word-vba

This repository contains macros written in Word VBA. Mike Pope is the host.

There are two branches: master and word-vba-feature

Versions of Word

I use Word 2013 for Windows, but much of this applies to earlier versions of Word. Most of it probably applies to Word for the Mac, but I cannot guarantee that.

Installing macros

To install macros, you need to be able to open the macro editor in Microsoft Word. In Windows, you can do this by pressing Alt+F11 while you're in a document. If you've configured Word to show the Developer tab, you can also use the Code area of the ribbon to manage macros.

Here's a primer on how to use the VBA editing environment and work with macros:

Getting Started with VBA in Word 2010

List of macros

Here's a brief description of what's in this repo:

change-plaintext-to-normal.mac

This was written in response to a query to on the Word-Pc list. If you open up a pure-text file in Word, Word formats the text in the file as the style named Plain Text. The poster wondered if there was a way to have Word instead show everythign in Normal. There might be a better way to do that, but this macro seems to do the trick. It relies on the fact that Word runs AutoNew, AutoOpen, and AutoClose macros if they exist when (respectively) you create, open, and close a document.

show-hide-revisions.mac

This macro toggles revision marks. In the language of the Word UI, it's the equivalent of the following:

Review (tab) > Tracking > [All Markup|No Markup]

This macro is particularly suitable for mapping to a keystroke. I use Alt+V,A

More info: http://mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2407

toggle-smart-quotes.mac

Turns on/off the feature in Word that converts straight quotes to curly quotes. Most useful when this has a keyboard shortcut assigned to it.

Managing the Styles pane

set-styles-panel-to-all-alphabetical.mac

Changes the display in the Styles pane to a) show all styles in b) alphabetical order.

HTML-related macros

convert-all-links.mac

Walks through all Word hyperlinks and converts them to <a> elements (with target="_blank").

An interesting feature of this macro is that it walks backward through the collection of links. The issue is that as each hyperlink is converted, it stops being a hyperlink and is thus removed from the collection. This confuses any code that is walking the collection.

convert-to-ul-list.mac

Converts the selected text to a <ul> list. Each paragraph becomes one list item.

make-bold.mac

Adds <b></b> tags around the selected text.

make-code.mac

Adds <code></code> tags around the selected text.