Hey, Scripting Guy! I’ve seen Word documents where the file name appears in the footer. Except that this file name is dynamic: if the name of the document changes then the footer changes, too. How can I add that kind of a footer using a script?

— ZK

Hey, ZK. You know, it’s always tough to come back to work after being gone for a week; there’s just so many things to catch up on. For example, we haven’t had the chance yet to mention the fact that, in a study of the 25 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S., Seattle drivers ranked 23^rd out of 25 when it came to the rudest drivers. (In other words, we have very polite drivers here. The rudest drivers of all? Those from Miami.)

The Scripting Guy who writes this column finds this interesting, in part because none of his Scripting Siblings ever come over to the Seattle area to visit him. Why not? “No way am I driving with all those crazy Seattle drivers!” Except, as it turns out, Seattle drivers aren’t crazy drivers after all.

Hmmm; wonder why they really don’t ever come over to visit him?

So if Seattle-area drivers are nice does that mean that Seattle-area Scripting Guys are nice, too? And does that also mean that they’d be happy to answer a question about adding a dynamic file name to the footer of a Word document? Heck no. But they’ll answer the question anyway:

Const wdFieldFileName = 29

Set objWord = CreateObject(“Word.Application”)
objWord.Visible = True
Set objDoc = objWord.Documents.Add()
Set objRange = objDoc.Sections(1).Footers(1).Range
Set objField = objDoc.Fields.Add(objRange, wdFieldFileName)
objDoc.SaveAs “C:\Scripts\Test.doc”

OK. This script starts out by defining a constant named wdFieldFileName and setting the value to 29. As it turns out, Word includes a number of built-in “fields” that can display information such as file name, user name, author name, last-saved date, last-printed date, etc. The field that displays the file name has a value of 29; hence we assign our constant the value 29.

After defining the constant we next create an instance of the Word.Application object and set the Visible property to True; that gives us a running instance of Word that we can see onscreen. We then use this line of code to add a new, blank document to our instance of Word:

Set objDoc = objWord.Documents.Add()

Now that we have a document we need to insert the field for the file name in the footer. To do that, we first create a Range object that encompasses the first footer in the first section of the document (which, for a brand-new document, will also be the only footer in the document):

Set objRange = objDoc.Sections(1).Footers(1).Range

And then we’re ready to insert the field:

Set objField = objDoc.Fields.Add(objRange, wdFieldFileName)

That’s right: just one line of code. We reference the Fields collection and then call the Add method. This method requires two parameters: the spot in the document where we want to insert the field (objRange, the object reference to the footer) and the value of the field to be inserted. This, of course, is where we use our constant wdFieldFileName.

Of course, having a footer that displays the file name is somewhat meaningless if you don’t actually have a file name. Therefore, we added this line of code to save the file as C:\Scripts\Test.doc:

objDoc.SaveAs “C:\Scripts\Test.doc”

And that, as they say, is all, folks.

You know, it’s funny: usually when we mention a news item in this column we do so only so we can poke fun at that item. In this case, though, we happen to agree with the news: Seattle drivers are pretty polite. But, then again, it’s hard to be a rude and aggressive driver when you’re gridlocked over 8 lanes of traffic, none of which ever seem to move. You can still be rude and aggressive, mind you, but it’s awfully hard to call you a driver when you aren’t actually going anywhere.