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Sadly, most of the tables I view have been “monkeyed with” and querying the column width returns an error message that not all the cells in the column are the same width.

So it looks like I’ve got to iterate the whole table, checking the width of each cell on each row. Hmm.. I wonder if the cell width includes bewteen-cell spacing if used (and believe me, my users will have used it, against their own best interests).

Sadly, most of the tables I view have been “monkeyed with” and querying the column width returns an error message that not all the cells in the column are the same width.

So it looks like I’ve got to iterate the whole table, checking the width of each cell on each row. Hmm.. I wonder if the cell width includes bewteen-cell spacing if used (and believe me, my users will have used it, against their own best interests).

This is really no problem. The easiest way is to hide the variant stuff, overlapping in the same area, perhaps. When the listbox or combobox changes (lbWhatever_Change event), check the new value, and toggle the .visible property of the other fields.

In situations like this, I usually test *all* the variable items when anything changes, e.g.

strX = lbWhatever.Text
cbSomething.Visible = (strX=”Check”)
cbOther.Visible = (strX=”Money Order”)
cbElse.Visible = (strX=”Visa” or strX=”MasterCard”)

This is really no problem. The easiest way is to hide the variant stuff, overlapping in the same area, perhaps. When the listbox or combobox changes (lbWhatever_Change event), check the new value, and toggle the .visible property of the other fields.

In situations like this, I usually test *all* the variable items when anything changes, e.g.

strX = lbWhatever.Text
cbSomething.Visible = (strX=”Check”)
cbOther.Visible = (strX=”Money Order”)
cbElse.Visible = (strX=”Visa” or strX=”MasterCard”)

Thanks — that did help. First off, if you do need to scan every char, you can make some major performance gains by doing “For Each pgh in activedocument.storyrange(x)” and checking pgh.range.font.name. If it’s blank, you’ve got more than one font. If it isn’t, add it to your collected list of fonts.

In the PDF world, the list of fonts would be stored in a “resources” object in the doc. Too bad MS doesn’t expose something like that — it’s probably somewhere in the internals.

Thanks — that did help. First off, if you do need to scan every char, you can make some major performance gains by doing “For Each pgh in activedocument.storyrange(x)” and checking pgh.range.font.name. If it’s blank, you’ve got more than one font. If it isn’t, add it to your collected list of fonts.

In the PDF world, the list of fonts would be stored in a “resources” object in the doc. Too bad MS doesn’t expose something like that — it’s probably somewhere in the internals.

Well, what I really need is not the *preferred* width, but the actual width of the table (I’m writing an auditing tool, that among other things will check for stuff outside of margins).

It bugs me that the GUI “knows” the width, but the programming interface won’t give it to me.

By the way… is there an Office/Word symbolic constant that means 9999999?

Well, what I really need is not the *preferred* width, but the actual width of the table (I’m writing an auditing tool, that among other things will check for stuff outside of margins).

It bugs me that the GUI “knows” the width, but the programming interface won’t give it to me.

By the way… is there an Office/Word symbolic constant that means 9999999?

I hate to be a spoilsport on this topic (especially several months later), but I’m concerned about docs that come from a machine other than my own, and might have *their* fonts somewhere in the doc. Since this routine starts by getting the list of the fonts on *my* system, it can’t know about any xenofonts, which are most likely to be the troublemakers.

Unfortunately, I can’t think of any method other than examining every character that can detect this.

For that matter, select some text, press ctrl-shift-F and type “Mumblemumble”
You’ll now have text in a font called “Mumblemumble” and the macro does not detect it at all.

I hate to be a spoilsport on this topic (especially several months later), but I’m concerned about docs that come from a machine other than my own, and might have *their* fonts somewhere in the doc. Since this routine starts by getting the list of the fonts on *my* system, it can’t know about any xenofonts, which are most likely to be the troublemakers.

Unfortunately, I can’t think of any method other than examining every character that can detect this.

For that matter, select some text, press ctrl-shift-F and type “Mumblemumble”
You’ll now have text in a font called “Mumblemumble” and the macro does not detect it at all.

Probably you mean “Compile on Demand”
That still sounds like it would have the potential for the user to stumble onto a compile-level error, which is never a nice thing.
I usually like to do a full compile of the project prior to saving and shipping to my clients, to be sure there’s no errors lurking, and that would be difficult with this method. Late binding sounds better all the time.

Joel

Probably you mean “Compile on Demand”
That still sounds like it would have the potential for the user to stumble onto a compile-level error, which is never a nice thing.
I usually like to do a full compile of the project prior to saving and shipping to my clients, to be sure there’s no errors lurking, and that would be difficult with this method. Late binding sounds better all the time.

Joel

Mike,
Thanks for the info. I was pretty sure that was the case, and I just got a note back from their tech support confirming it. They think it’s a good idea, and encouraged me to submit it to their feature request page (I’m sure I’ve done so years past).

Thanks for the note about the flightiness of the bibliography in Cite-While-You-Write. That’ll save me a lot of frustration. Probably, I’ll want to do it only as a pre-publish step to ensure finality of the bibliography, and ensure I do it each time we publish to ensure that they haven’t been replaced. The code’s pretty straightforward, so far as I can tell.

Mike,
Thanks for the info. I was pretty sure that was the case, and I just got a note back from their tech support confirming it. They think it’s a good idea, and encouraged me to submit it to their feature request page (I’m sure I’ve done so years past).

Thanks for the note about the flightiness of the bibliography in Cite-While-You-Write. That’ll save me a lot of frustration. Probably, I’ll want to do it only as a pre-publish step to ensure finality of the bibliography, and ensure I do it each time we publish to ensure that they haven’t been replaced. The code’s pretty straightforward, so far as I can tell.

(Edited by HansV to make URL clickable – see Help 19)

Anyone have experience with Reference Manager from ISI Researchsoft? http://www.refman.com/%5B/url%5D
Their tool does a great job with managing the references (hence the name, I guess), but it uses its own ADDIN fields, as opposed to MS Word REF fields to link the citations (e.g. (Borgel, 1997)) to the reference (Borgel, D. P. 1997, “The theory of something or other”…).

What I need is to be able to hyperlink from the citation to the ref, which is obvious with a REF field, and survives the transit to PDF using common tools.

Has anyone done this already, or will I have to invent this wheel? [Wheel will be for sale shortly if I do]