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Hack 75 Include an Interactive Calendar in Your Forms

This hack shows you how to implement an
easy-to-use calendar for choosing dates from within a form or other
document.

If you use Word's Forms
feature, many of your forms probably
include DATE fields. Word provides some dates for
you, such as today's date and the date a document
was created. However, if you want the form's user to
fill in a date, you can prompt the user to select the date from an
interactive calendar, such as the one shown in Figure 8-5.

Figure 8-5. An interactive calendar placed in a form

The calendar used in Figure 8-5 is an ActiveX
control included with Office. With some simple steps in the Visual
Basic Editor, along with a few lines of code, you can easily add this
calendar to any form. With your form template open, select
ToolsMacroVisual Basic Editor.

In the Project Explorer, select your template and choose
InsertUserForm. Next, select ViewToolbox to make
the Toolbox visible. Right-click the Toolbox and choose Additional
Controls to display the dialog shown in Figure 8-6.
Scroll down and check the "Calendar Control
11.0" box (the version number may be slightly
different on your system).

Figure 8-6. Activating the Calendar control

Click the OK button to add the Calendar control to your Toolbox.
Click it and draw a new calendar on your blank
UserForm, as shown in Figure 8-7. In the Properties window, change the
UserForm's caption to
"Calendar."

Figure 8-7. Add the Calendar control to a UserForm in the Visual Basic Editor

Next, select ViewCode and insert the following code:

Private Sub UserForm_Activate( )
Me.Calendar1.Value = Date
End Sub
Private Sub Calendar1_Click( )
Selection.Text = Calendar1.Value
End Sub

Now, in a code module in your template (if none exists, select
InsertModule), add the following code:

Sub ChooseDate( )
UserForm1.Show
End Sub

Then select FileClose and Return to Microsoft Word.

Right-click the DATE field within the form in
which you want the calendar to appear and choose Properties to
display the dialog shown in Figure 8-8. Select the
ChooseDate macro to run when the field is entered.

Figure 8-8. Select the macro to display the Calendar control

After choosing the date, close the calendar by clicking the Close
button on its titlebar.

8.7.1 Hacking the Hack

Though it's ideally suited for fill-in forms, you
may find the Calendar control useful in other documents too. To
insert the Calendar control into any document, use a
MACROBUTTON field, as shown in Figure 8-9. These fields assume you're
using the same ChooseDate macro described above
for activating the Calendar control. The field code is shown in the
first field, and the field result is shown in the second field.

Figure 8-9. The first field shows the field code; the second shows the field result