Word 365—Want Fixed Nav + Style Pane sizes

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My standard Word work window has the Navigation & Style panes open on each side of the main content section.

Maybe 2 months ago, the panes changed size to larger than before and changing them to my preferred sizes didn’t stick—I tried Shift-click closing and changing the pane sizes in my template.

Is there some way to make my preferred sizes stick, like they’ve done for years?

PS I have the following auto macros:

Sub AutoOpen()
 ActiveWindow.View.Type = wdWebView 'open in Web Layout
 ActiveWindow.View.Zoom.Percentage = 120 'Zoom %
 Application.TaskPanes(wdTaskPaneFormatting).Visible = True 'open Style Pane
 Application.TaskPanes(wdTaskPaneNav).Visible = True 'open Nav Pane
 End Sub

Sub AutoNew()
 ActiveWindow.View.Type = wdWebView 'open in Web Layout
 ActiveWindow.View.Zoom.Percentage = 120 'Zoom %
 Application.TaskPanes(wdTaskPaneFormatting).Visible = True 'open Style Pane
 Application.TaskPanes(wdTaskPaneNav).Visible = True 'open Nav Pane
 End Sub

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

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Replies

Try

With CommandBars(“Navigation”)

.Visible = True

.Width = 200

.Position = msoBarLeft

End With

1 user thanked author for this post.

Lugh

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Please see this blogpost about posting code.

Use the [ pre ] and [ /pre ] tags to prevent problems with posting.

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anonymous wrote:

Try

Thanks for your effort Anon, I get…

Run-time error ‘9’:
Subscript out of range

…and no change in either pane’s behavior.

Clicking Debug highlights the line…

With CommandBars(“Navigation”) ‘fixed pane width

I searched on “Subscript out of range”, but got nothing for Word—and only dodgy sites for Excel.

Fyi I pasted your code into my 2 Auto macros, immediately before End Sub.

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

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Lugh

This site converts the straight ” into smart “.

Try retyping the double quotes either side of Navigation and make sure they become straight.

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Lugh

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anonymous wrote:

Try retyping the double quotes either side of Navigation and make sure they become straight

Excellent Anon, that worked, thank you!

I extrapolated your code, which also worked for the Styles pane on the right side—so here it is for anyone else who wants a setup like mine:

 With CommandBars("Navigation") 'fixed pane width
.Visible = True
.Width = 300
.Position = msoBarLeft
End With
 With CommandBars("Styles") 'fixed pane width
.Visible = True
.Width = 300
.Position = msoBarRight
End With

Put the above in the AutoOpen & AutoNew subs of your template if you want this every time—I have mine in the Normal template, since I want this setup for all Word docs.

I you don’t want it every time, I assume putting the code in its own Sub will give you the option on demand. You might want to attach it to a custom button in the ribbon.
Alternatively, put it in a custom template, rather than Normal.

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

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Your welcome. Good to see you got it working.

If you were going to be putting this into its own sub, I would make it a toggler to show/hide the panes by doing the following. Note that this would be a bad idea in the Auto macros.

Sub TogglePanes()
With CommandBars("Navigation") 'fixed pane width
.Visible = Not .Visible
.Width = 300
.Position = msoBarLeft
End With
 With CommandBars("Styles") 'fixed pane width
.Visible = Not .Visible
.Width = 300
.Position = msoBarRight
End With
End Sub

1 user thanked author for this post.

Lugh

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For me, the Styles Pane settings still stick in Word 2019.

I created an Add-In for the Navigation pane settings that sets and uses a document variable with the following AutoExec macro.

Sub AutoExec() ' runs when Word Starts
    If ThisDocument.Variables("SetNavPaneWidth").Value = True Then
        Dim iWidth As Integer
        iWidth = ThisDocument.Variables("NavPaneWidth").Value    ' change to suit using dialog
        Application.CommandBars("Navigation").Width = iWidth
'        Application.CommandBars("Styles").Width = iWidth ' This line is commented out on distribution
    End If
    Application.CommandBars("Navigation").Visible = ThisDocument.Variables("NavState").Value
End Sub

The Add-In can be downloaded from my downloads page.

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