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

Cleaning Up Text Pasted from the Web

The ease of copying and pasting text from Web sites and email greatly simplifies many tasks in Word, but problems often arise in making the pasted text conform to the style of the document into which it is pasted. One of the most common chores is getting rid of excess line breaks, which cause the text to wrap short of the right margin. There are several ways to work around this problem.

Barnhill, Suzanne and Dave Rado. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

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

Creating a Mail Merge Data Source

Microsoft Word supports many file formats which can be used as a Data Source for a mail merge. This article covers specifications and frequently asked questions on the most commonly used Data Sources, along with how to set up a Data Source in Word.

Melton, Beth. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Databases>Microsoft Word

Creating a Template (Part I): The Basics

The natural tendency of most users of word processing applications is to create a document and use it as a model for future documents. That is, you format a letter the way you want all (or most) of your letters to look, save it, and then, when you want to write a letter, open this document and save it under another name as the starting point for your letter. In WordPerfect, until recently, this was the only way to create a template. Word uses a different approach.

Barnhill, Suzanne. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Document Design>Software>Microsoft Word

Creating a Template (Part II)

This article tells you how to create a template to produce a software manual.

McGhie, John. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

Determine the Index Number of the Current Paragraph, Table, Section ...

The first questions is – why do you need to know the index number?

Rado, Dave. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Indexing>Microsoft Word

The Draw Layer: A Metaphysical Space (And How to Bring It Back Down to Earth)

Word's draw layer is a metaphysical space where floating objects reside. It really isn't a layer, since floating objects can be sent behind the text layer or brought out in front of it. Either way, they continue to reside in the draw layer.

Rado, Dave and Bill Coan. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Graphic Design>Software>Microsoft Word

Early vs. Late Binding

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

Finding and Replacing Characters Using Wildcards

Wildcards are like the blank pieces in Scrabble, or like the Jokers you can use in some card games to stand in for any card.

Mayor, Graham. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

Finding and Replacing Non-Printing Characters (such as Paragraph Marks) and Text Formatting

How to find text that has particular formatting and replace it with different text, but without changing the formatting.

Rado, Dave. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

Floating Objects in Word 2000 Table Cells are Vertically Aligned Wrongly

Whenever I insert a graphical object (picture, drawing object, etc.) into a Word 2000 table cell I lose the vertical formatting. The text is always aligned at the top of the cell, instead of being centered or at the bottom of the cell. Why, and what can I do about it?

Meister, Cindy. Word MVP Site, The (2002). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

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

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

Graphics Don't Appear or Won't Print

Objects in the drawing layer are visible in Page Layout (Print Layout) view and Print Preview but not in Normal view. Interestingly, a frame is a sort of hybrid object that can appear to float (and text can be wrapped around it), but it is actually inline and can be viewed (though not in position) in Normal view.

Barnhill, Suzanne and Dave Rado. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Graphic Design>Software>Microsoft Word

How Can I Insert Special Characters, Such as Dingbats and Accented Letters, in My Document?

Many Word users don't realize how easy it is to insert special characters. There are at least four ways to do it: through the Symbol dialog, using shortcut keys, automatically with AutoCorrect, or by direct keypad entry.

Barnhill, Suzanne. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

How Can I Recover a Corrupt Document or Template – and Why Did It Become Corrupt?

Saving when resources are low can cause corruptions. If you notice Word start to slow down noticeably it's always best to quit and restart Word immediately; to close any other applications that are open; and to clear the clipboard, by selecting any character and copying it.

Rado, Dave and John McGhie. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

How Do I Generate an Index in Word?

The Microsoft Word Help suggests that you can automatically generate an index. Sorry, but you can't (the 'result' looks like an index, but the reader can't use it). You can automatically mark index entries: however, the amount of work required to edit the result into a usable index is usually double the effort required to manually mark the index entries one-by-one.

McGhie, John. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Indexing>Microsoft Word

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

How to Control the Page Numbering in a Word Document

Word's page numbering scheme isn't directly obvious but it isn't needlessly complex, either. Indirect might be a good term for it. Once you understand how it works, all sorts of possibilities open up. Unfortunately, the built-in tools that simplify the insertion of page numbers also happen to make it more difficult to tell what's really going on. So, for the moment, forget everything you've learned or think you know about page numbers.

Coan, Bill. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Document Design>Microsoft Word

How to Create a Mail Merge

Mail merge is for simplifying repetitive documents and tasks. Mail merge can be used for creating many documents at once that contain identical formatting, layout, text, graphics, etc., and where only certain portions of each document varies. Mail merge is also used for generating mailing labels, envelopes, address lists, personalised training handouts, etc. As well as hard copy mailshots, it can be used to generate multiple emails and electronic faxes. And it can even be used to create a 'friendly' front-end to spreadsheet or database information.

Melton, Beth and Dave Rado. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Databases>Microsoft Word

How to Create a Userform

This example will step you through the process of creating a template that contains an autonew macro which, when you create a new document from the template, will cause a Userform to be displayed, into which you can enter some information that you want to appear in the document.

Robbins, Doug. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Forms>Microsoft Word

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

How to Recover a Master Document

Notice how this article starts off with the cheerful assumption that you want to 'recover' a Master Document? I bet you were hoping that we would tell you how to 'fix' one! We can't. If you are having a problem with a master document, the problem is the master document. Any attempt you make to repair one will inevitably make your problem worse.

McGhie, John. Word MVP Site, The (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

How to Remove Manually Typed Numbering from a Document

You can use the old Word 2 command: WordBasic.ToolsBulletsNumbers Replace:=0, Type:=1, Remove:=1 This command is particularly useful for removing manually typed numbering from Headings in a document you have been emailed, prior to applying List Numbering.

Rado, Dave. Word MVP Site, The (2002). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word