microsoft.public.word.vba.general

Too hard, eh? That's OK; I'll see if I can get the client to change the
requirement...
--
Cheers!
The Kiwi Koder

Please note: Uninvited email contact will be marked as SPAM and ignored -
unless you want to hire me. ;-)


"NZ VBA Developer" wrote:

> First, my apologies for the length of this post, but it’s a bit of a
> complicated problem and requires some background to explain completely.
>
> I have a series of templates that produce forms-protected documents that
> contain unprotected sections. However, Word’s definition of ‘unprotected’ is
> a bit… unusual, and is causing me no end of grief.
>
> Now I understand disabling some functions. For example, disabling File |Page
> Setup and View | Header and Footer make sense, since this is the kind of
> stuff you don’t want users changing in a protected document.
>
> Disabling other functions seems sort of logical if you follow a bit of
> convoluted reasoning. For example, disabling Insert | Reference |
> Cross-Reference is kind of sensible because it stops users from inserting a
> cross-reference to something in a protected section that then can’t be
> ‘accessed’ by control-clicking on the link; it might result in some odd
> behaviour in that focus would then be set to the nearest unprotected location
> in the document – although this seems a bit like throwing the baby out with
> the bathwater. I mean, why take away a very useful bit of functionality
> because it _might_ result in something that requires a bit of simple thought
> to understand?
>
> However, I can live with these limitations. The stuff that really makes me
> scratch my head is the things like disabling Restart Numbering and Continue
> Numbering. (Can anyone explain that one to me?) Getting around these
> limitations has resulted in writing code that basically unlocks the document,
> calls the standard Word functionality and then locks the document again. I’ve
> written several of these procedures and not had any serious problems so far –
> just a raw head.
>
> But by far the most problematic area has been working with Inline and
> Floating Shapes (which I will refer to collectively as images). Not only are
> all of the standard Word functions for working with images disabled, but in
> the case of a Floating Shape, you can’t even select it to delete it. And to
> make matters worse, Word tells you bugger-all about the images in a document.
> Basically, all you can find out is what type of image it is (Inline or
> Floating), how many of each type there is in the document and the index of
> each image of each type. There’s no easy way to label an image – at least not
> whilst inserting it, in spite of the fact that Shapes have a Name property –
> and Word won’t even tell you where it’s located in the document.
>
> My solution to the above problems has resulted in something akin to shooting
> in the dark: a UserForm that lists all of the images in the document,
> identifies what type of image it is (Inline or Floating) and simply
> enumerates them as ‘Inline Shape 1’, ‘Inline Shape 2’, ‘Picture 1’, ‘Picture
> 2’, etc. Options are then provided for performing various operations on the
> selected image as follows:
>
> Format – If it’s a Floating Shape, selects the Shape and displays the
> standard ‘Format Image’ dialog box. If it’s an Inline Shape, displays a
> secondary userform that allows the user to either convert the Inline Shape to
> Floating and then ‘edit’ it using the ‘Format Image’
> (wdDialogFormatDrawingObject) dialog box or ‘edit’ the Inline Shape itself
> using something called the ‘Picture’ (wdDialogFormatPicture) dialog box.
> (Note that the ‘Picture’ dialog is virtually useless but it’s the only one
> that can be displayed programmatically – in spite of the fact that the
> ‘Format Image’ dialog box is the one that Word displays if you use any one of
> the various ‘Format Picture’ methods that are native to Word. Go figure…)
>
> Delete – Simply deletes the selected image regardless of the type. (A
> confirmation message is displayed first as I would hate for a user to
> inadvertently delete an image that they had just spent hours formatting using
> the ‘close your eyes and pull the trigger’ method described above.)
>
> Caption – Displays the standard Word ‘Caption’ dialog box and allows the
> user to add a caption to the selected image.
>
> Of course all of these functions unlock the document first and they all also
> display a native Word dialog. The first two work OK – apart from the fact
> that trying to do something like position an image using the options in the
> ‘Format Picture’ dialog box is almost a hopeless proposition – but ‘Caption’
> just doesn’t want to play nice.
>
> At this point I’m going to provide a code snippet for the ‘Caption’
> functionality and then explain a bit about what it does before describing the
> problem.
>
> Private Sub CaptionThis()
> Selection.Bookmarks.Add "HERE", Selection.Range
> Select Case lstPix.Column(1)
> Case "S"
> ActiveDocument.Shapes(lstPix.Column(2)).Select
> Case "I"
> ActiveDocument.InlineShapes(lstPix.Column(2)).Select
> End Select
> ActiveWindow.ScrollIntoView Selection.Range, True
> Dialogs(wdDialogInsertCaption).Show
> With ActiveDocument.Bookmarks("HERE")
> .Select
> .Delete
> End With
> End Sub
>
> First I insert a bookmark at the current selection. I do this because when
> you caption a Floating Shape, it inserts a Text Box somewhere in the vicinity
> of the selected Shape and then leaves focus inside the Text Box. This
> (apparently) interferes with locking the document again because if I try to
> protect the document programmatically at this point I get an error saying
> that the ‘ToolsProtectDocument’ statement is currently disabled, and if I
> debug it stops on the line that says ‘ActiveDocument.Protect’. Thus the
> reason for the bookmark, which I then select again at the end (to get focus
> out of the Text Box) and then delete.
>
> Next I look to see what the Shape ‘type’ is that’s associated with the item
> selected in the ListBox so I can work out which collection to look in for the
> Shape that I want to select – and then I select that Shape.
>
> Then I try to help the user a bit by scrolling the selection into view so
> they have _some_ idea of which image they’re working with. Dunno how useful
> it is, but at least I tried.
>
> Finally, I display the standard Word ‘Caption’ dialog box and, after the
> user has done whatever they want to do in the dialog box, set focus to and
> delete the bookmark as discussed above.
>
> So here’s the problem: After all this jiggery-pokery, the code just hangs.
> The button on the toolbar that’s clicked to start things off stays
> ‘depressed’ and if I go into the VBE I can’t do anything – add or edit code,
> run a sub or UserForm, reset, nothing. In fact, the Run Sub/UserForm button
> (which tooltips as ‘Continue’ at this point) is disabled, and F5/F8 do
> nothing. I can click the ‘Break’ button, but it doesn’t really do anything
> either. However, if I look for the ‘execution point’ in the code (I’m not
> really sure what it’s called but it’s the yellow arrow to the left of a line
> of code that displayed when stepping using F8), it’s clear back in the
> original sub that’s invoked by the toolbar button sitting on the line that
> shows the UserForm. Clicking the ‘Stop’ button does seem to stop execution –
> at least the yellow arrow goes away – but it doesn’t ‘un-hang’ the code.
>
> One final interesting bit: If I have multiple documents open, the toolbar
> button is ‘depressed’ only in the document that I clicked it in originally.
> It is available in other documents and does do what it’s supposed to do;
> however, it still hangs the same way in each new document. The only way to
> get unstuck is to shut down Word completely and restart. Also the Caption
> dialog seems to respond very slowly and gets even slower in subsequent
> documents.
>
> I’m a bit hesitant to provide the code-containing template to anyone as it
> contains some sensitive stuff and would be very difficult to sanitise.
> However, if you would like more information and would prefer not to go
> through the posting process, feel free to contact me at the Gmail address
> listed in my profile.
>
> --
> Cheers!
> The Kiwi Koder
>
> Please note: Uninvited email contact will be marked as SPAM and ignored -
> unless you want to hire me. ;-)