Access Hacks

Hack #67. Manage Word Documents from Access

Tap into the Word object library to copy Access data directly into a Word document.

As is the case with all Microsoft Office products, Word has a significant number of exposed objects and methods to work with, and becoming familiar with a decent number of these is a challenge worth undertaking.

This hack creates a procedure that places data from Access into a table in a Word document. The concepts here also apply to other Word manipulations. Perhaps this will be your springboard into a new avenue of Office development.

Hooking into Word

In an Access code module, we're going to place a routine to work with an existing Word document. To make this a little easier, we'll set a reference to Word's object library. We'll do this inside the Access VB Editor, using the Tools → References menu and the References dialog box, as shown in Figure 7-42. Note that your version number of the Word library might differ, so use whatever you have.

Figure 7-42. Setting a reference to the Word object library

The Code

The next thing to do is enter the code. This must go into an Access code module:

Sub Access_to_Word() Dim conn As ADODB.Connection Set conn = CurrentProject.Connection Dim recset As ADODB.Recordset Set recset = New ADODB.Recordset Dim row_num As Integer Dim col_num As Integer Dim word_doc As Object 'Assumes Word doc is in same path - change name and ...