Finding Controls

[Igor]

If I have a Text content control on a word document, how would I find this
exact control and manipulate it?

 

[Greg Maxey]

Igor,

Lets assume you have two text CCs. One is titled "Name" and tagged
"CustomerName" the other is titled "Date" and tagged "SalesDate."

There are several ways to work with and manipulate these controls.

1. A ContentControl is part of an indexed collection of ContentControls.
This means that you can work with them by index number:

Sub ManipulateCCsByIndex()
ActiveDocument.ContentControls(1).Range.Text = "Igor"
ActiveDocument.ContentControls(2).Range.Text = "6/22/2009"
End Sub

When a CC is created Word assigns it a unique ID. You can obtain this ID by
selecting the control and running this bit of code:

Sub GetCCID()
MsgBox Selection.Range.ContentControls(1).ID
End Sub

Sub ManipulateCCsByID()
ActiveDocument.ContentControls("932358501").Range.Text = "Igor"
ActiveDocument.ContentControls("932358504").Range.Text = "6/22/2009"
End Sub

Note: your unique ID number will be different than mine.

You can work with CCs by title. Since you can have more that one CC with
the same title you must include the item number (i.e., first, second, third,
etc.)

Sub ManipulateCCsByTitle()
ActiveDocument.SelectContentControlsByTitle("Name").Item(1).Range.Text =
"Igor"
End Sub

or the same thing by tag:

Sub ManipulateCCsby Tag
ActiveDocument.SelectContentControlsByTag("SalesDate").Item(1).Range.Text =
"6/22/2009"
End Sub

Personally I think working with the unique ID is the more robust method.

 

[Igor]

Thank you Greg for the response. What is a good way to first check if the
control exists in the document first. If so, I would manipulate it. I can't
assume that the control will be on the document, otherwise this will cause an
exception.

 

[Igor]

I have looked at this and I think good to go with a foreach loop that loops
through all content controls and if I find a match on the title, then
manipulate the content control.

 

[skarden]

I agree with Igor is that you need to set up a loop to figure out which CC you are in and which is the next one. THE big problem is that the Index ofan item is NOT the same as its Count.

For example, I could have 3 CCs with a title and tag of KidName. I want tofind out which KidName I'm in and then move to the next KidName. From experimenting with them (by making the CC.Range.Item(i).Text = Str(i)) I seethat the Index seems to be in an almost random order (though 1 time I thought I saw it was in alphabetical order for different tags, but couldn't figure out the order for those with the same name.) I tried making a CC and copying and pasting it in to see if that set the order, but it didn't. Makes it VERY much a pain to work with.