Removing blank spaces and section breaks

[Denise]

Hello

Using Office 2002 SP-2, Windows 2000 V5.0 SP-4.

I have a Word template with a userform where users can tick checkboxes to
include blocks of text. If a box is left unticked the corresponding block
of text is deleted from the document. The document initially contains all
the text and pieces are removed if their box is unticked.

My problem is that I am left with large blank spaces in the document which
need to be removed. Also, if an entire section has been deleted I need to
remove the section break as well.

I haven't been able to find a way of doing this through VBA and would very
much appreciate any help.

Thanks

Denise Crawley

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi Denise,

You'll need to supply more information. It depends on how the template is
set up and how the code in the userform is doing the deletions.

Are the blocks of text initially surrounded by bookmarks, and is the code
using something like this?
ActiveDocument.Bookmarks("bookmarkname").Range.Delete
Or is there some other arrangement that tells the code which text to remove?

After the code has removed a block, look at the document with nonprinting
characters turned on. What's causing the blank spaces? Are there empty
paragraphs, paragraphs with large Space Before or with Page Break Before
turned on, hard page breaks, Next Page section breaks, or something else?

 

[Denise]

Hi Denise,

You'll need to supply more information. It depends on how the template is
set up and how the code in the userform is doing the deletions.

Are the blocks of text initially surrounded by bookmarks, and is the code
using something like this?
ActiveDocument.Bookmarks("bookmarkname").Range.Delete
Or is there some other arrangement that tells the code which text to remove?

After the code has removed a block, look at the document with nonprinting
characters turned on. What's causing the blank spaces? Are there empty
paragraphs, paragraphs with large Space Before or with Page Break Before
turned on, hard page breaks, Next Page section breaks, or something else?

Hi Jay, thanks for the speedy response

You're spot-on about the bookmarks - that's exactly how I've done it. The
code is as follows:-


Private Sub RemoveSection(strBookmark As String)

' Searches for a bookmark named strBookmark and removes it if found

On Error GoTo Err_RemoveSection

If ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.Exists(strBookmark) Then

ActiveDocument.Bookmarks(strBookmark).Select
Selection.Delete

End If

Exit_RemoveSection:

Exit Sub

Err_RemoveSection:

With Err

MsgBox "Error no. " & .Number & vbCr & _
"in function RemoveSection" & vbCr & .Description

End With

Resume Exit_RemoveSection

End Sub


I've had a look at the remaining blanks with Show/Hide On. There is a
single paragraph mark at the top of each page but the rest of each page is
blank, i.e. no non-printing chars. Some pages have the paragraph mark then
a page break, some have a section break but many of the pages are blank
apart from the paragrpah mark. I must admit this is a real grey area for
me so I'm not really sure what this tells you.

Does this help and is there any more information I can give you?

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi Jay, thanks for the speedy response

You're spot-on about the bookmarks - that's exactly how I've done it.
The code is as follows:-


Private Sub RemoveSection(strBookmark As String)

' Searches for a bookmark named strBookmark and removes it if
found

On Error GoTo Err_RemoveSection

If ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.Exists(strBookmark) Then

ActiveDocument.Bookmarks(strBookmark).Select
Selection.Delete

End If

Exit_RemoveSection:

Exit Sub

Err_RemoveSection:

With Err

MsgBox "Error no. " & .Number & vbCr & _
"in function RemoveSection" & vbCr & .Description

End With

Resume Exit_RemoveSection

End Sub


I've had a look at the remaining blanks with Show/Hide On. There is a
single paragraph mark at the top of each page but the rest of each
page is blank, i.e. no non-printing chars. Some pages have the
paragraph mark then a page break, some have a section break but many
of the pages are blank apart from the paragrpah mark. I must admit
this is a real grey area for me so I'm not really sure what this
tells you.

Does this help and is there any more information I can give you?

Hi Denise,

For the issue of deleting the section breaks along with the text, the answer
is to set up the template so the section break *at the end* of each text
block is *inside* the bookmark and will be deleted with the text. (It isn't
obvious, but all the characteristics of a section -- margins,
headers/footers, page orientation, etc. -- are stored in the section break
at the end of the section, not at the beginning. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/WorkWithSections.htm for more
enlightenment.)

For the blanks, it's usually more important to know what's immediately
*after* the blank than before it (the only exception being when the
preceding paragraph has a very large value for the Space After setting).

If the blank is followed by a hard page break, the answer is to delete the
page break. Actually, the initial template shouldn't contain any hard page
breaks, precisely because you can't tell when they'll cause problems like
this. Instead, use the paragraph settings Keep With Next and Keep Together
where necessary.

If it's a Next Page section break, either delete it by having it inside the
bookmark (if you don't need a section break there for other reasons) or
change it to Continuous.

If it's neither, put the cursor in the paragraph immediately after the
blank. Open the Task Pane and select the Reveal Formatting pane. Look for
and eliminate any of these settings from the template:
- Page Break Before
- Keep With Next, if the paragraphs that follow also have it so that the
whole page becomes an indivisible block
- Space Before with a large value (in the hundreds of points), although
this would have shown up in the initial template so it's unlikely

One final comment: The line of code I showed before, using the Range of the
bookmark, accomplishes the same deletion as the two lines in your code, but
it also doesn't move the user's cursor, and if the block is off-screen the
user won't even see the deletion happening. To fit into your code, the line
would be

ActiveDocument.Bookmarks(strBookmark).Range.Delete

 

[Denise]

Hi Denise,

For the issue of deleting the section breaks along with the text, the answer
is to set up the template so the section break *at the end* of each text
block is *inside* the bookmark and will be deleted with the text. (It isn't
obvious, but all the characteristics of a section -- margins,
headers/footers, page orientation, etc. -- are stored in the section break
at the end of the section, not at the beginning. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/WorkWithSections.htm for more
enlightenment.)

For the blanks, it's usually more important to know what's immediately
*after* the blank than before it (the only exception being when the
preceding paragraph has a very large value for the Space After setting).

If the blank is followed by a hard page break, the answer is to delete the
page break. Actually, the initial template shouldn't contain any hard page
breaks, precisely because you can't tell when they'll cause problems like
this. Instead, use the paragraph settings Keep With Next and Keep Together
where necessary.

If it's a Next Page section break, either delete it by having it inside the
bookmark (if you don't need a section break there for other reasons) or
change it to Continuous.

If it's neither, put the cursor in the paragraph immediately after the
blank. Open the Task Pane and select the Reveal Formatting pane. Look for
and eliminate any of these settings from the template:
- Page Break Before
- Keep With Next, if the paragraphs that follow also have it so that the
whole page becomes an indivisible block
- Space Before with a large value (in the hundreds of points), although
this would have shown up in the initial template so it's unlikely

One final comment: The line of code I showed before, using the Range of the
bookmark, accomplishes the same deletion as the two lines in your code, but
it also doesn't move the user's cursor, and if the block is off-screen the
user won't even see the deletion happening. To fit into your code, the line
would be

ActiveDocument.Bookmarks(strBookmark).Range.Delete

Hi Jay

Thanks very much for the info. Your advice on section breaks has helped
enormously - so obvious when someone tells you! I'm still messing about
with the blank spaces but the template is so much improved just by the
removal of the section breaks.

Thanks again

Denise Crawley