Please Fill Out This Form, Part 3

This article is the third in a series of articles on automating forms. If you've been following along, you now know how to build a basic form template with Form Fields and use VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) code to help move users through a form efficiently. If not, go back and check the November/December 2000 and March/April 2001 issues of Computor Companion for these first two lessons so you can catch up. (You can find them at www.computorcompanion.com.)

In this article, I show you how to create a form that uses message boxes to inform users and input boxes to request specific information. Then with that information, the form fills out the information for the user, without making the user tab through fields.

1  Use the skills you learned in the previous two articles to build a simple form like the one below. Be sure your form has form fields for Text and Yes/No checkboxes. Make it simple, since you'll be concentrating more on the VBA code now, rather than worrying about the form details. Be sure to double-click each field to change the default bookmark names to realistic names that are easier to remember.
2  Now click Tools|Macro|Macros to enter the Visual Basic Editor (VBE). Name the macro AutoNew and make sure you've clicked the Macro in drop-down box and selected your template. Then click Create and the VBE opens.
3  Because this macro is called AutoNew, it automatically runs when the user creates a new document. Type the code at right into your macro window exactly as I've written it. Note that the MsgBox code wraps, but in your code, do not hit the Enter key until the closing parentheses. The macro says: set a variable called vAnswer to hold the user's yes or no answer. The If…Then statement asks what the value of the vAnswer variable is and then does something for each value. If the user clicks Yes the MsgBox function returns 6 in vAnswer, and the macro runs another macro called mUserName. Otherwise (the user didn't choose Yes), the macro Exits and stops all further automation. Note that in Visual Basic, 6 is the MsgBox Yes value and 7 is the No value.	Sub AutoNew() add any optional macro comments here, if you want vAnswer = MsgBox(Prompt:="This form will now run automatically to acquire information and fill in the form. Do you want to continue?", Buttons:=vbYesNo) If vAnswer = 6 Then mUserName Else Exit Sub End If End Sub
4   If you ran this macro now, you'd get an error because you haven't written the mUserName macro yet. So after the End Sub line in your current macro, press Enter. Now type Sub mUserName() and press enter. Wow! A new macro starts for you. Now add a comment. Press Enter and type `an input box to get user name to put into form. (You include the single quote to designate comments.) Now type the code at right: This macro says: create a variable called vUserName to hold the results of whatever the user types into the InputBox function. Then make the FormField named bkUserName equal to the results of that variable.	vUserName = InputBox(Prompt:="Pls enter your name and click ok.") ActiveDocument.FormFields("bkUserName").Result = vUserName
5  If you did everything right, when you click File|New to create a new document from this template, the first message should pop up. If you say yes, you get the InputBox. Whatever you type into the InputBox is then put into the Name field. NOTE: Be sure your bookmark names match the code and remember to click Tools|Protect Document to lock your template for Forms! Now give it a shot. Close the VBE. Lock and save your template. Click File|New and choose your template…and cross your fingers! Hopefully, you didn't have any typos in your code so you didn't receive any errors. If you did, just click the Debug option to see which line has the problem. Fix the typo then stop the debugger by clicking the square Stop button above the code window and give it another shot.
6  Now try writing code on your own! Try setting the Checkbox result. Be sure you have checkbox fields on your form for both Yes and No. Label the bookmarks ckYes and ckNo. Then create a new macro in your code windows by hitting Enter after the last macro, type Sub mYesNo(), and press Enter. In the code, set a vYesNoAnswer variable equal to the equivalent of the answer to the message box MsgBox(Prompt:="Does user need private modem jack?", Buttons:=vbYesNo). Then write an If…Then statement that deciphers your answers and sets the appropriate checkbox value. It should read: If vYesNoAnswer = 6 Then ActiveDocument.FormField("ckYes").Checkbox.Value _ = True Else ActiveDocument.FormField("ckNo").Checkbox.Value _ = True End If Use the syntax (exact layout and statement format) from your previous code to see if you can pull the rest of this off yourself with the above information. Important Note: Remember you'll also have to add the mYesNo macro call to the end of your previous mUserName macro (before the End Sub) so that macro will call the next macro to run. Otherwise, how will it know to run? One of the best ways to learn how to write code is to be given a project and then wrestle it out on your own. Remember to hit the F1 key for VBA help! If you can't make it work, feel free to e-mail me at dian@mousetrax.com and I'll help you solve it. Good luck!

For more information on forms, be sure to check out all of Dian's articles
at this link http://www.mousetrax.com/techpage.html#autoforms.

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