Writing Word Macros, Second Edition

Preface

As the title suggests, this book is intended for those who want to learn how to program Microsoft Word 97 or later.

I guess that I cannot avoid the question, “Why would anyone want to program Microsoft Word?” The answer is simple: to get more power out of this formidable application. As you will see, there are many things that you can do at the programming level that you cannot do at the user-interface level, that is, with the menus and dialog boxes of Word. Chapter 1, Introduction, provides some concrete examples of this.

This book provides an introduction to programming the Word object model using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). However, it is not intended to be an encyclopedia of Word programming. The goal here is to acquaint you with the main points of Word programming—enough so that you can continue your education (as we all do) on your own. The point is that after reading this book, you should not need to rely on any other source except the Word VBA help file or a good Word VBA reference book (such as O’Reilly’s forthcoming Programming the Word Object Model by Julianne Sharer and Arthur Einhorn) and a nice object browser (such as the Enhanced Object Browser, a coupon for which is included in the back of this book).

It has been my experience that introductory programming books (and, sadly, most trade computer books) tend to do a great deal of handholding (to put the matter euphemistically). They cover concepts at a very slow pace, primarily by padding them heavily ...