Word Hacks [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 27 Crunch Numbers Quickly in Word

Sometimes a spreadsheet is overkill. For quick
and dirty math, dust off one of Word's oldest
commands: Calculate.

If you used Word when the
first President Bush was in office, you might remember a handy
feature from the Tools menu: the Calculate command. With the standard
four functions, plus exponents and percentages, Calculate could
handle a lot of the math needed for simple sales reports or budget
proposals.

Though Microsoft removed the command from the Tools menu in Word 6.0,
you can still find it if you know where to look.

This hack shows you how to put the Calculate command back on the Tools menu, but you can also put it on any of the toolbars or shortcut menus [Hack #3].

4.2.1 Resurrecting Calculate

First, select ToolsCustomize and click the Commands tab. In
the Categories column, choose All Commands. Scroll down until you
find ToolsCalculate, as shown in Figure 4-1.

Figure 4-1. Locating the Calculate command buried deep in Word

Drag the command to the Tools menu and place it right under the
Speech option (or anywhere else on the menu). Right-click the new
menu item and rename it
"Calculate," as shown in Figure 4-2.

Figure 4-2. Returning Calculate to the Tools menu

When you first place the command on a menu or toolbar, it may appear
grayed-out. Calculate is available only when you've
selected some text.

4.2.2 Using Calculate

By default, the Calculate command will add any set of selected
numbers separated by whitespace. Word temporarily displays the result
in the status bar, as shown in Figure 4-3, and also
places it on the clipboard.

Figure 4-3. The sum of the selected numbers is temporarily displayed in the status bar

Calculate ignores any text that isn't a number,
except for currency symbols, periods, and commas, which it recognizes
when these are part of a number.

For operations other than addition,
you must
include the mathematical operator. Table 4-1 lists
the operations in reverse order of precedence. To force a calculation
out of precedence order, enclose the expression in parentheses.
Addition and subtraction are of equal precedence and are evaluated
left to right. Multiplication and division also are of equal
precedence and are evaluated left to right.

Though Calculate is most often used in tables, it works
on any selected text. For example, you can use this command to
quickly add all the numbers in a paragraph of text, as shown in Figure 4-4.

Figure 4-4. Calculate works with selected text and displays the results in the status bar

4.2.3 Hacking the Hack

The calculation results are displayed in the status bar for only a
few seconds. After that, if you want to see the results, you must
either paste them from the clipboard or redo the calculation, paying
closer attention to the status bar. If you prefer to display the
calculation results more directly, you can intercept the command
[Hack #61]
and have Word display the results in a message box.

Place the following macro in the template of
your choice [Hack #50] .
It will run in place of the Calculate command when you select
ToolsCalculate.

Sub ToolsCalculate( )
MsgBox Selection.Range.Calculate
End Sub

However, when you intercept the command, Word neither displays the
calculation results in the status bar nor copies them to the
clipboard. To also put the results in the status bar, use the
following code instead:

Sub ToolsCalculate( )
Dim sResult as String
sResult = Selection.Range.Calculate
StatusBar = "The result of the calculation is: " & sResult
Msgbox sResult
End Sub

It takes a bit more work to get the results copied to the clipboard.
There's no direct way to access the clipboard from
VBA, so you need to use Windows API calls. You can find sample code
for accessing text on the clipboard at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;138909.

With the code from that site included in the same module, use the
site's example Clipboard_SetData
subroutine to put the results on the clipboard:

Sub ToolsCalculate( )
Dim sResult As String
sResult = Selection.Range.Calculate
StatusBar = "The result of the calculation is: " & sResult
MsgBox sResult
ClipBoard_SetData (sResult)
End Sub