Word Document VBA Question

[Mike]

Hi,

I have an application that creates a report using a third party tool which
has the ability to export to a RTF (Word) document. The problem I am
running into is the report has lines to seperate certain sections however
the export does not support lines. I am looking for a solution in where I
create a Word Macro and create the lines in Word. Or I was thinking of
creating a word document and use it as a template. The report is basically
a quote form generated for sales and sales needs to have the ability to edit
it. Basically, the lines are used to hold the line items and give it a
professional look. I was thinking that the Word document could have a
textbox for the line items and I just pass the info in and would shrink or
grow as the data grows. I do not have alot of experience with VBA and Word
so I am just looking for some suggestions or comments.

Thanks

 

[Stephanie Krieger]

Hi, Mike,

In terms of adding borders... Depending on how the form
exports (i.e., does it place the content in a table or
paragraph text? etc.) will depend on what a formatting
macro should consist of ... but if you have elements that
are always consistent, you can certainly create a macro
to do that. I'd need more information to direct you on
specific code.

Or, if you're going to create your own form instead, a
table is going to be much simpler and look a lot better
ultimately than trying to do this with text boxes (will
also take a fraction of the time to both create and fill-
out). You can use cell borders for the underlines of your
line items -- they'll remain stable and table cells will
expand with content, but won't move or distort the form.

You'll only need VBA if you want to automate completion
of the form. VBA is quite easy to learn, but it will be
easiest if you get a solid foundation of end-user skills
with Word before going there -- and sounds to me like you
might not need to go there at all for this project.

The easiest thing for this form might just be to create
the table in a document (Table, Insert, Table), format it
and then save it as a template.

To save it as a template, go to File, Save and select
Document Template as the save as type. The save location
will default to the user template folder.

Then, to start a new form, select the template from the
templates dialog box (it will appear on the General tab
of that dialog box) and it will create a new document
with the content you saved in the template. How you
access that dialog box depends on your Word version -- in
2002 or 2003, it's accessible from the New Document task
pane (General Templates in 2002 and On My Computer in
2003) -- or through File, New in 2000 or earlier.

I hope that's helpful!

Stephanie Krieger
author of Microsoft Office Document Designer
(from Microsoft Press)
e-mail: MODD_2003 NOSPAM @msn.com
blog: arouet.net

 

[Mike]

Thanks for the post. I guess I am leaning toward using a Word template form
and creating the document on the fly. Basically, I would create a xml or
ini file that would have all the info for the word document. Then create a
macro via the word template file that would read the file (xml or ini) and
fill in the data in the document. I do have alot of experience writing VB
code so the transition to VBA will not be hard, I just have no experience
working with Word. The real issue is how do I create somewhat a static
form/template in Word that I can push data into. Is this called a user form
in Word or is this mail merging? Am I on the right track?

Thanks

 

[Stephanie Krieger]

Hi, Mike,

Okay -- so Word VBA will be really simple for you!

You don't need to use forms or mail merge for this. A
regular Word document will work fine for what you want to
do... then the code does the content merging. You have a
few choices of how the code will read the content into
that form. If you use a table for the document, you can
just have text dropped into specified table cells for
each field (I do that frequently when building templates -
- it's a clean, easy way to go both in Word and in terms
of keeping the code as brief as possible... also is very
stable in terms of easily retaining whatever document
formatting you set up in the master, and it doesn't put
limits on the amount of content you can place in any
table cell.)

If you send me an email address, I'll be happy to send
you a quick sample using a Word table for the form with
VBA code to generate a new document and add content to
it. I don't visit the newsgroups every day (and not on
the weekends at all, so using my email below will be best
for following-up.)

Best,
Stephanie

e-mail: MODD_2003 at msn.com

 

[G]

Mike and Stephanie,
I had the same problem, as I created a an Access Report, and found that all
the lines and nice formatting were lost with the "send to mail recipient as
RTF attachment". I went with the word document as the formatting is
preserved.

The trick is that you need to create the desired word document, the use the
Insert>Bookmark to create locations in the document where the program will
place info, then open the document and place info at each named bookmark.

My problem was a bit trickier, as I had to open word, then open the desired
word document, then insert the info. It is pretty easy though.

Here is a code snippet of opening a document and writing to boomarks. Hope
this helps:

Dim objWord As Object
Dim objDoc As Object
Dim strFullPathAndFileName As String


'build the path to the rma form
strRMA = "RMA Request Form rev 2004-08-27"
strFullPathAndFileName = "l:\database\customer support\" & strRMA &
".doc"

'Opens word
Set objWord = CreateObject("Word.Application")
objWord.Visible = True

'opens the document
Set objDoc = objWord.Documents.Open(strFullPathAndFileName)


'write to the document at the bookmarks
With objWord.ActiveDocument.Bookmarks
.Item("MN").Range.InsertAfter (((UCase(Forms("FrmRMARequest")("MN")))))
.Item("SN").Range.InsertAfter (((Forms("FrmRMARequest")("SN"))))
.Item("PN").Range.InsertAfter (((Forms("FrmRMARequest")("PN"))))
.Item("RmaDate").Range.InsertAfter
(((Forms("FrmRMARequest")("RequestDate"))))