An Outlook-style "Insert/Signature": improving my solution

[natasha]

Hello everybody,
I wanted to add to Office XP an "Insert/Signature" voice.
I wrote a simple VBA sub to insert a signature at the end of document and,
of course, to add a menu entry to call it is a trivial task.
But, I'd like to develop a TRUE solution: that is, adding a "Signature" tab
in "Tools/Options", saving signatures on a .txt file, and dinamically adding
subvoices to "Insert/Signature", populated by .txt files, letting user choose
if to insert Signature1, Signature2,...., and so on, depending how much
signatures they've been defined in "Signature" tab of "Tools/Options".
Not so difficult read/write from text files, but how to perform other
requirements?

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hello everybody,
I wanted to add to Office XP an "Insert/Signature" voice.
I wrote a simple VBA sub to insert a signature at the end of document and,
of course, to add a menu entry to call it is a trivial task.
But, I'd like to develop a TRUE solution: that is, adding a "Signature" tab
in "Tools/Options", saving signatures on a .txt file, and dinamically adding
subvoices to "Insert/Signature", populated by .txt files, letting user choose
if to insert Signature1, Signature2,...., and so on, depending how much
signatures they've been defined in "Signature" tab of "Tools/Options".
Not so difficult read/write from text files, but how to perform other
requirements?

For starters, you can't add any tabs to the Tools/Options dialog. You
could create a UserForm that could be called by a toolbar button or
menu item: http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Userforms/CreateAUserForm.htm
but it would be separate from Tools/Options.

There's already a better solution, though: Store all your signatures
as AutoText entries
(http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/AutoText.htm) in the
template used to base your letters. If you apply the Signature
paragraph style to each one before you store it, they'll all be listed
in the Signature category in the Insert > AutoText menu. You can also
type the unique part of the name of a signature (at least 4
characters) and press F3 to insert it. This also has the advantage
over text file storage that the signatures can contain formatting.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
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