Exporting data from Excel to Word: data targets/placeholders

Question

In Excel I have a userform that has a ListBox being populated from an Excel table using RowSource=myTable.

Now I want to select one line, press a button, and export eve

Answer 1

Word has multiple possibilities for the developer to write data that will be displayed in the document. Which to use depends on the individual requirement of the developer.

1. Traditionally, bookmarks are most often used. A Bookmark object provides a Range property so that the inserted content can be formatted or otherwise manipulated. A bookmark can be referenced elsewhere in the document as a cross-reference or to repeat the information more than one time.

VBA code to write to a bookmark

 ActiveDocument.Bookmarks("BookmarkName").Range.Text = "Data as string"

Writing to a bookmark with content deletes the bookmark. If the bookmark should be retained

Dim sBookmarkName as String
Dim rngBookmark as Word.Range
Dim doc as Word.Document
Dim bkm as Word.Bookmark
sBookmarkName = "BookmarkName"
Set doc = ActiveDocument
If doc.Bookmarks.Exists(sBookmarkName) Then
  Set bkm = doc.Bookmarks(sBookmarkName)
  Set rng = bkm.Range
  rng.Text = "Data as string"
  doc.Bookmarks.Add(sBookmarkName, rngBookmark)
End If

2. Text content can be written to Document.Variable or CustomDocumentProperty objects and the content reflected on the document surface by use of DocVariable or DocProperty fields. This has the advantage of the content travelling with the document, whether the user edits what's displayed on the surface, or not. Formatting the content is problematic.

To write to document Variables and custom document properties:

ActiveDocument.Variables("VariableName") = "Data as string"
'See the language reference for more about values for Type
ActiveDocument.CustomDocumentProperties.Add Name:="PropertyName", _
                                            LinkToContent:=False,  _
                                            Type:=msoPropertyTypeString, _
                                            Value:="Data as string"

3. Starting in Word 2007, content controls are recommended by Microsoft as data placeholders. Programmatically addressing them is similar to working with bookmarks. Main differences:
   • the title or tag of a content control can be used more than once in the document
   • writing to a content control need not (but can) remove the content control (writing to a bookmark removes the bookmark, but it can be recreated if it's needed for referencing or writing data at a future time)
   • a content control can be linked to a Custom XML Part in the document
   • data written to content controls can be more easily extracted from the closed Word document, via the Office Open XML file format. (Even more easily if the content control is linked to a Custom XML Part)
   • Corollary: it's also possible to write data directly to a Custom XML Part that's linked to content controls in a document. This is especially interesting if the data should be written to a closed file.

Since content controls can have the same title or tag, the object model returns an array for these properties. Word also assigns each content control a unique ID (GUID) - if the GUID is known, the content control can be addressed directly.

Dim doc as Word.Document
Dim sCC_ID as String
Dim sCC_Title as String
Dim sCC_Tag as String

Set doc = ActiveDocument
'ID value is passed as a string
doc.ContentControls("1691881769").Range.Text = "Data as String"

'Get the first content control with the given title
sCC_Title = "Content Control Title"
doc.ContentControls.SelectContentControlByTitle(sCC_Title).Item(1).Range.Text = "Data as String"

'Loop all content controls having the same tag
Dim aCC as Word.ContentControls
Dim cc as Word.ContentControl

sCC_Tag = "Content Control Tag"
Set aCC = doc.SelectContentControlsByTag("Content Control Tag")
For Each cc In aCC
    cc.Range.Text = "Data as string"
Next

4. It's possible to write data to merge fields, although this NOT how merge fields are meant to be used. This approach is most often used when the idea is that a user can set up a document "easily". Writing the code to target the merge fields is more complex than for the other types of placeholders.

The following snippet demonstrates how to loop all fields in document not linked to a mail merge data source, search for the merge field and replace it with data

Dim fld As Word.Field
Dim fldRange As Word.Range
Dim sFldCode As String, sDataField As String, sDataContent

sDataField = "MergefieldName"
sDataContent = "Data as string"
For Each fld In ActiveDocument.Fields
    sFldCode = fld.code
    Select Case InStr(sFldCode, sDataField)
        Case Is > 0
          Set fldRange = fld.result
          fld.Delete
          fldRange = sDataContent
    End Select
Next

5. Find/Replace is also an option. Usually, some kind of special character delimits the start and end of the "placeholder". The code searches these characters, reads the placeholder and inserts data at the "found" position.

Simple search code:

Dim wdDoc As Word.Document
Dim sPlaceholder as String, sData as String

sData = "Data as string"
sPlaceholder = "DataFieldName"
Set wdDoc = ActiveDocument

With wdDoc.content.Find
    .ClearFormatting
    .Text = "<<" & sPlaceholder & ">>"
    With .Replacement
        .ClearFormatting
        .Text = sData
    End With
    .Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End With