Is this VB/A or an Addon?

[Guest]

Hi all,

I was visiting a site where I saw them using Word2000 with some fancy
things. Some I could identify as macros or VBA forms, but there is one thing
I am not sure whether it is a VBA form or a 3rd party addon (I wasn't able to
ask).

Could someone identify this, and if it a 3rd party addon, indicate where it
might be able to purchased?

(Purpose: The Idiot User's Procedure for Saving a Doc in the right area
with the right name)


* At the end of saving the doc, a Form was used (called by a menu bar macro)
to save stuff to a directory etc.

*The trick with this was that because letters, reports, proposals always
start with the same letter coding, and the stuff was being saved to a
specific topic directory, there were radio buttons to see the pre-existing
names of reports (because you selected the radio button for reports) etc.

*You could see the names of pre-existing files, and I was advised that users
were prevented from using the same file name in this area (not just when
clicking on the 'save' button - I think.)

* It was really easy to just write in the new file name based on what you
could see. Not sure whether or not they had a default partial file name
inserted or not, based on what was there in the rest of the types of reports
showing.

* The company name was at the top of the form, and the form was a dark blue
background in colour (in case this twigs something for anyone).


This was some pretty fancy coding if VBA coding done directly by them. Is
this sort of thing easy enough to put together in VBA, or best left to a
developer?

TIA,

 

[Jezebel]

First, there is no necessary distinction between VBA and 'third-party
add-on' -- many third-party add-ins are written in VBA. The 'add-in' just
refers to how it is installed (ie, the code is in a template in Word's
Startup folder).

From your description, yes VBA is well able to do all those things, although
it would be a little easier to do in true VB. Probably a little beyond the
skills of a beginner. The challenge with this kind of development is the
devil in the details: it's not that the code is hard to write, it's just
that it is really difficult to work out the logic of what you actually want
the code to do. Even in your brief account of it, any number of 'what-ifs'
come to mind, that the code would have to deal with.

 

[Guest]

Thank you for the info. Add-in templates are nice when you can get them all
nicely coded up for you.