Spell check a text box in Access 97 using with word 2003 spell checker

[GrantS]

A client using access 97 runtime has upgraded their office suite to
2003. Unfortunately with office 97 no longer installed they asked if
it was possible run the office 2003 spell checker from their access 97
app (for use on a form's textbox). I have implemented the below
solution which can be used successfully in visual basic but I'm having
problems in VBA with the screen not be re-painted when the
spellchecker is in use. i.e someone trys to use another application
while the spell checker is running and the screen appears to crash and
one must Alt Tab back to the spellchecker. The basic functionality is
load the content of the text box into word doc (which is not visible)
which is spell checked and then loaded back into the textbox. The
function is as below:

Private Sub cmdSpellCheck_Click()
On Error GoTo Err_cmdSpellCheck_Click


'Paul Barry Simpl 15/01/04 new function to utilise office 2003
spell and grammar checker
Dim objWord As Object
Dim objDoc As Object
Dim strResult As String



'Create a new instance of word Application
Set objWord = CreateObject("word.Application")

Select Case objWord.Version
'Office 2000
Case "9.0"
Set objDoc = objWord.Documents.Add(, , 1, True)
'Office XP
Case "10.0", "11.0"
Set objDoc = objWord.Documents.Add(, , 1, True)
'Office 97
Case Else ' Office 97
Set objDoc = objWord.Documents.Add
End Select



'Return focus to the control
Me.txtActionComment.SetFocus
'Give the text box content to Word
objDoc.Content = txtActionComment.Text
'Spell and Grammer check content
objDoc.CheckGrammar 'THIS IS WHERE THE PROBLEM OCCURS AS
ANOTHER


'Check new content
strResult = left(objDoc.Content, Len(objDoc.Content) - 1)

'Replaces carriage returns with hard returns for access
strResult = ReplaceChars_TSB(strResult, Chr(13), Chr(13) &
Chr(10))


'Clean up
objDoc.Close False
Set objDoc = Nothing
objWord.Application.Quit True
Set objWord = Nothing

If txtActionComment.Text = strResult Then
' There were no spelling errors, so give the user a
' visual signal that something happened
MsgBox "The spelling and grammer check is complete.",
vbInformation + vbOKOnly
End If


' Replace the selected text with the corrected text. It's
important that
' this be done after the "Clean Up" because otherwise there are
problems
' with the screen not repainting


txtActionComment.Text = strResult

' Old spellchecker code when office 97 was installed
' DoCmd.RunCommand acCmdSpelling

Exit_cmdSpellCheck_Click:
Exit Sub

Err_cmdSpellCheck_Click:
If err = 91 Then 'No textbox has focus
MsgBox "Please click in the text box you wish to check!",
vbCritical, "Error"
Else
MsgBox Error & " " & err, vbCritical, "frmIssue"
End If
Resume Exit_cmdSpellCheck_Click


End Sub


To stop this happening when using a vb app the following line of code
is inserted before the word object is created.

App.OleRequestPendingTimeout = 999999

Unfortunately this is not recognised in access 97 - does anyone know
the equivilent or some type of work around?

Is there maybe a way to set a timer to refresh the process using APIS.
This might be something along the lines of 1. USE API to get the
Current thread (before calling spell checker) 2. Set a timer that
relates to this thread 3. Call spell checker while the initial thread
refreshes at the specified interval (so that the screen will repaint
if a user begins to do some other action while spell checker doing its
thing).


Thanks in anticipation.

 

[Word Heretic]

G'day (e-mail address removed) (GrantS),

because it's invis, how does the spellchecker prompt for which word to
change it to?

Steve Hudson
Word Heretic Sydney Australia
Tricky stuff with Word or words

Email: WordHeretic at tpg.com.au


GrantS was spinning this yarn:

 

[GrantS]

Hi and Thanks for your reply.

Sorry, this might have sounded a bit confusing.

To clarify: When one clicks the spell checker command button on the
MSAccess97 Form, the Word application and document is created as per
the code snippet in the code spippet in my last post. TheWord app and
also the document are invisible (through visible=false statement). The
text from the MSAccess control, is passed into this document. The
spellchecker is called for this (invisible) document. If spellchecker
finds a misspelled word, the Spellchecker window IS Displayed modally.
At this point you can make your changes. These changes are only
written to the document, and therefore back to the MSApplication once
you close the Spellchecker.

This is easy to reproduce if you have the environment where you have
Access97 installed and a later version of Word installed. Place a text
box and command button on the Access form and use the code as per the
snippet in the command button. If you use the DoCmd.RunCommand
acCmdSpelling from within Access97, the Access97 SpellChecher is
fired. The user wants to gain advantages from the later version of
SpellChecker that is installed with MSWord XP.

Since my last post, I have tried to create and activeX.exe and also a
Dll in VB6. I passed the text to be checked to this DLL from Access97.
The word document and spell checker were created in these
appplications (dll and ActiveX.exe) and even when using the
'App.OleRequestPendingTimeout = 999999' statement, we still have the
situation where the screen is NOT re-painting as can be seen once the
spellchecker window appears and the user drags this across the screen
(as they might need to in order to view the text they have typed.

Hope this clarifies the problem a bit more.

Cheers

Grant