mike's web log

VBA tip: insert text at the start and end of a paragraph

Tue, 03 Jun 2025 20:00:23 GMT

A Word macro/VBA tip. I'm writing this up primarily because I do this just seldom enough that I look it up every time. At least now I'll now where to look.

Suppose you're writing a Microsoft Word macro (in VBA). You want to add text to beginning and end of the paragraph. In my case, I'm adding HTML tags around the paragraph content, which is why this is interesting to me.

The Paragraph object has a Range property that returns a Range object. The Range object in turn supports the InsertBefore and InsertAfter methods. So you'd think that you could do this:

Dim para as Paragraph
Set para = ActiveDocument.Paragraphs(1)
para.Range.InsertBefore("<p>")
para.Range.InsertAfter("</p>")

This almost works. However, the closing </p> tag is added after the paragraph as a new paragraph:

Instead, do this:

Dim para As Paragraph
Set para = ActiveDocument.Paragraphs(1)
para.Range.Select
Selection.InsertBefore ("<p>")
Selection.MoveLeft unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1, Extend:=wdExtend
Selection.InsertAfter ("</p>")

This is what's happening:

Use the Range.Select method to select the paragraph. This gives you access to a Selection object.

Keyboard shortcut for keyboard shortcuts in Word

Sun, 02 Jun 2024 20:46:24 GMT

This is mostly a note to myself so that I don't have to look this up the next time I have to do this. The task is to have a quick way to get directly to the Customize Keyboard dialog box in Microsoft Word:

You use this dialog box to assign new (custom) keyboard shortcuts to Word commands or to macros. The usual way to get to this dialog is through the File menu:

Choose File > Options.
Click the Customize Ribbon tab.
Click the Customize button next to Keyboard shortcuts.

This works but is tedious. Instead, you can assign a keyboard shortcut to get directly to this dialog. The trick is to use the Customize Keyboard dialog to assign a shortcut to the ToolsCustomizeKeyboard command:

Don't forget to click the Assign button!

Credits: I learned all of this from Stefan Blom's answer on a thread on the Microsoft Community site.

Automatically backing up the Normal.dotm file

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 21:32:32 GMT

On Twitter recently, DeAnna Burghart reminded us that if you use Microsoft Word, it's important to back up your Normal.dotm file. If the file is overwritten or corrupted, you lose your macros, your keyboard shortcuts, and other goodies that editors rely on.

I've experienced that problem, gah. So a while back, I set up Windows so that it automatically backs up my Normal.dotm file several times a day. I thought it might be useful to show other people how I did this.

Sad note: The information in this post applies only to Windows. I'm sure there's a way to do this on the Mac, probably involving Python or Bash and one of several ways to run a scheduled task.

I realize that this is a long post and therefore looks complicated. It isn't, I promise! I added some extra steps to test as you go to try to make sure that you don't Experience Disappointment.

Background
Create the PowerShell script
Test the script
Schedule the backup
Test the scheduled task

Update: I created a video version of this tutorial!

Background

[more]

My videos about Microsoft Word

Mon, 10 Sep 2018 21:38:22 GMT

A little-known fact is that I have a number of videos on YouTube about using Microsoft Word. ("Little-known" as evidenced by the analytics, haha.) It seems that I should probably let more people know about them! So here's a blog post that catalogs the videos I have so far.

Using styles

Why use styles?

An overview of why styles are awesome and wonderful and why you should use them.

Types of styles

About the different types of styles (paragraph, character, linked, table, and list styles), and how and when you use them.

Ways to apply styles

Reviews the several different ways that you can apply styles in Microsoft Word—the Quick Styles gallery, the Styles pane, the Apply Styles dialog box (Windows only), and keyboard shortcuts. I also offer tips for choosing the right style to apply.

Using styles to set spell-check options

How to use styles to set the language (English, Spanish, German, etc.) for different parts of a document.

Using styles to disable spellcheck

[more]

Let's change our attitude about the Word grammar checker

Wed, 31 Jan 2018 09:54:15 GMT

A fairly regular occurrence in the editor groups I participate in on Facebook or Twitter is that someone posts about how the spelling or grammar tools in Microsoft Word have gotten something spectacularly wrong. As I've noted before, editors in particular seem to take glee in bashing the grammar checker.

I find this frustrating for a couple of reasons, and I've pushed back a bit on social media when I see posts that dismiss proofing tools. But I thought I owed it to people to explain why I think it's not productive exercise to bash the tools. (Modulo the entertainment value of hilariously bad advice, which is by no means limited to advice dispensed by tools.)

I'm going to focus on two issues: the measurable deficiencies of the tool, and the question of audience.

Measureable, reproducible deficiencies

Imagine that you are a program manager (PM) at Microsoft whose job it is to improve the grammar-checking tool. It's not news to you that the tool gets things wrong sometimes.

You go out into the world to find out what sorts of problems people are having with the grammar checker. You find no shortage of complaints. An article in Slate claims that the grammar checker "makes your writing worse." At least that article has some explicit examples. Other complaints are more abstract:

Put yourself in the place of that PM. How is the grammar checker "creating problems"? Which things is it flagging that are "not errors"? What [more]

Using styles to set spell-check options in Word

Wed, 10 Jan 2018 08:28:46 GMT

There are many reasons to use styles in Word, as I've noted before. One feature I find handy is using styles that have different spell-check options for different types of text. I'll explain a couple of examples: one where I set a non-default spell-check option (Spanish), and another where I disable spell check for code snippets.

Note: If you'd rather see this on video, see the links below.

Spell check for non-default languages

Suppose you're writing a document that has quotations in different languages. If you run spell check over the document, it'll barf when it gets to your citations in Spanish or French or Latin or whatever.[1]

The hard way to solve this problem is to select the text of each citation, one by one, and then to set the proofing language (Review tab > Language > Set Proofing Language).

The easier way to do it is to define a style and set the language for that style. Then you can just apply the style to your citations.

Suppose I'm writing about One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez:

I run spell check, and uh-oh: if it's going to stop on every word of Spanish, it's going to be a long night proofing this doc:

Instead, I'll create a style just for my quotations in Spanish. In this case, I'll create a paragraph style, although I can set language options for character styles also, which is useful for cites in running text.

Here's the [more]

MS Word: avoiding taboo words and other tricky vocab

Wed, 05 Jul 2017 15:02:05 GMT
As most people discover, there's a class of writing error that spell check just can't help you with. Consider these examples:
We recommend that the company shit its resources for better output.
The event is open to the pubic.
Run these through spell check, and all is well. Only, of course, it's not.

As I recently learned, Word has a feature that can help find errors like this: an exclusion list. An exclusion list has words that are spelled perfectly fine, but that should be excluded from your documents.

The steps for creating an exclusion list are described in a great blog post by Sam Hartburn. The basic idea is that you add words, one per line, to .lex files in a specific folder on your computer. Here's the Windows location--see notes later for Mac instructions:

You can use any text editor to edit the file, including Notepad.

Note that there are different .lex files for different languages, and in fact for different flavors of each language—e.g. English US and English GB. (It's not inconceivable that there's a way to set up a global .lex file, but I don't know. Leave a comment if you know about that.)

Once you've got your exclusion list(s) updated, close and then reopen Word. Then when you run the spell checker, Word will flag words that are part of your exclusion list:

The examples I've shown here pertain to, you know, taboo vocabulary. Another excellent use for this feature is to flag words that you often mistype but are technically spelled correctly, such as [more]

Subs in VBA: calling and exposing

Fri, 23 Jun 2017 12:24:13 GMT
I rassled a bit recently with a couple of dumb issues when creating some Word macros, so I thought I'd better write these up for my own future reference. To be clear, "dumb" here means that I should already have known this stuff, and I wasted time learning it.

1. Calling subroutines

I was trying to call a sub like this:
Sub SomeMacro
SomeOtherSub(p1, p2)
End Sub
Word got so mad about that SomeOtherSub call:

Turns out that when you call a subroutine in VBA and pass parameters, you do that without parentheses:
SomeOtherSub p1, p2
The parameters can be positional, as here, or named. For the latter, use the := syntax:
SomeOtherSub p1:="a value", p2:="another value"

2. Exposing subroutines (implicit access modifiers)

Here was another kind of bonehead mistake I made. I wrote a subroutine sort of like this:
Sub MyMacro(param1 As String, param2 As String)
' Code here
End Sub
Then I tried to actually run this macro (Developer > Macros). The macro stubbornly refused to appear in the Macros dialog box. If I was in the macro editor and pressed F5 to try to launch it in the debugger, Word just displayed the Macros dialog box for me to pick which macro to run, but again, did not display the actual macro that I actually wanted to run.

Anyway, long story short (too late, haha), the problem was that the Sub definition included parameters:
Sub MyMacro(param1 As String, param2 As String)
[more]

Paste unformatted text in Word

Wed, 19 Apr 2017 14:35:11 GMT
Another quick post about Word, primarily for my own benefit (when I forget this later).

Word has several options for how you can paste text:

They are (in order):
Keep Source Formatting. This option keeps the original formatting (both character and paragraph formatting), but converts it to direct formatting.

Merge Formatting. This option copies basic character formatting (bold, italics, underline) as direct formatting, but does not copy any paragraph formatting.

Use Destination Styles. This option copies the text and applies styles that are in the target document. (This option appears only if there matching styles in the target doc.)

Keep Text Only. This option copies the text as plain text, with no formatting.
I need the last one (paste plain text) more often than any of the others, so I want it on a keyboard shortcut. You can do this by recording a macro of yourself using the Keep Text Only option. But I realized there's an even easier way—just assign a keyboard shortcut to the built-in PasteTextOnly command.

I keep forgetting that most anything Word can do has a command. If a gesture requires just one command, you can assign a keyboard shortcut directly to it. Maybe writing this out will help me remember.

Update I added a video!

Word macros for displaying styles in the Styles pane

Mon, 14 Mar 2016 00:01:22 GMT
This is another in a series of blog posts about how I configure Microsoft Word, which I add here primarily for my own reference.

I often use the Style pane, and within that pane, I often want to change the styles that are displayed. Sometimes I want to see all the styles; sometimes just the styles that are defined in the current document; sometimes just the styles currently in use.

You can change this display by using a dialog box. In the Styles pane, click the Options link, and then use the dropdown lists to select which styles to display and how they're ordered, like this:

But that can get to be an annoying number of clicks if you're switching between these display options frequently. So, macros to the rescue. I recorded myself making one of these changes, then created a couple of variations to give me the different displays I want. Here are the macros I currently use, where the sub name is (I hope) self-explanatory:
Sub SetStylesPaneToAllAlphabetical()
ActiveDocument.FormattingShowFilter = wdShowFilterStylesAll
ActiveDocument.StyleSortMethod = wdStyleSortByName
End Sub

Sub SetStylesPaneToInCurrentDocument()
ActiveDocument.FormattingShowFilter = wdShowFilterStylesAvailable
ActiveDocument.StyleSortMethod = wdStyleSortByName
End Sub

Sub SetStylesPaneToInUse()
ActiveDocument.FormattingShowFilter = wdShowFilterStylesInUse
ActiveDocument.StyleSortMethod = wdStyleSortByName
End Sub
To complete the picture, I map the macros to these keyboard shortcuts:

ctrl+shift+p,a — SetStylesPaneToAllAlphabetical
ctrl+shift+p,c – SetStylesPaneToInCurrentDocument
[more]

AutoFormat in Word

Tue, 08 Mar 2016 00:23:08 GMT
I have used Microsoft Word for years—decades—but hardly a week goes by when I don't learn something new. (Including things that are probably pretty well known to others, oh well.) Anyway, TIL about how to use the batch version of auto-formatting in Word. Since I think a lot of people already know this, I'm adding the information here primarily for later reference for myself.

Word has settings to perform "auto-formatting as you type." These include things like converting quotation marks into so-called smart quotes (i.e., typographical quotation marks), converting double hyphens (--) into em-dashes (—), converting typed fractions (1/2) into typographic fractions (½), etc. You set these options in the AutoCorrect dialog box: File > Options > Proofing, AutoCorrect Options button, AutoFormat As You Type tab.

It turns out that Word can also apply these auto-formatting instructions after the fact. In the same AutoCorrect dialog box, there's a tab named just AutoFormat:

This has most of the same options as with auto-format-as-you-type. Here's the neat part: you can get Word to apply these formatting options by pressing alt+ctrl+k. There's no UI gesture, but you can use the feature for customizing the ribbon to add the relevant command to the ribbon or Quick Access Toolbar.

A use case where I can see this working pretty well is if you paste text in from a text editor. (I do this all the time.)

Credit where it's due: I learned about this from the article [more]

Show/hide revisions in Word 2013

Thu, 09 Jan 2014 23:13:26 GMT
I just installed Word 2013 and was disappointed to note that some of the long-standing keyboard shortcuts no longer work. For example, I've been using Alt+V,A for years (decades?) to invoke an ancient menu command to toggle between hiding and showing revision marks. Even when they introduced the ribbon and the menus went away, a lot of those old menu-command shortcuts still worked. And some still do; but this particular one no longer does, darn it.

I spent a little while trying to map keystrokes to the show-revision and hide-revision commands in the Review tab. Either I'm not finding them or (as I believe) there's no longer a single command to toggle show/hide of rev marks in the way I've come to rely on.

So, macro time. Using the macro recorder and some editing, I created the following macro and then mapped Alt+V,A to it. Macros are stored in Normal.dotm, so as long as that remains available I should be good. (Right?) However, I'll have to update Normal.dotm on each machine on which I install Word 2013.

Update 2016-03-06: For the "hide revisions" section, I changed wdRevisionsViewOriginal to wdRevisionsViewFinal. This macro always shows the "final" version, but toggles whether rev marks are displayed.

Perhaps there's an easier mapping for this functionality. If this macro thing doesn't work out, I'll investigate further.
Sub ShowOrHideShowRevisions()
If ActiveWindow.View.RevisionsFilter.Markup = wdRevisionsMarkupNone Then
' Hide revisions
With ActiveWindow.View.RevisionsFilter
.Markup = wdRevisionsMarkupAll
.View = wdRevisionsViewFinal
End With
Else
' Show revisions
With ActiveWindow.View.RevisionsFilter
.Markup = wdRevisionsMarkupNone
[more]

Key remappings in Word

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 16:55:45 GMT
This is a blog post just to record the key remappings I do in Microsoft Word 2010. (It is probably not of interest to most people.)

I've found that it speeds up revisions tremendously to map keyboard shortcuts to the commands in Word that you use to find, accept, and reject revisions and comments. As a bonus, I don't like that the traditional Find key in Word 2010 is mapped to some sort of Navigation pane (where traditional Find is available under Advanced Find). So I map Ctrl+F as well. As I say, this is primarily for my own reference.

Task Command Key mapping
Display Find/Replace dialog box EditFind Ctrl+F
Find next revision or comment NextChangeOrComment Ctrl+Shift+F
Accept current change AcceptChangesSelected Ctrl+Shift+A
Reject current change RejectChangesSelected Ctrl+Shift+R

7+1 productivity tips for Microsoft Word

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:10:56 GMT
It's always a little startling to me to watch over someone's shoulder when I'm helping them do something in Word. Seeing someone very carefully move the mouse pointer over to the little diskette (!) icon in order to save, or hearing them howl when the computer freezes, or hitting Enter to add a blank paragraph for vertical spacing — well, I think I know how Drivers Ed teachers must feel. So here are a few tips that cannot help but make someone take better advantage of the astounding capabilities of Word. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that these are some of the skills that determine whether you're a power user of Word.

0. Save early and often

This is a sort of pre-tip. Everyone has lost work in Word because Word froze or because the computer locked up. Talk about losing productivity. Learn to do this:
As soon as you've created a new document, save it. When it's still blank. Do not wait till you've written "enough."

Learn the keyboard shortcuts for saving: Shift+F12, Ctrl+S, and Alt+F,S. (Three of them! Your choice!) This makes it as trivially easy to save.

Save every time you pause. Basically, I reflexively save whenever I stop typing.
Adopting these habits does not mean that you'll never, ever lose work. But the amount of work you'll lose is measured in minutes (or seconds), not hours.

1. Learn keyboard shortcuts

Using the mouse slows you down. There, I said it. In fact, I'm going to say that most anything you do in Word using the mouse, I can probably do faster using the keyboard. Tips:
Word has tons and tons of built-in keystrokes for commands that are on the ribbon, status bar, etc. (list, list [more]

Some love for the Word spelling checker

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 08:55:05 GMT
As I’ve noted before, when spelling-checker software gets attention, it’s because something went wrong. And I’ve also noted before that lots of people think that spelling checkers, and the spelling checker in Word in particular, are not very good.

That isn’t me. I use the spelling checker[1] in Word all the time. In fact, even if I’m writing something in some other editing tool, and even if that tool has a spelling checker, I will often copy the content to a Word document and run the spelling checker there. (This is especially true when I work with HTML documents.) When I found myself doing that again recently, I thought I should sort out why exactly I find it so useful. So here are some thoughts on why the spellchecker in Word works so well for me personally. (As they say, YMMV.)

It’s overwhelmingly right. I am in fact a wretched typist. One of the reasons that this isn’t quite as obvious as it might be is that Word finds the two or three words per sentence that I’ve mistyped and scolds me. People like to harp on cases where Word misses a misspelling (10 Common Errors “Spell Check” Won’t Catch [2]) or suggests some absurd replacement for a misspelled word ("Cupertinos"). But realistically, the percentage of times that Word is right versus these oddball cases has got to be in the high 90th percentile.[3]

It works both in real time and in batch mode [more]

Grammar checker FTW

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 17:59:03 GMT
You can hardly swing a dead linguist without getting opinions -- negative ones, of course -- about the quality of advice offered by spelling and grammar checking in Microsoft Word. Here's a sample from Geoff Pullum:
But she is wise to the extraordinarily bad advice Word gives on spelling and grammar, and firmly resisted what could have been one of the worst cupertinos in the history of philosophy.
The issue with linguists (and editors) and Microsoft Word is that they focus on what we in our business call "edge cases." Submit to Word a term that's been so misspelled that it's not clear what was intended, or submit a particularly tricky grammar issue to it, and it might respond with an incorrect suggestion. So obviously the tool is useless. (Or, um, "extraordinarily bad.") The fact that Word catches 98+ percent of the bad spellings and grammar issues[1] that it encounters is never remarked on. It's not very interesting when a tool just does what it's supposed to do.

Me, I am highly dependent on these tools because in fact they do find all sorts of junk. (More spelling errors than grammar errors, but some of each.) And sure, it isn't always right, but that's why there's an editor. (Me.) Even so, it impressed me today. Here's something I wrote; for the highlighted word, do you know whether it's right?
When I get the nod from Bill, or from whoever he delegates the decision to, I’ll make the updates.

Word did. :-)

I will admit that it isn't always (as my wife likes to say) buttercups and roses. Here's a grammar-checker boo-boo from the Fail blog:

[more]

Measur(e)able

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 16:00:03 GMT
Question posted internally today: how come the spelling checker in Word 2007 allows both measureable and measurable? Dictionaries prefer the spelling without -e-, and the rules (as I read them) in our own style guide say to drop the interstitial e. That most democractic of aribters, Google, favors measurable by a whopping 50:1.

In Word 2003, incidentally, measureable is considered an error:

Someone from the proofing tools team responded to this query (thus the advantages of being able to post these questions) and said that the linguists who make these kinds of judgements might have decided that it was an acceptable variant. He made the interesting observation that they get a lot of requests to be more "Google-like" and favor common usage over authorities. Or, he said, they might have goofed up (with further notes about algorithmic possibilities).

Either way, he did note that if that no-good, slacker spelling checker is letting stuff thru that you don't approve of, you can add words to an exclude list (a blacklist, I guess). Instructions here.

PS. I'm just dying to know if you found the stray -e- in this post. :-)

Is your tool your master?

Tue, 29 May 2007 01:17:20 GMT
I use the spell checker and grammar checker in Word all the time. These thing are tools for me, ways to help somewhat with the gruntwork of examining every letter of every word of every sentence in all the documents I edit. The spell checker finds words all the time that have been fumbled (often by me as I edit), although it finds many, many more that it thinks are errors but are just fine in context (e.g. lots of technical names). The grammar checker doesn't have as much opportunity to be helpful, but it's good at finding problems like subject-verb agreement when the subject of sentence has been edited but the verb has not.

But these tools are often looked at askance. As I've noted before (I think), professional editors can be snotty about the grammar checker in particularly, focusing on errors that the checker doesn't find, or constructions that confuse the grammar checker and make it believe it's found an error when there is none. Similarly, virtually everyone has examples where the spell checker has missed words (the spell checker is helpless in the face of their-they're-there confusion, for example).

You occasionally hear about situations where someone has relied entirely on the grammar and spell checkers to find errors, and if you hear such a story, it's because things didn't turn out well. For some reason this is seen as a reason to bash the tools rather than bashing the people who rely on them too much.

I got another perspective the other day. I had the good fortune to exchange email with Geoff Pullum of the Language Log; I had commented on one of his entries [more]

Pimping the keyboard

Thu, 25 May 2006 17:11:46 GMT
As a kind of public service, Jeff Atwood occasionally posts information about Keystrokes You Probably Didn't Know About (#, #, #, #). Reviewing lists like that, you'd think that there's a keystroke for everything you'd ever want to do in any program.

Sadly, no.

I mostly write and edit (as opposed to code), and I spend most of my work life in Microsoft Word. For maximum speed, I eschew the mouse, so I'm always looking for ways to do things from the keyboard. I have long since become familiar with existing shortcut keys for common tasks.[1] But there are still tasks I do all the time for which, oddly, no shortcut key exists among the thousands already there. What I do, then, is map a keystroke to the command I need.

Example: I work with Word's revision marks all the time. Word provides a shortcut key (CTRL+SHIFT+E) to toggle revision marks on and off, sweet. But I also need to be able to find the next revision and then accept it or reject it. There are menu commands and toolbar buttons to do this (ie, mouse gestures), but AFAIK, no keystrokes.

For anything that has a menu command in Word, you can create your own shortcut key. Let's say you want to create a shortcut key for the gesture to go to the next revision mark in the document. Do this:
Click Tools > Customize.
Click Keyboard.
In the Categories list, click Edit.
In the Commands list, click NextChangeOrComment.
Put the focus in the Press new shortcut key [more]

Word's grammar checker

Tue, 05 Apr 2005 08:45:42 GMT
There was an article in the Seattle P-I on Monday about the limitations of the grammar checker in Microsoft Word. Here's a cite:
[Some whiner] has crafted and posted for public download several documents containing awful grammar. Depending on the version and settings, the Word grammar checker sometimes detects a few of the problems. But it overlooks the majority of them -- skipping misplaced apostrophes, singular-plural inconsistencies, missing articles, sentence fragments, improper capitalization and other problems.

An excerpt from one of his documents: "Marketing are bad for brand big and small. You Know What I am Saying? It is no wondering that advertisings are bad for company in America, Chicago and Germany. ... McDonald's and Coca Cola are good brand. ... Gates do good marketing job in Microsoft."

With examples like that passing through unflagged, Krishnamurthy questions whether Microsoft should even offer the grammar-checking feature in its existing state.
Devising computer algorithms to check grammar is what's termed a "hard problem." The article notes that Corel's grammar checker is better than the one in Word, and they quote various people as saying that the Word grammar checker could be better. Quite likely true.

But I'll repeat my own view, the basis of which I think is neatly captured by this quote from the article:
[L]ast year, one student turned in a badly written report.

"The least you could have done is run spell-check and grammar-check," Krishnamurthy said.

"But I did!" the student said.
My view being that:
Grammar checkers are an aid, not a fix.
No one should ever let a machine override human judgement in matters of language.
[more]

Task	Command	Key mapping
Display Find/Replace dialog box	`EditFind`	Ctrl+F
Find next revision or comment	`NextChangeOrComment`	Ctrl+Shift+F
Accept current change	`AcceptChangesSelected`	Ctrl+Shift+A
Reject current change	`RejectChangesSelected`	Ctrl+Shift+R