then, just go to the Insert ribbon, Quick Parts, Document Properties and insert, place and format those how you like. Then go to Word's start button (the orb thingy) and then under Prepare choose Properties. Here you can type, for example "Introduction to Business Studies", into the Title box and then just deselect it somehow (like click in another box). The Content Control for Title will be filled in automatically with your text.
If you want to use this for multiple files, just create this file as a .dotx (after CC insertion/placement/formatting and before updating the Document Properties' text). Then every time all you'll have to do is set these three properties with each new file.
Well, yes, it did turn out to be feasible.
Sub autoopen()
Dim sKeywords As String
sKeywords = ActiveDocument.BuiltInDocumentProperties(4)
ActiveDocument.Bookmarks("foo").Select
Selection.Text = sKeywords
End Sub
Okay, I have some filling out to do, but at least the guts of it are there.