In Word 2003 -- setting a table heading to repeat?

[Walipala]

... that is, to repeat on following pages.

Does anyone have the VBA statement for setting this property to "true" for the selected heading/row? Thanks.

 

[macropod]

Hi Walipala,

You could use something based on:
Selection.Rows.HeadingFormat = True

Hint: when you don't know the vba code for something, try the macro recorder.

Cheers

[MS MVP - Word]

 

[Walipala]

Thanks. I knew it had to be something incredibly simple.

BTW, my first attempt to do this was by recording the steps in a macro using the drop-down menu, but that only seems to toggle the property:

Selection.Rows.HeadingFormat = wdToggle

...which isn't satisfactory since some of my tables already have this property set to true, so toggling it messes them up.

 

[fumei]

Here is a general suggestion. When you use the macro recorder, while it very handy to see what sort of code comes up, it is also VERY handy as a starting point for using F1 - Help.

When you got the Selection.Rows.HeadingFormat = wdToggle, if you had put the cursor on HeadingFormat and pressed F1 you would have seen that HeadingFormat has True or False.

As a further hint, whenever you see wdToggle in recorded code, this usually means that you are NOT seeing the actual value. wdToggle does just that. It flips the actual value of the property. It indicates that the property has a True/False value.

For example, here is some recorded code:

Selection.Font.Bold = wdToggle
Selection.Font.Bold = wdToggle

Is the font Bold, or not?

There is NO way to know, from this code. All you can know is it was flipped one way (whatever that was), then flipped backed.

When you see wdToggle in a recorded macro, this means the property can be True, or False.

HOWEVER, be careful.

You can ONLY manually action, using the menu (Table > Heading Row Repeat), on the first row of a table. Row 1. If the selection is on another row (or the selection does not include Row 1) , Heading row repeat is greyed out.

This is NOT the case using VBA. If the Selection is in Row 3, and you execute:

Selection.Rows.HeadingFormat = True

then if the table expands onto the next page, the THIRD row of the table exposed on the page will repeat. It will not be a "header row".

VBA allows ANY row (or selected rows) to be repeated.

As real-world situations would rarely (if ever) call for this, I am not sure whether to call this a bug, or a "feature". I am inclined to think the former.

When I am using code to make a table header row repeat, I either error trap (checking to see if the Selection Range includes Row 1), OR avoid using Selection (better anyways) and explicitly use Row 1.

Gerry
My paintings and sculpture

 

[Walipala]

Thanks Gerry. Assigning 'headingness' to the wrong row isn't an issue in my case. My macro actually looks for the next occurance of a "tableheading" style, which only exists in the first row of each table anyway. It then does its thing and then jumps down a row.

It's become apparent to me that these tables (in the docs I have been given) didn't know their first row was a heading. In fact the documents themselves were written by someone who doesn't know about styles, so 90% of the text was some variation on Normal style. I had to go in after the fact and assign an explicit table-heading style to the text in first row of each table.

 

[fumei]

Woohoo! Love it. That is the way to do it. It is not often I read posts that understand styles properly.

Gerry
My paintings and sculpture

 

[Walipala]

Thanks. I'm a tech writer---with still a lot to learn---working with a bunch of engineers. They may know Linux inside and out, but MS Word is Greek. To them a template is just a generalized Word document that keeps getting saved-as on and on.

By the way, speaking of Word this particular problem of mine came about because of the misleadingly simple wording in drop-down menu selection. Because it says "Heading Rows Repeat", I assumed that table headings have an option to repeat or not. (Pardon my ignorance.) It would have been more accurate to say something like "Make these rows into a heading (which will therefore repeat)". As it is I went looking for a 'heading.repeat=True' type of solution.

 

[fumei]

Gerry
My paintings and sculpture