Please Fill Out This Form, Part 4

This article is the fourth in a series on creating Auto Forms in Word. In the first article (November/December 2000), I showed you how to create a form that lets users enter information into fields. Lesson two (March/April 2001) ventured into the VBE (Visual Basic Editor). I showed you how to write a little code to direct your form users to specific questions. Part 3 (May/June 2001) showed you how to create message boxes to provide or request information which then could be retrieved and used to modify a document.

This article concentrates on creating custom dialog boxes. Although, MsgBox and InputBox are useful tools, having them popping up all over the place gets annoying. With a custom dialog box, you can ask more specific questions with fewer boxes. You can then take that information and populate areas of a form and add more obscure information which the user may not know, such as personnel, accounting, or product codes. This way, the user only has to make simple choices, such as requesting copy paper. The form then can automatically add in specific requisition numbers, which make the form more useful.

1  Design your form When you're going to get involved in more complex form development, you need to make sure you take time to think about your form design. Talk to those people who will use the form. In this expenditure form, I need to include the manager and department codes, for example.
2  Secure Information In previous forms, you had to protect the template in order to activate the form fields. However, this time I don't want the user to be able to modify certain information, such as department codes. I still use form fields for personal information, but I also use a single bookmark as a place holder for department information. This way, I know where to put the information, but it's locked into the form's boilerplate text so users can't alter it. To slip the text into the boilerplate, I do need to unlock the form and then immediately relock it. This protection toggle procedure deciphers whether the form is locked or not. I then use this procedure to open the form, add the information and relock the form. You can see I've SET an object reference to the ActiveDocument (just because I'm too lazy to keep typing ActiveDocument). Then I ask if the Doc is protected or not and toggle the settings. I also added the NoReset argument so my form fields won't be blanked out, as they would be if you set Protection on a form manually. If you have sections or passwords in your form, you'd need to handle these arguments as well. How do you know what to add? Use VBA Help (press the F1 key while you are in the VBE).
3  Create Custom User Forms When you click Insert|UserForm in the VBE, a blank UserForm appears. A UserForm is actually a dialog box you build yourself. Each UserForm has Properties you set to design how it looks. When you click the form, a Toolbox that holds your Controls appears. You use these ActiveX Controls to build your custom form. Just click and drag them onto the form. You click the controls to see their properties and customize their appearance. Each control has a default name which you can change (just like the bookmark names you set with Form Fields).
4  Make your form work In VBA, the code runs when an event occurs. I double-clicked the OK control on my UserForm and entered the code below into the Click Event procedure for the button. It tells the form that when the user clicks the OK button on this form, set variables to capture the text typed into the text boxes, then set the results of form fields using the appropriate bookmark name, with the information held in each variable. Where I only use a bookmark, not a form field, I have to call the protect toggle procedure (pToggleProtectDoc) to open the form before the bookmark text is entered. To get this UserForm to appear when you open the document, you can write a simple AutoNew macro that calls the form with UserForm1.Show. You should also write code under the Cancel button Click Event, which hides the form and protects the document against modification.
5  Make design choices This form asks the user to click the name of his/her department. I used Option Buttons, so the user can only make one choice. If this form were asking a question that allowed multiple choices, I would have used the CheckBox control instead. Or I could have saved room on the form by populating a ListBox control with the department choices. Some controls are easier to use than others, so your design choices may be limited by your skill until you learn more.
6  Make Programming Choices The code below runs when the user clicks the OK button. Normally, you would write a more efficient Case Statement to capture answers from multiple choices. A Case Statement would look at the one answer and do something for whatever Case matches the answer. Since you're more familiar now with If…Then statements, the code I used goes through the value of each option control and asks if it's value is True (selected). Then it not only sets that department's name on the form, but also adds the appropriate Unit Manager's name and department code for accounting purposes. Afterwards, the form is reprotected, unloaded and the next form is called.

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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