Writing Word Macros, Second Edition

Example: Creating Tables from Word Lists

I will conclude our discussion of tables with an example, one that was promised in the Preface to the book. Let me first recap the situation.

In writing this book, I was faced with the problem of turning long columns of words into tables. The built-in ConvertToTable command was not flexible enough for my needs for three reasons.

First, I wanted the items to be placed in the table in column-major order (the first column is filled first), rather than in row-major order (the first row is filled first). Second, I wanted to choose the number of columns based on the number of words (cells), so I needed a report on the word count before I made the choice of the number of columns. Finally, I wanted a row at the top of the table for a title.

To illustrate, I wanted to be able to select the following column of words:

Border

Cell

Column

Document

Font

Options

PageSetup

Paragraph

ParagraphFormat

Range

Row

Selection

Style

Table

Template

Window

and then be presented with a dialog box as shown in Figure 16-5. Then, if I entered 3 for the number of columns and hit the OK button, I wanted the table shown in Figure 16-6.

Figure 16-5. Table-making dialog box

Figure 16-6. Three-column table produced from a column of text

The code is shown in Example 16-1. (I think that you should get a ...