Setting range in Word with VBA in Excel

Question

How do I set a range in Word while opening that file with VBA in Excel?

Dim wordApp As Word.Application
Dim wordObject As Word.Document
Dim wordRange As Word.Range

Dim filePath As String
Dim fileName As String

filePath = "C:\Users\"
fileName = "somename.docx"

Set wordApp = CreateObject("Word.Application")

With wordApp
    .Visible = True
    .Activate
    .WindowState = wdWindowStateNormal
End With

Set wordObject = wordApp.Documents.Open(filePath & fileName)

Set wordRange = Documents(fileName).Sections(1).Range

With wordRange
    'code
End With

The line causing trouble:

Set wordRange = Documents(fileName).Sections(1).Range

Regardless of the string I put in this returns

4160 runtime error "Bad File Name"

If I use ActiveDocument instead of Documents() , I get

4248 runtime error: "This command is not available because no document is open".

The error persists even after opening multiple unsaved and saved Word docs whilst running the code, only to have the same error message show up.

Answer 1

Set wordRange = Documents(fileName).Sections(1).Range errors because Excel doesn't know what Documents is (or it resolves it to something other than Word.Documents )

To fix that, you'd use (just as you did in the previous line)

Set wordRange = wordApp.Documents(fileName).Sections(1).Range

That said, you've already Set the Document(filepath & filename) to wordObject , so use it:

Set wordRange = wordObject.Sections(1).Range

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Also, Excel doesn't know wdWindowStateNormal , so a new Variant variable is created (unless you have Option Explicit , which you should, always ) and assigned the default value 0 . Which just happens to be the value of Word.wdWindowStateNormal so no harm done, but the code is misleading.

To fix, use

.WindowState = 0 'wdWindowStateNormal

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I'm curious about the way you've created the object. Using early binding but instead of creating New Word.Application you use CreateObject

• Was this an intentional decision?
• What is the benefit?