Working with Document Objects

Article
07/11/2006

In Visual Basic, the methods for modifying files are methods of the Document object or the Documents collection object. This topic includes Visual Basic examples related to the following tasks:

Creating a new document
Opening a document
Saving an existing document
Saving a new document
Activating a document
Determining if a document is open
Referring to the active document

Creating a new document

The Documents collection includes all of the open documents. To create a new document, use the Add method to add a Document object to the Documents collection. The following instruction creates a new document.

  Documents.Add

A better way to create a new document is to assign the return value to an object variable. The Add method returns a Document object that refers to the new document. In the following example, the Document object returned by the Add method is assigned to an object variable. Then several properties and methods of the Document object are set. You can easily control the new document using an object variable.

  Sub NewSampleDoc()
    Dim docNew As Document
    Set docNew = Documents.Add
    With docNew
        .Content.Font.Name = "Tahoma"
        .SaveAs FileName:="Sample.doc"
    End With
End Sub

Opening a document

To open an existing document, use the Open method with the Documents collection. The following instruction opens a document named Sample.doc located in the MyFolder folder.

  Sub OpenDocument()
    Documents.Open FileName:="C:\MyFolder\Sample.doc"
End Sub

Saving an existing document

To save a single document, use the Save method with the Document object. The following instruction saves the document named Sales.doc.

  Sub SaveDocument()
    Documents("Sales.doc").Save
End Sub

You can save all open documents by applying the Save method to the Documents collection. The following instruction saves all open documents.

  Sub SaveAllOpenDocuments()
    Documents.Save
End Sub

Saving a new document

To save a single document, use the SaveAs method with a Document object. The following instruction saves the active document as "Temp.doc" in the current folder.

  Sub SaveNewDocument()
    ActiveDocument.SaveAs FileName:="Temp.doc"
End Sub

The FileName argument can include only the file name or the complete path (for example, "C:\Documents\Temporary File.doc").

Closing documents

To close a single document, use the Close method with a Document object. The following instruction closes and saves the document named Sales.doc.

  Sub CloseDocument()
    Documents("Sales.doc").Close SaveChanges:=wdSaveChanges
End Sub

You can close all open documents by applying the Close method to the Documents collection. The following instruction closes all documents without saving changes.

  Sub CloseAllDocuments()
    Documents.Close SaveChanges:=wdDoNotSaveChanges
End Sub

The following example prompts the user to save each document before the document is closed.

  Sub PromptToSaveAndClose()
    Dim doc As Document
    For Each doc In Documents
        doc.Close SaveChanges:=wdPromptToSaveChanges
    Next
End Sub

Activating a document

To change the active document, use the Activate method with a Document object. The following instruction activates the open document named Sales.doc.

  Sub ActivateDocument()
    Documents("Sales.doc").Activate
End Sub

Determining if a document is open

To determine if a document is open, you can enumerate the Documents collection by using a For Each...Next statement. The following example activates the document named Sample.doc if the document is open, or opens Sample.doc if it's not currently open.

  Sub ActivateOrOpenDocument()
    Dim doc As Document
    Dim docFound As Boolean

    For Each doc In Documents
        If InStr(1, doc.Name, "sample.doc", 1) Then
            doc.Activate
            docFound = True
            Exit For
        Else
            docFound = False
        End If
    Next doc

    If docFound = False Then Documents.Open FileName:="Sample.doc"
End Sub

Referring to the active document

Instead of referring to a document by name or index number — for example Documents("Sales.doc") — the ActiveDocument property returns a Document object which refers to the active document (the document with the focus). The following example displays the name of the active document, or if there are no documents open, it displays a message.

  Sub ActiveDocumentName()
    If Documents.Count >= 1 Then
        MsgBox ActiveDocument.Name
    Else
        MsgBox "No documents are open"
    End If
End Sub