New articles

Borders in table styles

What borders are available for table styles, how to control them, and how to avoid the bugs and inconsistencies in the Word object model.

Error 5848 “The style definition is empty”, or, why are there two Normal styles in my document?

Reading Conditions of a Word table style (for developers)

How to hide table styles on the Table Tools Design tab in Word (for developers)

How to create a ribbon button to show the ‘More Windows’ dialog in Word

How to create a ribbon button to show the Signatures pane in Word

The FileViewDigitalSignatures command in Word is broken. But you can work around this by creating a custom button on the ribbon to display the Signatures task pane directly.

5 Curiosities about Placeholders in Word Content Controls (for developers)

Selecting or referring to a page in the Word object model

It's common to feel that you need to cycle through all the pages in a Word document and perform some processing on each page. This article discusses why it's not possible for developers to refer to a printed page using the Word object model, and some workarounds.

Word.Application.Options.LabelSmartTags doesn’t work in Word 2010. But there is a workaround.

In Word 2010, Smart Tags are re-named as Actions, and are deprecated. The user can still turn on the recognition of Actions but we can no longer read or write the corresponding option in the object model. This article proposeds a workaround.

How to detect whether a Word COM Add-in is connected and, if not, load it

Word's object model provides a COMAddIns collection of COMAddIn objects. In theory, the .Connect property of a COMAddIn object should tell you whether the add-in is connected and/or allow you to load it. In practice, not so.

Change the colour or remove the underline from hyperlinks in Microsoft Word

How to format hyperlinks in a Microsoft Word document to remove the underline, or change the colour (or the color!).

Hyperlinks: different colours for text and underline in Microsoft Word

When you create a hyperlink in Microsoft Word, you can't have different colours for text and underline. It's a bug. Here's one (poor) workaround.

Front cover images in Microsoft Word report templates

In a Microsoft Word template for a business report we often need a front cover with a big image and text overlaying the image. How to do it and traps to avoid.

Specifying cover images for Microsoft Word templates

For graphic designers: about the best size and format to supply front and back cover images to be used in a Word template.

Word 2007 and Word 2010: Ribbon tutorial

Get to know the new Ribbon in Microsoft Word 2007 and Word 2010. Info on how it works, what's new, and what to look out for.