HOWTO: Automate the Microsoft Office Binder Object through OLE

ID: Q153305

The information in this article applies to:

Standard, Professional, and Enterprise Editions of Microsoft Visual Basic for Windows, 16-bit and 32-bit, version 4.0

SUMMARY

As part of Microsoft Office 95, a new application called Office Binder was shipped to help manage documents created using the Microsoft Office products. The Office Binder packages documents from different Office applications. This article provides a code sample showing how to manipulate the Office Binder programmatically through OLE Automation from Visual Basic.

MORE INFORMATION

Step-by-Step Example

1. Start a new project in Visual Basic. Form1 is created by default.

2. Place a CommandButton on Form1.

3. On the Tools References menu, click the Office Binder Type Library.

4. Add the following code to the General Declarations section of Form1:

      Option Explicit

      Private Sub Command1_Click()
         Dim objBinder As Object
         Dim objWord As Object
         Set objBinder = CreateObject("Office.Binder")
         objBinder.Visible = True
         Set objWord = CreateObject("Word.Basic")
         With objWord
            .FileNewDefault
             .FormatStyle Name:="Heading 1", Apply:=True
             .Insert "OLE Automation to Office Binder"
             .InsertPara
             .FileSaveAs "c:\ole_test.DOC"
             .FileClose
         End With
         Set objWord = Nothing
         With objBinder
          .Sections.Add filename:="c:\ole_test.doc"
          .Sections(1).Name = "Ole Sample from VB"
          .SaveAs filename:="c:\vbNewBinder.obd", _
              saveOption:=bindOverwriteExisting
          .Visible = False
         End With
         Set objBinder = Nothing
      End Sub

5. Run the project, and click the CommandButton. The Microsoft Word

   document and Microsoft Office binder files will be created on the root
   of the C: drive.

You could just as easily create an object for Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Project, or Microsoft PowerPoint, and save the files into the Binder object in exactly the same way.

REFERENCES

For more information, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q118817
   TITLE     : Summary of Sample Applications on the ODK 1.0

   ARTICLE-ID: Q108043
   TITLE     : INFO: How VB Uses OLE Automation with Word Version 6.0

   ARTICLE-ID: Q121736
   TITLE     : Getting OLE Automation Methods/Properties Supported by OLE
               App

Chapter 9 of the Programmer's Guide gives a good overview of interacting with other applications through OLE from Visual Basic

The Office Developer's Kit has a lot of OLE Sample code.

Keywords          : kbprg kbVBp400 VB4WIN vbwin kb32bitOnly 
Version           : WINDOWS:4.0
Platform          : NT WINDOWS
Issue type        : kbhowto

Last Reviewed: October 2, 1997