Updating a Field in a Text Box (Microsoft Word)

Posted on: 2020年11月12日 2020年11月12日

Jay has a situation where he has a document property field inserted in a text box in a document. Using Ctrl+A and then pressing F9 should update all the property document fields in the document, but this one field is not updated by Jay?s action. The process to update fields in headers and footers also does not update the field inside the text box.

Jay is wondering if there is a way he can manually update the field using the keyboard or if there is a way to update it using a macro.

Fields can be placed in lots of document elements. They can be, for instance, in the main document text, in text boxes, in headers or footers, in AutoShapes, or in special tables. While pressing Ctrl+A will select all of your document, pressing F9 won?t update the fields in all of the document elements. Instead, you need to use a macro to do the updating.

If you simply want a macro to update the fields in any of your text boxes, this is easy enough to do. The following macro steps through each of the shapes in your document (this includes text boxes and AutoShapes)

and, if the shape contains text, update any fields it contains.

Sub UpdateTBFields()

Dim shp As Shape

For Each shp In ActiveDocument.Shapes         With shp.TextFrame             If .HasText Then                 .TextRange.Fields.Update             End If         End With     Next End Sub

This macro could be assigned to a keyboard shortcut so that you could easily update the fields with the touch of the shortcut. Of course, you might want to develop a more encompassing macro that updates all the fields, wherever they may be. (Remember?fields can be in any number of document elements.) In that case, consider the following more-encompassing version of the macro.

Public Sub UpdateAllFields()

Dim doc As Document     Dim wnd As Window     Dim lngMain As Long     Dim lngSplit As Long     Dim lngActPane As Long     Dim rngStory As Range     Dim TOC As TableOfContents     Dim TOA As TableOfAuthorities     Dim TOF As TableOfFigures     Dim shp As Shape

' Set Objects     Set doc = ActiveDocument     Set wnd = ActiveDocument.ActiveWindow

' get Active Pane Number     lngActPane = wnd.ActivePane.Index

' Hold View Type of Main pane     lngMain = wnd.Panes(1).View.Type

' Hold SplitSpecial     lngSplit = wnd.View.SplitSpecial

' Get Rid of any split     wnd.View.SplitSpecial = wdPaneNone

' Set View to Normal     wnd.View.Type = wdNormalView

' Loop through each story in doc to update     For Each rngStory In doc.StoryRanges         If rngStory.StoryType = wdCommentsStory Then             Application.DisplayAlerts = wdAlertsNone             ' Update fields             rngStory.Fields.Update             Application.DisplayAlerts = wdAlertsAll         Else             ' Update fields             rngStory.Fields.Update         End If     Next

'Loop through text boxes and update     For Each shp In doc.Shapes         With shp.TextFrame             If .HasText Then                 shp.TextFrame.TextRange.Fields.Update             End If         End With     Next

' Loop through TOC and update     For Each TOC In doc.TablesOfContents         TOC.Update     Next

' Loop through TOA and update     For Each TOA In doc.TablesOfAuthorities         TOA.Update     Next

' Loop through TOF and update     For Each TOF In doc.TablesOfFigures         TOF.Update     Next

' Return Split to original state     wnd.View.SplitSpecial = lngSplit

' Return main pane to original state     wnd.Panes(1).View.Type = lngMain

' Active proper pane     wnd.Panes(lngActPane).Activate

' Close and release all pointers     Set wnd = Nothing     Set doc = Nothing End Sub

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(Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (3879) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here:

Updating a Field in a Text Box.