Hands on: Building with Word 2003

We have previously looked at Autotext in Word 2003 and earlier, and covered Word 2007’s Building Blocks.

Last time we looked at some of the Content Controls and ‘Click Here’ blocks you can use in Word 2007.

This time we’re going back to the less glamorous world of 2003 to see how you can use similar automation features.

As with many of Word 2007’s new features, there’s a lot of emphasis on presentation. Whereas the Galleries provide a quick way of adding all kinds of content, many of the features are there in earlier versions. Starting with the ‘Click Here’ boxes, there’s a quick way of doing this. First, you need to create a macro. Go to Tools, Macro, Macros, type in a name (let’s say, ‘Clickhere’) and click the Create button.

The VBA editing window will appear with the head and tail of ‘Sub Clickhere()’ plus a few lines of comment. This is all you need, so close the VBA editor. Now, in the document, choose Insert, Field, MacroButton and select your Clickhere macro from the list. In the ‘Display text’ box above the macro list, type in the prompt; eg, ‘Type your title here’.

OK to insert the field, then format it as you want, making sure you have the field results rather than code visible ­ right-click to toggle between the two. Save this in a template; you’ll find that all new documents based on the template will display the prompt. One click will select the entire prompt, and typing the real title will replace it.

For a more sophisticated and versatile method of adding ‘ready-to-go’ content to a template, you can use forms. Forms and their controls aren’t really as scary as they sound. It’s a bad choice of word ­ most of us associate forms with tax returns. So brace yourself, create a new template and turn on the Forms toolbar.

Starting with the simplest, the left-most button inserts a Text form field. This defaults to a four-character blank space ­ it helps if you turn on shading (eighth button from left). Right-click on this and select Properties, or select the field and press the Options button (fourth from the left in the Forms toolbar) and you’ll get a dialogue. The default is Regular Text and you can type the placeholder text in the box beside this.

Below this you can set a limit for the length and specify the case ­ upper, lower, first capital or title case. Below that you can specify macros to run when the user enters or exits the control ­ we’ll return to this another time. Make sure, however, that the ‘Fill-in enabled’ box is checked.