Many Microsoft Word users and VBA programmers don't realize the extensive opportunities that exist when Word's Object Model is accessed using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), which replaced WordBasic in conjunction with the release of Word 97. By creating what is commonly called a "Word Macro" you can automate many features available in Word. Writing Word Macros (previously titled Learning Word Programming is the introduction to Word VBA that allows you to do these things and more, including:

• Create custom pop-up menus

• Automatically create tables from lists

• Append one document to the end (or beginning) of another

• Create a toggle switch to change a document from draft to final copy by adding or removing a watermark in the header

• Generate reports using data from other applications

• The Visual Basic Editor and the Word VBA programming environment. Word features a complete and very powerful integrated development environment for writing, running, testing, and debugging VBA macros.

• The VBA programming language (which is the same programming language used by Microsoft Excel, Access, and PowerPoint, as well as the retail editions of Visual Basic).

• The Word object model. Word exposes nearly all of its functionality through its object model, which allows Word to be controlled programmatically using VBA. While the Word object model, with almost 200 objects, is the largest among the Office applications, readers need be familiar with only a handful of objects. Writing Word Macros focuses on these essential objects, but includes a discussion of a great many more objects as well.

Not intended to be an encyclopedia of Word programming, Writing Word Macros provides Word users, as well as programmers who are not familiar with the Word object model with a solid introduction to writing VBA macros and programs. In particular, the book focuses on: Writing Word Macros is written in a terse, no-nonsense manner that is characteristic of Steven Roman's straightforward, practical approach. Instead of a slow-paced tutorial with a lot of hand-holding, Roman offers the essential information about Word VBA that you must master to program effectively. This tutorial is reinforced by interesting and useful examples that solve practical programming problems, like generating tables of a particular format, managing shortcut keys, creating fax cover sheets, and reformatting documents. Writing Word Macros is the book you need to dive into the basics of Word VBA programming, enabling you to increase your power and productivity when using Microsoft Word.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 21 Ratings

Probably the best book one can buy for learning VBA with Word - 2006-04-07
Reviewer Rating:
This is probably the best book one can buy for learning VBA and Word. That said, one should also note that it is a terrible book. The trouble is that there is no other book available that covers this subject.

I refer to this book all the time I am trying to program VBA, but most of the time the book is no more help than what I can get by using Microsoft help. I have wasted hundreds of hours (no exaggeration) trying to find out information that should be in this book but is not there. He makes a plug for you to send him money for his "enhanced object model browser" because the one in Word "gives only a flat one-dimensional view of the object model" whereas his is "two-dimensional". He nowhere explains what he means by those terms, and the illustrations he gives do not help one either.

Before buying this book you should first be a professional programmer who uses VBA already. Mr. Roman assumes you know many things that he will not explain. That might be OK if he would give more programming examples so that one could try to extract from the examples the steps that his book does not explain. On a more positive note, Mr. Roman likes to explain things that most persons who buy this book already know: the different kinds of variables, the importance of declaring variables before using them, and so forth.

It would have been better if in the draft stage he had had some neophyte try to work with what he had written so that he would know where he contradicts himself and where he leaves out material one has to know to make things work. A better solution would be for him to read John Walkenbach's "Excel ... Power Programming with VBA" and then try to imitate that for Word.

One wishes that someone else could write a book on VBA for Word. I hope Mr. Roman's students at CSU Fullerton have the opportunity to ask him questions to get him on the right track when he is unclear. Unfortunately his readers do not have that ability.

only book on Word programming you should consider - 2008-08-20
Reviewer Rating:
Many of the reviews here are very unfair to this book.

Overall, this is an excellent book. Steven Roman covers exactly what you need to know about Word programming. As the author states in his intro, this book does not do any handholding and it's not padded with extraneous junk. It gives you just the facts and enough information to get you started. This book is not for beginners - it's directed at someone who has a reasonable competency in programming. Not an advanced progarmmer; just a basic knowledge of VB and an idea of how to work with Objects.

Note he often does not give big sections of code which you can just slightly modify to get it to do what you want. He gives short illustrations that any programmer would know how to integrate into existing code.

The first 9 chapters are virtually the same as the first 9 chapters of another one of his books, Writing Excel Macros with VBA. This is provided to get non-programmers up to speed before the real meat of the book, which starts on page 128.

Rating based type of VBA programmer - 2009-08-20
Reviewer Rating:
I don't speak for IT professionals nor for complete beginners in VBA programming. I speak as a regular engineer who is just beginning to go underneath the surface of MS Word, but has written some very complex applications using VBA in both Access and Excel - useful enough to have attracted favorable attention from specialists in divisions across the country of the large corporation I work for. However, when I learned what I know of VBA, I skipped the important step of learning the vocabulary of the VBA Integrated Development Environment (IDE)- a term I began to understand on page xv of the preface. As a result of my early carelessness, I often struggle with the internet discussions of a problem I'm researching - I even struggle with the explanations provided by Microsoft itself which assume you've learned the terminology. That's why I, personally, found the first few chapters of the book particularly useful

Several people have complained about those first chapters where Mr. Roman is not talking about how to actually program Word using VBA, but rather introducing the tools that will make your job easier when he does begin discussing the VBA programming language (for example: what windows are available when you enter the Word VBA environment, and what useful information do they contain?). For these chapters alone, I would have bought the book; and for these chapters, I will keep the book nearby no matter what Microsoft application I'm writing VBA code for.

Another complaint offered by some is the many lists Mr. Roman offers of built-in function statements (134 of them - pp 85 and 86); VBA statements (92 of them - p.86); msgbox button argument values (16 of them - p.87); collection objects (25 of them - pp 112-113); global objects...; Word-specific objects...; enums...; properties...; and methods...

I am delighted that he has taken the trouble to put these lists into a single reference book. I wish they had all been gathered together into one or several contiguous Appendices, but here's why I'm glad that, at least, they're included.

I often want to do something, but don't know the right keywords to construct the code. If I scan down the appropriate list it often jogs my memory of forgotten statements, objects, methods, etc., or provides new ones (to me) whose names indicate they may be useful.

But there is much more to this book than simple lists; the structure of the VBA language is explained; the text is peppered with helpful suggestions and details about how to implement them (use keyboard shortcuts; use modular programming, comment liberally in your code, etc.). The major techniques for achieving results with VBA programming ARE covered - this book is NOT just a compendium of lists.

Personally speaking, I didn't find any particular need to compare VBA with FORTRAN, COBOL, C++, etc. I especially don't care to see even the simple coding examples he provides in each of those languages to illustrate the differences (at least such comparisons are isolated to one or two parts of the book). Maybe someone would find this useful, I found it mildly annoying. However, not annoying enough to reduce my overall rating of the book by even a fraction of a star.

Old wine a new bottle - 2009-06-10
Reviewer Rating:
Having gone through Roman's Word Programming book, I thought I'd get his Word Macros and see if it took things further. They are both the same book, even if the Macros volume does claim it has "minor updates for Word 2000 compliance." The minor updates appear confined to a new copyright page, a new cover, and a new title.

This book is valuable - 2008-05-02
Reviewer Rating:
I have noticed that certain number of commentators did not give this book high mark. I wonder why?

First of all let me introduce myself. I have been electronic engineer, system engineer and a programmer for the last 20 years. I follow this MS Word thing from about its first versions up to now. You do not want to hear how many languages I have or I have had in my pocket. My first steps in Visual Basic for Applications has been so old that I do not remember when exactly I have been involved in the matter. Most of my knowledge of VBA and with lots of other fields started with no books at all.

The author Mr. Roman says very clearly that Word macros scheme is so large that his intention is not to cover all, or even most of these objects, but to acquaint the audience with the major portions of it in order to EASE LEARNING. I also would like to point out that the editor's note on Amazon also brilliantly says: "Not intended to be an encyclopedia of Word programming". And finally who would expect that some topic with more than 3,000 properties and methods could be just put in a book with less then 400 pages altogether?

From these reasons I consider the book is properly advertised and the marks given to the book should only judge about what the book promise and what it delivers. And it delivers a lot.

What I personally needed was a book on Word objects and here it is. Longer than decade I needed a book on Word macros, and this author seems to be the only one who dares to go for adventure of giving an insight into this topic. I think he did the most he could; otherwise he would need 5 years more to write the encyclopedia, and we should not like that, should we?

For this discussion it is important that generally the Microsoft company has made a very hard life to programmers, with version inconsistency, with peculiar solutions, abandoning standardizations and trying to enforce just private rules, with monopoly and with a lot of other problems that I do not want to enumerate in this letter. In spite of that, this author did the best job of bringing the controversial Word macros topic much closer to the broad public that he deserves applause. For that I give him 4 stars.

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