WD97: Returning Object Counts for Parts of a Document

• Microsoft Word 97 for Windows

SUMMARY

In Visual Basic for Applications, an object represents an element of an application, such as a document, a paragraph, a sentence, a word, or a field.

A collection is an object that contains several other objects, usually, but not always, of the same type. In Microsoft Word, for example, the Documents Collection object contains all the open Document objects.

At times it may be necessary when you write Visual Basic for Applications macros to return the number of objects within a particular collection of objects.

This article discusses methods that can be used to return the count of a collection of objects for part or all of a document including but not limited to objects located in headers, footers, and different sections of a document.

MORE INFORMATION

Microsoft provides examples of Visual Basic for Applications procedures for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose. The Visual Basic procedures in this article are provided 'as is' and Microsoft does not guarantee that they can be used in all situations. While Microsoft support engineers can help explain the functionality of a particular macro, they will not modify these examples to provide added functionality, nor will they help you construct macros to meet your specific needs. If you have limited programming experience, you may want to consult one of the Microsoft Solution Providers. Solution Providers offer a wide range of fee-based services, including creating custom macros. For more information about Microsoft Solution Providers, call Microsoft Customer Information Service at (800) 426-9400.

Method 1: To Return a Count of Objects for an Entire Document

To return a count of objects for an entire document including those contained in headers, footers, comments, endnotes, footnotes and text frames use the StoryRanges Collection object.

A Story object is contained within the Story Collection. Members of the Story collection are

- The Main Text or Body of a Document

- First Page Header

- First Page Footer

- Primary Header

- Primary Footer

- Even Pages Headers

- Even Pages Footers

- Comments

- EndNotes

- Footnotes

- Text Frames

For example, to count the number of fields in all stories of a document, use the following example:

   Sub CountAllFields()
      Dim iCount As Integer
      Dim aStory As Object
      For Each aStory In ActiveDocument.StoryRanges
         iCount = iCount + aStory.Fields.Count
      Next
      MsgBox iCount
   End Sub

   Sub CountAllShapes()
      Dim iCount As Integer
      Dim aStory As Object
      For Each aStory In ActiveDocument.StoryRanges
         iCount = iCount + aStory.Application.ActiveDocument.Shapes.Count
      Next
      MsgBox iCount
   End Sub

   Sub CountAllHyperLinks()
      Dim iCount As Integer
      Dim aStory As Object
      For Each aStory In ActiveDocument.StoryRanges
         iCount = iCount + _
         aStory.Application.ActiveDocument.Hyperlinks.Count
      Next
      MsgBox iCount
   End Sub

Method 2: To Return a Count of Objects for Part of a Document

To return a count of items for a single member of the StoryRange, specify a member of the story range with a wdStoryType constant.

In this example, the wdMainTextStory constant is used in conjunction with the Paragraphs collection to return the count of paragraphs in the main text or body of a document:

   Sub CountParagraphs()
      MsgBox ActiveDocument.StoryRanges(wdMainTextStory).Paragraphs.Count
   End Sub

   Sub CountSentencesInMainDocBody()
      Dim MyStory As Object
      Set MyStory = ActiveDocument.StoryRanges(wdMainTextStory)
      MsgBox MyStory.Sentences.Count
   End Sub