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Hack 63 Use Word Dialogs in a Macro

Using Word's own dialogs in
your macros allows the person using the macros to work with a
familiar interface, which can make even complicated macros seem easy
to use.

Macros that must interact with
the person using them are
generally harder to write than those that just run from start to
finish without needing any user input. In many cases, however,
Microsoft has already done the work of designing a useful interface
for modifying the same sorts of things your macro probably does
(i.e., parts of a Word document).

For example, if you've got a macro that inserts a
particular kind of table into your document, you might want to let
the user choose the number of rows and columns to put in the table
each time the macro is run. Rather than create your own user form in
the Visual Basic Editor, you can use Word's
InsertTable dialogjust show the dialog and
capture the row and column numbers selected, and your macro can
insert the right-sized table.

This hack shows you two different ways of exploiting Word dialogs
from within a macro.

Put the macros in this hack into the template of your choice [Hack #50]
and run them from the ToolsMacroMacros dialog.

7.8.1 Use Dialogs to Execute Commands Interactively

Say you've created a macro to
open a new file and
fill it with useful information, such as a table of available system
fonts [Hack #15] .
But before the macro finishes, you want it to prompt the user to save
the new document. The following code creates a new, blank document,
and then displays Word's own
FileSaveAs dialog (the same one that appears
whenever you save a new document for the first time):

Sub ShowFileSaveAsDialog( )
Dim dial As Dialog
Dim doc As Document
Set dial = dialogs(wdDialogFileSaveAs)
Set doc = Documents.Add
dial.Show
MsgBox "Thanks! You either saved the document or canceled the dialog."
End Sub

When the FileSave dialog appears, the user can
click either the Save button or the Cancel button, but this version
of the macro has no way of knowing which one the user clicked. If you
want your macro to behave differently depending on which button the
user clicks, you can evaluate the
dialog's return value, which is
like the answer to a question. As an example of using a return value,
the following macro displays the number of currently open documents,
which it finds by getting the return value from the
Count property:

Sub HowManyDocumentsAreOpen( )
Dim iNumberOfDocuments As Integer
iNumberOfDocuments = Documents.Count ' Getting a return value
MsgBox iNumberOfDocuments ' Displaying that return value
End Sub

A dialog used in a macro returns a value that indicates which button
in the dialog the user clicked to exit the dialog. If the user
clicked the Cancel button, or the Close button in the top corner of
the dialog, the return value is 0. You can use
this information to modify the
ShowFileSaveAsDialog macro so that it
"knows" whether the user clicked
the Save or Cancel button and reacts accordingly:

Sub ShowFileSaveAsDialog
Dim dial As Dialog
Dim doc As Document
Set dial = dialogs(wdDialogFileSaveAs)
Set doc = Documents.Add
If dial.Show <> 0 Then
' Didn't press Cancel
MsgBox "Thanks for saving the document."
Else
' Pressed Cancel
MsgBox "Afraid of commitment?"
End If
End Sub

In this version, if the user clicks the Save button, the macro
displays its gratitude. If the user clicks the Cancel button, it
displays a sarcastic message.

If you also want to suggest a specific name for the new document
created by the macro, you can supply values for certain dialog
components. For the FileSaveAs dialog, you can
suggest a name by assigning a value to the Name
property before showing the dialog:

Sub ShowFileSaveAsDialogAndSuggestName
Dim dial As Dialog
Dim doc As Document
Set dial = dialogs(wdDialogFileSaveAs)
Set doc = Documents.Add
dial.Name = "YourNewDocument.doc"
If dial.Show <> 0 Then
MsgBox "Thanks for saving the document."
Else
MsgBox "Still afraid of commitment?"
End If
End Sub

To find the names of the properties available in each dialog, do a
search in the VBA help files for "built-in dialog
arguments," as shown in Figure 7-8.

Figure 7-8. Getting a list of arguments for the built-in dialogs

7.8.2 Use Dialogs Just to Get Input

Sometimes a Word
dialog
is the best way to get certain types of information from the person
running your macro, even if you don't want the
dialog to "do" its usual duty.

For example, the following macro displays the
FileSaveAs dialog from the previous section. But
after you click the Save button, a message box appears showing the
filename you chose instead of saving the document. The difference is
that instead of using the Show method, as in the
previous section, this macro uses the Display
method, as indicated in bold.

Sub ShowFileSaveAsDialog( )
Dim dial As Dialog
Set dial = dialogs(wdDialogFileSaveAs)
dial.Display
MsgBox "You asked to save the file as: " & dial.Name & ". Too bad."
End Sub

With Show, the dialog does what you expect; in the
case of FileSaveAs, clicking the Save button saves
the current document with the name you provide. But with
Display, the dialog captures the name you entered
but doesn't actually do the save.

To return to the scenario of inserting a table described at the
beginning of this hack, the following macro inserts a two-row,
three-column table at the insertion point. The first row is styled as
"Heading 1," and the rest of the
table is styled as "Heading 2":

Sub TableWithSpecialHeadings( )
Dim tbl As Table
Set tbl = Selection.Tables.Add(Range:=Selection.Range, _
NumRows:=2, NumColumns:= 3)
tbl.Range.Style = wdStyleHeading3
tbl.Rows(1).Range.Style = wdStyleHeading2
End Sub

This macro becomes more versatile if you can choose the number of
rows and columns each time you run it. The following macro prompts
the user with the InsertTable dialog, captures the
column and row numbers chosen, and then inserts the special table:

Sub TableWithSpecialHeadings( )
Dim tbl As Table
Dim dial As Dialog
Set dial = Dialogs(wdDialogTableInsertTable)
If dial.Display = 0 Then
' User pressed Cancel, so quit now
Exit Sub
End If
Set tbl = Selection.Tables.Add(Range:=Selection.Range, _
NumRows:=dial.NumRows, _
NumColumns:=dial.NumColumns)
tbl.Range.Style = wdStyleHeading3
tbl.Rows(1).Range.Style = wdStyleHeading2
End Sub