ID: Q119990
The information in this article applies to:
With Microsoft WordBasic, you can produce a series of document forms with a number that is incremented with each new document created. This may be helpful if you are designing an invoice template form and you want to automatically increment the invoice number. The following macro example increments the value stored in the INVOICE# AutoText entry each time the macro is run and places the result in a text form field called Invoice_Number.
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1. If you have not created a custom template for your forms document,
create a new template that will serve as the form template. To do this,
follow these steps:
a. On the File menu, click New.
b. Select Blank Document.
c. Under "Create New," select Template.
d. Click OK.
e. Save the new template.
2. Make sure your custom template is open and is the active window in
Word. Insert a text form field with the name Invoice_Number. To do
this, follow these steps:
a. Position the insertion point where you want to place the invoice
number.
b. On the Insert menu, click Form Field.
c. For Type, click Text.
d. Click Options.
e. In Field Settings Bookmark: type "Invoice_Number" (without the
quotation marks).
f. Click OK twice to insert the form field into the template.
3. On the Tools Menu, click Macro.
4. In the Macro Name text box, enter a name for the macro.
NOTE: Macro names cannot contain spaces or punctuation.
You can name this macro AutoNew and store it in a protected
form template (protect the template for Forms). If the macro is named
AutoNew, Word runs the macro whenever you create a new document
based on the template.
5. From the "Macros in" box, select the custom template name.
NOTE: The SetAutoText and GetAutoText statements in this macro
have the context set to template; therefore, you must run this macro
from a document based on a template other than Normal.dot.
6. Click Create.
7. In the macro editor window, you will see:
Sub Main
End Sub
8. Enter the following code between the existing Sub Main and End Sub
lines as follows.
Sub MAIN
' Unprotect form so an AutoText entry can be changed.
ToolsUnprotectDocument
' Retrieve the contents of the INVOICE# AutoText entry and
' add 1 to it.
number = Val(GetAutoText$("INVOICE#", 1)) + 1
' Convert the number to a string variable.
InvoiceNum$ = Str$(number)
' Remove the preceding space.
Temp$ = LTrim$(InvoiceNum$)
' SET the contents of the INVOICE# AutoText entry.
SetAutoText "INVOICE#", Temp$, 1
' Set the contents of the Invoice form field.
SetFormResult "Invoice_Number", Temp$
' Re-Protect the current document for forms.
ToolsProtectDocument .Type = 2, .NoReset = 1
' Save the template.
SaveTemplate
End Sub
9. From the macro editor window, click Close on the File menu.
You can define the AutoText item INVOICE# from this example to specify the starting number for the sequence. If the INVOICE# AutoText entry does not exist, the first time you run this macro, INVOICE# is set to the number 1.
1. Open your Template.
2. Unprotect your document if necessary (click Unprotect document on the
Tools menu).
for example:
100000
5. On the Edit menu, click AutoText.
6. In the "Make AutoText Available To" list, select "Documents Based on
<template>."
8. Click Add. (If Word prompts you with a question about Redefining the
AutoText entry, click Yes.)
The AutoText entry (INVOICE#) has been set.
The SetFormResult statement inserts the sequence number into a text form field named "Text1." You may need to change "Text1" to refer to a form field name that exists in your template.
The template you create should be protected for forms. To do this, follow these steps:
1. On the Tools menu, click Protect Document.
2. Select Forms and then click OK.
If your form is a document rather than a template, the number can be saved in a document variable using the SetDocumentVar statement. For example, the following macro stores a number in the document variable named "number." Each time the macro runs, it increments the number by one.
To create this macro, follow the steps for creating a macro listed earlier in this article.
Sub MAIN
number = Val(GetDocumentVar$("number")) + 1
number$ = LTrim$(Str$(number))
SetDocumentVar "number", number$
SetFormResult "Text1", number$
End Sub
Other methods for preserving values between sessions of a macro are as follows:
"Microsoft Word Developer's Kit," version 6.0, pages 183-198
Additional query words: form text field macro SetFormResult auto serial increment sequential seq sequence increment incremental automatically
Keywords : kbmacro kbmacroexample winword macword word6 word7 word95
Version : WINDOWS:6.0,6.0a,6.0c,7.0,7.0a
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbhowto kbinfoLast Reviewed: April 9, 1999