Writing Word Macros, Second Edition

Object Variables

To access a property of an object, or to invoke a method, you can generally take two approaches: direct or indirect. The indirect approach uses an object variable—that is, a variable that has an object data type, whereas the direct approach does not.

For instance, to set the Bold property of the Font object for the first paragraph in the active document, you can take a direct approach, as in:

	ActiveDocument.Paragraphs(1).Range.Font.Bold = True

Alternatively, you can assign an object variable. Here are two possibilities:

	Dim rng as Range
	Set rng = ActiveDocument.Paragraphs(1).Range
	rng.Font.Bold = True

	Dim fnt as Font
	Set fnt = ActiveDocument.Paragraphs(1).Range.Font
	fnt.Bold = True

Object variables are actually more important than they might seem at first. The most obvious reason for their use is that they can improve code readability when you need to refer to the same object more than once. For instance, instead of writing:

	ActiveDocument.Paragraphs(1).Range.Font.Bold = True
	ActiveDocument.Paragraphs(1).Range.Font.Italic = True
	ActiveDocument.Paragraphs(1).Range.Font.Underline = False
	ActiveDocument.Paragraphs(1).Range.Font.Size = 12
	ActiveDocument.Paragraphs(1).Range.Font.Name = "Arial"

you can use a Font variable to improve readability as follows:

	Dim fnt As Font
	Set fnt = ActiveDocument.Paragraphs(1).Range.Font
	fnt.Bold = True
	fnt.Italic = True
	fnt.Underline = False
	fnt.Size = 12
	fnt.Name = "Arial"

The With Statement

In fact, VBA provides a With statement to handle ...