Problem

In Microsoft Word, a table of contents is not automatically updated when a document is opened. If a table of contents (TOC) is created and the document is modified afterwards (either in Word on the client, or using WordWriter on the server) the TOC will need to be updated in order to accurately reflect the changes. Otherwise, you may experience some of the following problems:

• If your TOC points to MergeFields in your template, even though the mergefield will be correctly populated by WordWriter on the server, the TOC entry will display a copy of the original MergeField.
• Page numbers may be inaccurate.
• If your headers are generated using SetRepeatBlock, the TOC will show only those which which existed in the template at design-time.

The TOC can be updated manually by the end-user (by right-clicking on the TOC and choosing “update field”). However, a more user-friendly approach is to include VBA in your template which will cause the TOC to be updated automatically when the new document is opened on the client.

This article explains how to build a table of contents, and how to create a VBA macro which will refresh the TOC client-side.

Solution

Creating a table of contents in your template

In Microsoft Word, a table of contents is created in the following manner:

1. Insert text in your document for the headings 2. Apply one of the heading styles to the text using “Format>Styles and Formats” from the menu, or the Styles dropdown in the formatting toolbar:

3. Add a new table of contents

Word 2010/2007: On the Insert Tab, go to Quick Parts > Field > TOC. Click on ‘Table of Contents’.

Word 2003: Through the menu, choose Insert > Reference > Index and Tables > Table of Contents tab.

4. Once in the Table of Contents window, choose the format of your table of contents (for example, how many level of headers you want to include, if you have nested headers). Word will automatically pick up all text with heading styles and put it into the TOC.

Below is an example of a template with a TOC which references a heading in a repeat block. The <> in the table of contents is not a merge field. It is just picking up the text from the actual merge field in the document. When the WordWriter-generated file is opened on the client, the TOC will still look this way if it is not updated manually or through a macro.

Using macros to update the TOC on the client

If you add the following macro to the Document_Open event of your template Word document, the table of contents will automatically update itself when the user opens the newly-generated file. If you have multiple TOCs, it will update all of them:

Private Sub Document_Open()
For i = 1 To ThisDocument.TablesOfContents.Count
ThisDocument.TablesOfContents.Item(i).Update
Next
End Sub
After the macro runs, the TOC will reflect all of the changes in the populated document:

Note: If you do not wish your users to get a macro security prompt every time they open the document, one option to consider is digitally signing your macros. See: Digitally sign a macro project.

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Problem

Creating lists, ordered or bulleted, using the template object is possible using repeat blocks. However, sometimes you may wish to include a list inside another repeat block, but you run into the following hurdles:

• WordTemplate does not support nested repeat blocks
• WordApplication can dynamically insert lists, but it is not available in WordWriter Standard Edition
• WordTemplate nesting and grouping can also handle nested lists, but is only available in Enterprise Edition.

Solution

Using the WordTemplate object, one cannot populate a fully functional list within a repeat block. However, it is possible to emulate the look of such lists. The general idea is to concatenate the list items into one formatted string that Word displays as a list. These strings can be stored in any database. This solution works for both binary (.doc) and OOXML (.docx) formats in office 2007.

For bulleted lists, use the following format:
“• First item\r\n• Second item”

For numbered lists, use the following format:
“1) First item\r\n2) Second item”
Or
“1. First item\r\n2. Second item”

Note that the generic string format that will be displayed as a list in Word uses the two characters “\r\n” as the separator between the items.

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Problem

The WordApplication API can represent several Word elements that can appear in documents. These are outlined in Word file representation in WordApplication. These elements do not include form components, such as check boxes or text fields.

However, WordApplication can detect form elements on a basic level and some components can be parsed minimally.

Solution

WordApplication does not support manipulating form elements, but it is possible to get a handle on form fields using Document.GetElements(Element.Type.Field). This will return all the field elements in the document, even if they are not Mergefields or Hyperlinks.

GetElements() returns a collection of generic Element objects. Element is the parent class for all other objects represented by WordApplication.

The contents of an Element can be read in Element.Text, which is a text of the content contained in the Element.

For a few form fields, such as text fields, the value of the field will appear in Element.Text. Others, such as check boxes, will show a string form of the object (e.g. “FORMCHECKBOX”).

This is not officially supported in the WordApplication API, so we cannot guarantee that the form field values can be parsed by WordWriter.

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Problem

You have a word Document that contains texboxes. You want to know if WordWriter supports modifying or creating textboxes.

Solution

WordTemplate will populate any merge fields that are placed inside of a text box. This is largely because WordTemplate does not parse the full document and ignores the locations of merge fields.

If you need to search for and replace text that appears in text boxes, you can do so with the WordTemplate object. More details are available in this post.

Unfortunately, WordApplication does not support creating or modifying text boxes. The full list of elements recognized by WordApplication is outlined in this documentation article.

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