Development

Developing templates and tools in Microsoft Word, whether you're using VBA, .NET or another language to access the Word object model

For developers

Design Mode in Word 2007 and Word 2010: How to detect it and turn it on and off

Word 2007 and Word 2010 have a 'Design mode' button for editing content controls. .FormsDesign and .ToggleFormsDesign detect or toggle Design mode.

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.

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.

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 VBA resources

A list of tools, add-ins, websites and books for Word developers. Most apply whether you are using VBA, .NET or other languages to access the Word object model.

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.

For graphic designers

Creating images to customize the Ribbon in Word 2007 and Word 2010

For graphic designers: what kind of image is required for use as a custom image when customizing the Ribbon in Microsoft Word 2007 and Word 2010?