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I have found the Application/Document events to be of little use, which surprises me.

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This surprises me a bit too, because I have gotten a rough version of this working in Excel using the WorksheetBeforeSave Application event. Though admittedly, (A) your solution sounds a lot more comprehensive than what I am working on, and ( my code is only half-baked at this stage, if that.

Can I ask what kind of issues you’ve encountered using the Application events in Word? I had hoped that my Excel code would convert relatively easily to Word, because most of what I’m using is common to both — just a matter of changing “Activeworkbook” to “Activedocument”, etc.

I will keep in mind intercepting the Word commands as another potential route to explore — and thank you for the list of relevant commands to intercept, I would definitely have missed some of those.

Thanks!

I knew about Word’s backup option, but it’s not exactly what we were looking for, because it only saves one version back. I’m looking for a way to save every past version (i.e., if the user saves 30 times, then I should end up with 30 archived copies of the file).

I will have a look at the Excel utility. Thanks!

Can you use a 1″ margin for the document, but give the header a -0.5″ indent? Then you wouldn’t need a section break to change the margins. Sample attached.

If your section numbers are always consistent it looks like you can do this. There is a section field that gives you the number of the current section; so you can set up a field like { IF { SECTION } = 5 “Use section 5 autotext” “Use other autotext” }. I tried a quick sample on my machine, and it seems to work. But I don’t know if there’s a way to get the LAST section, if you don’t know what the number is.

Hope this helps,

There appears to be a “Line Number” character style that controls the size of the numbers. Go to the Format menu, then pick Style, look for the “Line Number” style, then use the Modify button to change the font size to something more reasonable for your printouts.

Hope this helps!

No, there aren’t any text boxes involved in this case. Just ordinary paragraphs, and ordinary mergefields. I’m working around it now by using two SET fields in Header 1 to get the two mergefield results (as in { SET pln “{ MERGEFIELD if_pln }” }), and then putting bookmark fields in Header 3 rather than the mergefields themselves. For whatever reason, this is working. So I’ve got a workaround; I just wish I knew WHY it is happening. (But I’ve worked with Word long enough to know that this wish is not always granted )

I’ll have a look through the newsgroups if I get a chance and see what may be seen. Thanks Hans!

I think it makes a little more sense if you consider the “top” border as the “top of a box” border, not necessarily the “top of this paragraph border”. For example, if you select three paragraphs and tell Word to put a box border around them, you get a single border above the first paragraph, not a border above all three of the paragraphs. But when you select the three paragraphs and apply only the top border, Word still treats the “top border” as if you were putting in a complete box. Hence also needing to use the in-between borders to get a border above each individual paragraph.

One of those features that isn’t completely intuitive, except in “Word-logic”, which doesn’t always measure up to real-logic

When you apply a top border to multiple successive paragraphs, Word only puts a border above all of them, not a border above each single one. If you select three paragraphs at once and apply a top border, you’ll see how it does this. You’re applying the top border to each one separately, but the end result is the same.

To get a border above each of the three paragraphs, what you need is both a top border and an “in-between” border (I don’t know if there’s an actual name for that, sorry!) If you select your three paragraphs, and then use the two buttons shown in the picture, it should give you what you’re expecting to see.

Is it possible there’s something wrong with the printer or printer driver — not the physical printer, since that seems to be working for other people, but the one installed on your machine? Could deleting/reinstalling the printer help?

We played with that a little bit yesterday, but it seemed that even when opening a document specifically as read-open (either manually in Word or via code), we still get the warning message — even though it seems overkill at that point, to tell you that you can only open a document read-only when you’ve asked Word to open it read-only! I believe that they’re going to try an end-run around the problem by making a separate copy of the merge document with a unique name, using that for the merge process, and then deleting it when done. Not nearly as elegant as suppressing a dialog, but it ought to work.

Thank you anyway!

Our data source is a simple text file, so we unfortunately won’t be able to do any fiddling with it via Excel or Access. I think we are going to end up just adding a field for the Includetext path to the data file, so I can set it up like {INCLUDETEXT “{MERGEFIELD docpath}” }, and deal with the problem elsewhere. Thanks for the tips about the * wildcard and forward slashes, though, they will come in handy elsewhere.

I was asking on behalf of one of our programmers, who is trying to automate Word to do a mail merge as part of a larger process (I’m not perfectly clear on all the details). Sometimes he is trying to open the merge document when another process has it open, which is causing the “locked for editing” dialog. He is not going to be editing the document, so it shouldn’t hurt (as far as I know!) to just open it as a read-only document, continue with the merge, and then close it again. The whole thing needs to eventually run completely hands-off on an unmonitored batch processor, so we need to avoid any messages or dialog boxes, or find ways to handle them when they appear.

Thanks!

You can also use a combination of IF fields, =(Formula) fields with the AND or OR functions, and COMPARE fields, but these can be tricky to set up. Nested IF fields are generally easier to understand and set up correctly.

“If Bookmark A = Yes OR Bookmark B = Yes enter Bookmark C otherwise enter Bookmark D” looks like
{ IF { = OR ( { COMPARE { A } = “Yes” } , { COMPARE { B } = “Yes” } ) } = 1 “{ C }” “{ D }” }

“If Bookmark X = Yes AND Bookmark Y = Yes enter Bookmark Z otherwise enter Bookmark P” looks like
{ IF { = AND ( { COMPARE { X } = “Yes” } , { COMPARE { Y } = “Yes” } ) } = 1 “{ Z }” “{ P }” }

The Help topics on =(Formula), especially the available functions, and the COMPARE field have more information.

I think the formatting of the final report is the most important thing, so I will look into changing the format via macro when the thing is printed (I think I’ve done something similar elsewhere — the trick will be finding it!) But I will keep your tip about the worksheet change event in mind, Legare, in case we ever do need to have the dollar sign move around on the original sheet, or in another workbook somewhere. Thanks!

I think the formatting of the final report is the most important thing, so I will look into changing the format via macro when the thing is printed (I think I’ve done something similar elsewhere — the trick will be finding it!) But I will keep your tip about the worksheet change event in mind, Legare, in case we ever do need to have the dollar sign move around on the original sheet, or in another workbook somewhere. Thanks!