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"Automation (formerly known as OLE Automation) is a feature of the Component Object Model (COM), an industry-standard technology that applications use to expose their objects, methods, and properties to development tools, macro languages, and other applications.

For example, a spreadsheet application might expose a worksheet, chart, cell, or range of cells--each as a different type of object. A word processor might expose objects such as an application, document, paragraph, bookmark, or sentence.

When an application supports Automation, the objects that the application exposes can be accessed through Visual Basic. You can use Visual Basic to manipulate the objects by invoking methods or by getting and setting properties of the objects."

Here's an example:

Inserting Data into a Microsoft Word Document

With Automation code, you can open a Microsoft Word document and move to a bookmark location in the document. The following example opens a Microsoft Word document and inserts text after a bookmark.

This example assumes that you have Microsoft Word on your computer, that you have an existing document called C:\My Documents\WordTest.doc, and that the document contains a pre-defined bookmark named City.

Sub FindBMark()

   Dim wordApp As Word.Application
   Dim wordDoc As Word.Document
   Dim wordRange As Word.Range

   Set wordApp = CreateObject("Word.Application")
   Set wordDoc = wordApp.Documents.Open("C:\My Documents\Wordtest.doc")

   wordApp.Visible = True

   ' Go to the bookmark named "City".
   Set wordRange = wordDoc.Goto(What:=wdGoToBookmark, Name:="City")
   wordRange.InsertAfter "Los Angeles"

   ' Print the document.
   wordDoc.PrintOut Background:=False

   ' Save the modified document.
   wordDoc.Save

   ' Quit Word without saving changes to the document.
   wordApp.Quit SaveChanges:=wdDoNotSaveChanges

   Set wordApp = Nothing

End Sub

Microsoft Support provides an entire Help file to assist you. It includes theory and examples.

The file is called XPAutomation.chm.

Download it and then double click on the file to run it. You could also set up a shortcut on the desk top, if it will be used frequently.


Microsoft Knowledge Base Article: 302460

This was aimed at Office 2002 but it can be used with later versions:

• Microsoft Access
  
• Microsoft Excel
  
• Microsoft Outlook
  
• Microsoft PowerPoint
  
• Microsoft Word

Labels: VBA