HOWTO: Run a Word 97 Macro That Requires Arguments

• Microsoft Visual Basic Learning, Professional, and Enterprise Editions for Windows, versions 5.0, 6.0
• Microsoft Visual Basic Standard, Professional, and Enterprise Editions for Windows, version 4.0
• Microsoft Office 2000 Developer
• Microsoft Word 2000
• Microsoft Word 97 for Windows

SUMMARY

When using Microsoft Word 97 or Word 2000 as an ActiveX server, you can run a Word VBA macro by using Word's Run method. However, the Run method cannot be used with automation to run a Word macro that requires arguments. To run a Word macro that requires arguments, you can make your Word macro a method of your document or template. This article illustrates how to do this.

MORE INFORMATION

To make a macro act as a method for your document or template, add the macro as a Public Sub to the ThisDocument object in the Visual Basic Editor for Word.

The following steps demonstrate how to create a Visual Basic application that executes a custom method of a Word document. This method expects two arguments, a string and an integer.

Steps to Create the Word Macro

1. Start a new Word document (Document1).



2. Press ALT+F11 to start the Visual Basic Editor.



3. Click Project Explorer on the View menu to display the Project Explorer.



4. In the Project Explorer, locate the "ThisDocument" object for Document1's project. Right-click "ThisDocument" and select View Code.



5. In the code window for ThisDocument, add the following macro:




      Public Sub Macro1(s As String, i As Integer)
         MsgBox s        'Display the string
         MsgBox i * 10   'Display the product i and 10

      End Sub 

6. Press ALT+Q to exit the Visual Basic Editor and return to Document1.



7. Save this document as C:\TEST.DOC, and exit Word.

Steps to Create the Visual Basic Application

1. Start a new "Standard EXE" project.



2. On the Project menu, click References. For Word 97, check "Microsoft Word 8.0 Object Library," and click OK. For Word 200, check "Microsoft Word 9.0 Object Library.



3. Add the following code to Form1.




      Option Explicit

      Dim objWordApp As Word.Application
      Dim objWordDoc As Word.Document

      Private Sub Form_Click()

         'Create a new instance of Word
         Set objWordApp = New Word.Application

         'Open the document containing the macro
         Set objWordDoc = _
            objWordApp.Documents.Open("C:\TEST.DOC")

         'Run the macro
         objWordDoc.macro1 "Hello!", 23

         'Close the document and clear the variables
         objWordDoc.Close
         Set objWordDoc = Nothing
         Set objWordApp = Nothing

      End Sub 

4. Press the F5 key to run the application. Click Form1 to run the Word macro.

Additional query words:

Keywords          : kbinterop kbAutomation KbVBA kbVBp kbVBp400 kbVBp500 kbVBp600 kbWord kbGrpDSO kbOffice2000 kbword2000 
Version           : WINDOWS:2000,4.0,5.0,6.0,97; :
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbhowto 

Last Reviewed: June 4, 1999