#27220
The Art of Defensive Programming
If you can't understand a program, then you can't debug it. Even with code that you have written yourself, if you come back to it six months or a year later, you may find yourself wondering “Why on earth did I write that? What was it for?” It doesn't take long to forget the details of a program when you aren't working on it any more. Make life easier for yourself, and write programs as clearly as possible. Also, provide such defences as you can against the possibility that VBA might change between versions of Word.
West, Jonathan. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Programming>Microsoft Word
#27217
Creating a Macro With No Programming Experience Using the Recorder
Word's macro recorder can help you acquaint yourself with macros and with Office 97's VBA programming language.
Coan, Bill. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Programming>Microsoft Word
#27227
There are two ways to use Automation (or OLE Automation) to programmatically control another application.
Rado, Dave. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Programming>Microsoft Word
#27229
Getting Help With Calling Word's Built-In Dialogs Using VBA
There are two Help topics in Word VBA Help that are required reading to get you started with built-in dialogs: 'Displaying built-in Word dialog boxes' and 'Built-in dialog box argument lists'. Unfortunately, in the latter article, Microsoft listed the arguments you can use but forgot to mention what the arguments mean or what values they can take! Fortunately, the dialog box arguments are almost identical to the arguments of the commands of WordBasic, so if you know one, you can work out the other. Therefore, the WordBasic Help file is at present by far the best resource for programmers wanting to use the dialogs. It is an absolute must-have.
Rado, Dave. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Programming>Microsoft Word
#27218
Getting to Grips With VBA Basics in 15 Minutes 
I can't turn you into a VBA expert but I can suggest a way to explore VBA that you may find helpful. Below, I've listed 22 steps that can be completed in approximately 15 minutes, assuming someone is kind enough to read them to you as you sit at your keyboard. If you have to read them by yourself and turn your attention alternately to the keyboard and back to the steps, then you may need a half hour or longer to complete the steps. Either way, the steps should give you a feel for what it's like to program in Word.
Coan, Bill. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Programming>Microsoft Word
#27216
How To Add Pop-Up Lists to any Word Document, So You Can Click Your Way Through Changes in Seconds
Do you re-use some of your documents over and over again, making slight changes just before you print, fax, or email it each time? Do you, for example, send the same basic letter to each new customer, but edit the letter each time so that it refers to the specific product purchased by that customer? Starting with Word 97, there's an easy way to add a pop-up list of choices to any Word document. This new feature lets you point at a word or phrase and simply right-click the mouse to switch to some other word or phrase.
Coan, Bill. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Programming>Microsoft Word
#27230
How to Customise the Control Toolbox in the VB Editor
Supposing you frequently need to add Multiline Text Boxes to your UserForms, with the EnterKeyBehavior property set to True. Or let's say you want to drag a 'Next' button straight onto your userform and not have to change the text in it to say 'Next', and not have to change the dimensions of the button.
Rado, Dave. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Programming>Microsoft Word
#27223
Most of us write routines that do similar operations more than once. It makes your code much less cumbersome and much easier to follow if you hive off all such repetitive chunks of code into separate subroutines or functions. The difference between a sub and a function is that a function can return a value. Within the function itself, you can treat the function name like a variable, and give it a value and then you can call the function and get that value.
Rado, Dave. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Programming>Microsoft Word
#27231
Running a Macro Automatically When a Document is Created, Opened or Closed
If you want a macro to be fired whenever any document is opened, regardless of which template the document is attached to, the simplest way is to write an AutoOpen macro and store it in Normal.dot.
Rado, Dave. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Programming>Microsoft Word
#27224
Useful WordBasic Commands That Have no VBA Equivalent
When Microsoft released Word 97, a new programming language VBA replaced the WordBasic language that had been available in earlier versions of Word. For most things, VBA is a much more powerful and flexible programming language than WordBasic, but there are a few very useful WordBasic commands which have no direct equivalents in VBA. Fortunately, VBA includes the WordBasic object, which gives access to most of the old WordBasic commands.
West, Jonathan. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Programming>Microsoft Word
#27225
When to Use Parentheses to Enclose Subroutine and Function Arguments
The rules are confusing concerning the use of parentheses to enclose argument lists. I have even seen MS Knowledgebase articles that have got it wrong. The rules are as follows.
West, Jonathan. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Programming>Microsoft Word
#27222
Why Variables Should be Declared Properly
Almost all Microsoft Word variables should be dimensioned as whatever they are (Dim MyRange As Range, Dim MyString As String, etc.).
Rado, Dave. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Programming>Microsoft Word
#27226
The most important thing you need to know when working with bookmarks in Word is that there are two 'types' of bookmarks: 'placeholder' bookmarks and 'enclosing' bookmarks.
Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Programming>Microsoft Word
