Word VBA

This is a collection of recipes for scripting Microsoft Word using Visual Basic for Applications. Macro Recording A great way of learning about Word VBA is using its macro recording function. With the function, you tell Word to start recording, then perform various steps as if you were working without a macro recorder, and finally, tell Word to stop recording. VBA code corresponding to what you did using Word GUI has been recorded by Word. While the code often cannot be meaningfully used without a modification, by starting from it and modifying it you can save a lot of time that would otherwise be spent reading the VBA documentation. Menu paths: Word 2007: View (tab) > Macros (group) > down-pointing triangle below Macros button > Record Macro Word 2007: Developer (tab) > Code (group) > Record Macro Links: Record or run a macro (Word 2007) at microsoft.com Create a macro (Word 2003) at microsoft.com Recording a macro to generate code (Office 2000) at microsoft.com Text Editing You can insert and delete text as follows: Selection.TypeText Text:="Inserted as if by typing on keyboard" Selection.Delete 'Deleted the single char after cursor, or a non-empty selection Moving Cursor You can move cursor around as follows: Selection.MoveDown Unit:=wdLine Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCell 'At the end of a row, moves to the next row Selecting You can select regions of text as follows: Selection.EndKey Unit:=wdLine, Extend:=wdExtend Formatting You can format text including text color, background color, and font properties as follows: Selection.Font.Color = RGB(0, 0, 255) 'Foreground color AKA text color Selection.Range.HighlightColorIndex = wdYellow 'Background color as highlight Selection.Font.Name = "Verdana" 'Font face Selection.Font.Size = 8 'Font size Selection.Font.Bold = True 'Or False Selection.Font.Bold = wdToggle Selection.Font.Italic = True Selection.Font.Underline = True Copying and Pasting You copy and paste as follows: Selection.Copy Selection.Paste Clipboard Prerequisites: Accessing the clipboard from a Word document requires that a reference to MSForms (Microsoft Forms Object Library) is set in the document. You can set the reference by adding and subsequent removing of a user form, via Insert > UserForm in a pop-up menu. To check the presence of a reference, see Tools > References menu. Placing text on the clipboard: Set MyClipboard = New MSForms.DataObject MyClipboard.SetText "My string" MyClipboard.PutInClipboard Getting text from the clipboard: Set MyClipboard = New MSForms.DataObject MyClipboard.GetFromClipboard TextContent = MyClipboard.GetText Links: DataObject Class at msdn.microsoft.com; contains a section on Visual Basic, whose applicability to Word VBA is unclear. Various Sub PasteTabSeparatedPlainTextToTable() 'This paste prevents loss of formatting of the table cells Set MyClipboard = New MSForms.DataObject MyClipboard.GetFromClipboard TextContent = MyClipboard.GetText SplitArray = Split(TextContent, vbNewLine) For Each Element In SplitArray SplitArray2 = Split(Element, vbTab) TabSkipNeeded = False Set OldSelection = Selection.Range For Each CellContent In SplitArray2 If TabSkipNeeded Then Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCell Else TabSkipNeeded = True Selection.EndKey Unit:=wdLine, Extend:=wdExtend End If Selection.TypeText Text:=CellContent Next OldSelection.Select Selection.MoveDown Unit:=wdLine Next End Sub Related Wikibooks Excel VBA Visual Basic External links Word VBA reference, docs.microsoft.com tags ms-word and vba, stackoverflow.com Microsoft software Office suites 25%