Microsoft Office Automation with Visual FoxPro

Transcription

1

2 Microsoft Office Automation with Visual FoxPro Tamar E. Granor Della Martin Hentzenwerke Publishing

3 Published by: Hentzenwerke Publishing 980 East Circle Drive Whitefish Bay WI USA Hentzenwerke Publishing books are available through booksellers and directly from the publisher. Contact Hentzenwerke Publishing at: (fax) Microsoft Office Automation with Visual FoxPro By Tamar E. Granor and Della Martin Technical Editor: Ted Roche Copy Editor: Farion Grove Copyright 2000 by Tamar E. Granor and Della Martin All other products and services identified throughout this book are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. They are used throughout this book in editorial fashion only and for the benefit of such companies. No such uses, or the use of any trade name, is intended to convey endorsement or other affiliation with this book. All rights reserved. No part of this book, or the ebook files available by download from Hentzenwerke Publishing, may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except that program listings and sample code files may be entered, stored and executed in a computer system. The information and material contained in this book are provided as is, without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including without limitation any warranty concerning the accuracy, adequacy, or completeness of such information or material or the results to be obtained from using such information or material. Neither Hentzenwerke Publishing nor the authors or editors shall be responsible for any claims attributable to errors, omissions, or other inaccuracies in the information or material contained in this book. In no event shall Hentzenwerke Publishing or the authors or editors be liable for direct, indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages arising out of the use of such information or material. ISBN: Manufactured in the United States of America.

4 This is dedicated to the ones we love.

5

6 v Our Contract with You, The Reader In which we, the folks that make up Hentzenwerke Publishing, describe what you, the reader, can expect from this book and from us. Hi there! I ve been writing professionally (in other words, eventually getting a paycheck for my scribbles) since 1974, and writing about software development since As an author, I ve worked with a half-dozen different publishers, and corresponded with thousands of readers over the years. As a software developer and all-around geek, I ve also acquired a library of more than 100 computer and software-related books. Thus, when I donned the publisher s cap four years ago to produce the 1997 Developer s Guide, I had some pretty good ideas of what I liked (and didn t like) from publishers, what readers liked and didn t like, and what I, as a reader, liked and didn t like. Now, with our new titles for the spring and summer of 2000, we re entering our third season. (For those keeping track, the 97 DevGuide was our first, albeit abbreviated, season, and the batch of six Essentials for Visual FoxPro 6.0 in 1999 was our second.) John Wooden, the famed UCLA basketball coach, had posited that teams aren t consistent they re always getting better or worse. We d like to get better One of my goals for this season is to build a closer relationship with you, the reader. In order to do this, you ve got to know what you should expect from us. You have the right to expect that your order will be processed quickly and correctly, and that your book will be delivered to you in new condition. You have the right to expect that the content of your book is technically accurate and up to date, that the explanations are clear, and that the layout is easy to read and follow without a lot of fluff or nonsense. You have the right to expect access to source code, errata, FAQs, and other information that s relevant to the book via our web site. You have the right to expect an electronic version of your printed book (in compiled HTML Help format) to be available via our web site. You have the right to expect that, if you report errors to us, your report will be responded to promptly, and that the appropriate notice will be included in the errata and/or FAQs for the book. Naturally, there are some limits that we bump up against. There are humans involved, and they make mistakes. A book of 500 pages contains, on average, 150,000 words and several megabytes of source code. It s not possible to edit and re-edit multiple times to catch every last

7 vi misspelling and typo, nor is it possible to test the source code on every permutation of development environment and operating system and still price the book affordably. Once printed, bindings break, ink gets smeared, signatures get missed during binding. On the delivery side, web sites go down, packages get lost in the mail. Nonetheless, we ll make our best effort to correct these problems once you let us know about them. And, thus, in return, when you have a question or run into a problem, we ask that you first consult the errata and/or FAQs for your book on our web site. If you don t find the answer there, please us at books@hentzenwerke.com with as much information and detail as possible, including (1) the steps to reproduce the problem, (2) what happened, and (3) what you expected to happen, together with (4) any other relevant information. I d like to stress that we need you to communicate questions and problems clearly. For example Your downloads don t work isn t enough information for us to help you. I get a 404 error when I click on the Download Source Code link on is something we can help you with. The code in chapter 14 caused an error again isn t enough information. I performed the following steps to run the source code program DisplayTest.PRG in chapter 14, and received an error that said Variable m.licounter not found is something we can help you with. We ll do our best to get back to you within a couple of days either with an answer, or at least an acknowledgment that we ve received your inquiry and that we re working on it. On behalf of the authors, technical editors, copy editors, layout artists, graphical artists, indexers, and all the other folks who have worked to put this book in your hands, I d like to thank you for purchasing this book, and hope that it will prove to be a valuable addition to your technical library. Please let us know what you think about this book we re looking forward to hearing from you. As Groucho Marx once observed, Outside of a dog, a book is a man s best friend. Inside of a dog, it s too dark to read. Whil Hentzen Hentzenwerke Publishing May, 2000

8 vii List of Chapters SECTION I Getting Started 5 Chapter 1: Introducing Automation 7 Chapter 2: The Office Servers 11 Chapter 3: Visual FoxPro as an Automation Client 29 SECTION II Automating Word 39 Chapter 4: Word Basics 41 Chapter 5: Intermediate Word 83 Chapter 6: Advanced Word 121 SECTION III Automating Excel 149 Chapter 7: Excel Basics 151 Chapter 8: Advanced Excel Features 189 Chapter 9: Excel s Graphing Engine 217 SECTION IV Automating PowerPoint 257 Chapter 10: PowerPoint Basics 259 Chapter 11: PowerPoint Advanced Features 297 SECTION V Automating Outlook 327 Chapter 12: Automating Outlook 329 SECTION VI Advanced Topics 349 Chapter 13: Inter-Office Communication 351 Chapter 14: Handling Automation Errors 369 Chapter 15: Wrapping Up the Servers 385

9 viii APPENDICES 417 Appendix A: On-line User Communities 419 Appendix B: ChartWizard Values 423

10 ix Table of Contents Our Contract with You, The Reader Acknowledgements About the Authors How to Download the Files v xvii xix xxi Introduction 1 SECTION I Getting Started 5 Chapter 1: Introducing Automation 7 If all you have is a hammer, does that make everything a nail? 7 A brief history of Automation 7 OLE or ActiveX or COM or what? 8 Putting Automation to work 8 Where do you go from here? 9 Chapter 2: The Office Servers 11 Exploring the Office servers 11 Read the fine manual (RTFM) 12 Let the server write the code 13 Take me for a browse 18 At your command 21 On-line and print resources 24 Taking up a collection 24 Changing the collection 25 Self-referential object models 25 Moving on 27 Chapter 3: Visual FoxPro as an Automation Client 29 Managing servers 29 Displaying the Office servers 30 Are we there yet? 32 Working with servers 32 SET OLEOBJECT 32 Use WITH ENDWITH 33 Use variables for object references 34 Loop with FOR EACH 34 Debugging 35

11 x Work in the Command Window 35 Collections and objects 35 It works, but it doesn t 35 Parameter problems 36 Unhelpful error messages 36 Use the Knowledge Base 36 Ask around 37 Time for code 37 SECTION II Automating Word 39 Chapter 4: Word Basics 41 Word s object model 41 Getting to Word 41 Managing documents 43 Accessing parts of a document 44 Manipulating text 46 Moving in a range or selection 47 Bookmarks 50 Formatting 50 Setting up pages 51 Setting fonts 53 Formatting paragraphs 57 Working with styles 59 Borders and shading 64 Headers and footers 69 Page numbering 70 Organizing text with lists 71 Output 77 Printing 77 Print preview 79 Putting it all together 79 Chapter 5: Intermediate Word 83 Document templates 83 What goes into a template? 84 Finding templates 84 Using templates 85 Creating templates 86 Putting templates to work 86 Tables 86 Irregular tables 93

12 xi Creating multi-column documents 95 Footnotes and endnotes 97 Adding graphics to documents 100 The two faces of graphics 101 Working with existing documents 106 Search and replace 106 Exploring document structure 110 Traversing a document with the collections 113 Automating macros 115 Putting it all together 115 Chapter 6: Advanced Word 121 Organizing a document using styles 121 Working with outlines 123 Creating a table of contents 126 Creating indexes 128 Deciding what to index 129 Marking items for the index 130 Generating the index 130 Formatting indexes 132 Merging documents with data 132 Word s mail merge structure 132 Substituting data with Find and Replace 133 Drop back 10 yards and punt 134 Putting it all together 142 SECTION III Automating Excel 149 Chapter 7: Excel Basics 151 The object model 151 Déjà vu 151 Getting a handle on the application 153 Managing workbooks and worksheets 153 Opening a new workbook 153 Opening an existing workbook 154 Saving the workbook 155 Working with worksheets 157 Rows, columns, cells, and ranges 159 Handling values and formulas 160 Adding, copying, and moving data (including formulas) 160 Fill er up 164 Formatting 165 Column widths and alignment 165

13 xii Fonts 168 Formatting values 169 Borders 173 Shading 174 Styles 176 Output 177 Page Setup 177 Print Preview 179 Printing 181 Saving the data in different formats 181 Putting it all together 182 Chapter 8: Advanced Excel Features 189 PivotTables 189 PivotTable data 190 Creating a PivotTable 192 What-if analysis using data tables 198 Goal Seek 202 Protection 203 Protecting a cell 204 Protecting a worksheet 204 Protecting a workbook 204 Templates 205 What goes into a template? 205 Finding templates 205 Using templates 206 Creating templates 206 Automating macros 206 Adding shapes 208 Adding pictures 211 Putting it all together 212 Chapter 9: Excel s Graphing Engine 217 The object model 217 Is it a chart or a sheet? 217 Setting up the data 218 Range names are your friend 220 Creating a graph 220 The ActiveChart property 222 Off to see the wizard 222 The anatomy of a chart 229 Formatting the components 230 The Chart object 231 Chart types 232

14 xiii Chart object properties available only to 3D charts 233 ChartArea 235 The Border object 235 The Interior object 236 The Font object 237 The PlotArea object 237 Data series 238 The Legend object 247 Axes 249 Titles 251 Putting it all together 251 SECTION IV Automating PowerPoint 257 Chapter 10: PowerPoint Basics 259 The PowerPoint object model 259 Déjà vu 260 Getting a handle on the application 261 Managing presentations and slides 263 Presenting: the Presentation object 263 Opening an existing presentation 264 Adding slides 265 Saving the presentation 267 Closing presentations 268 Closing the application object 268 Making it look good for the users 270 Working with slide contents 271 Using the slide layouts 271 Adding and formatting text 283 Making it presentable 290 Putting it all together 292 Chapter 11: PowerPoint Advanced Features 297 Achieving consistency with Master Slides 297 Backgrounds 297 Standardizing the appearance of text 303 Standardizing colors with ColorSchemes 306 More on SlideMaster shapes 307 Fancy features 307 Animations 308 Transitions 311 Taking action 311 Multimedia 313