Empty bookmark gives REF field error

Topic

New Reply

I have a userform that helps me create a meeting minutes report. It has a bookmark called MeetingFrequency which offers combobox values such as Monthly, Weekly, etc. This field comes before the MeetingTitle bookmark. Since not all meeting titles require a meeting frequency to precede it, one of the values I offer my users for MeetingFrequency is “blank”. When they select blank, my code sets MeetingFrequency to “”. However, my report has a REF to the bookmark where the meeting title repeats on a later page, and when the bookmark is blank I get an error message where the REF field is (where I would like “nothing” to be). Is there a simple way that a very low-level VBA programmer such as myself can fix this problem? Replacing “””” with a single space in my code comes close, but it results in either too many or not enough spaces in the report.

Reply | Quote

Replies

You could try wrapping your REF in an {IF} field. Roughly: {IF {REF bmk}=TextOfErrorMessage “” {REF bmk}}.

Reply | Quote

Instead of:
{IF{REF bmk}=TextOfErrorMessage “” {REF bmk}}.
you could use:
{IF{REF bmk} “Error!*” {REF bmk}}.
Note the required space between the ” and the following expression (also required after an ‘=’).

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Reply | Quote

Thanks! I’m sure both of your reasonings are fine, but I am not having any luck with the IF statements. I attached a file showing my attempt at both of your methods. Please change the extension from docx to dotm and double click to get the userform to popup.

Reply | Quote

I couldn’t open that document in Word 2003 for some reason. Here is a sample showing how you can use an IF field to test for the presence of a Bookmark. Press Alt+F9 to toggle between field results and field codes.

Reply | Quote

As a quick fix, you could leave one of the spaces out of the document itself and add one to each of your options, so you’d have ‘weekly ‘, ‘monthly ‘ and ‘ ‘ (or before the word, if that fits in better with your document). Then do the same at the other location where the info is used – leave a space out of the text and use the one in the options instead.

Reply | Quote