How to avoid find.execute moving focus and restore exact view after search

diracsbracket · #1 10-30-2016, 12:31 AM

Hi,
I have a sub that inserts a hyperlink to the heading matching the selected text in MS Word 2013.
The header's range is found using:

HTML Code:

Selection.Find.Execute

Before doing that, I save the current range (i.e. that of the selected text) in order to restore it after the search has found the heading's range.

Although the range is restored correctly (and I'm back at the selected text), usually the view of the page is shifted, as if it was scrolled up or down a bit.

Since these shifts are sometimes large, I find them annoying enough to want to avoid this.

Is that possible?
I tried this by saving/restoring various built-in MS Word bookmark ranges, for example:

HTML Code:

ActiveDocument.Bookmarks("\page").Range

But this still causes shifts....

The thing is that the find.execute moves the focus to the heading found. Is there a way to disable this focus change?

Thanks!

gmayor · #2 10-30-2016, 01:46 AM

This is one of the issues of using Selection as opposed to Ranges. For a selection to be a selection you have to actually select it and that causes things to move around.

Assuming your heading texts are unique, the following macro will locate the heading text of the heading before the selected text, bookmark it with a name that reflects its content and apply a hyperlink to the selected text to that heading bookmark, without moving anything:

Code:

Sub Macro1()
'Graham Mayor - http://www.gmayor.com - 30/10/2016 
Dim oHeading As Range
Dim oRng As Range
Dim strHeading As String
    Set oRng = Selection.Range
    Set oHeading = ActiveDocument.Range

    oHeading.End = oRng.Start
    With oHeading.Find
        .Style = "Heading 2" 'The style of the heading text
        Do While .Execute(Forward:=False)
            oHeading.End = oHeading.End - 1
            strHeading = oHeading.Text
            strHeading = Replace(strHeading, Chr(32), Chr(95))
            strHeading = "bm" & strHeading
            oHeading.Bookmarks.Add strHeading
            Exit Do
        Loop
    End With
    ActiveDocument.Hyperlinks.Add _
            Anchor:=oRng, _
            Address:="", _
            SubAddress:=strHeading, _
            ScreenTip:="", _
            TextToDisplay:=oRng.Text
lbl_Exit:
    Set oRng = Nothing
    Set oHeading = Nothing
    Exit Sub
End Sub

The problems will start if that bookmark name clashes with a bookmark in your document, so it might be better to start by bookmarking all your headings with unique bookmark names and instead of deriving a bookmark name as above you use the name already associated with the heading in question.

macropod · #3 10-30-2016, 03:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by diracsbracket

Hi,
I have a sub that inserts a hyperlink to the heading matching the selected text in MS Word 2013.
The header's range is found using:

HTML Code:

Selection.Find.Execute

Therein lies your problem. There should be no need to select anything to add a hyperlink to a heading.

diracsbracket · #4 10-30-2016, 03:17 AM

Graham, Paul,
Thanks for reacting!

I knew that I should have used ranges, but before I wrote my message I was using this:

HTML Code:

With Selection.Find
    .ClearFormatting
    .MatchWholeWord = True
    .MatchCase = False
    .ClearHitHighlight
    .ClearAllFuzzyOptions
    .Wrap = wdFindContinue ' needed because we don't start from first page
    .Style = "Heading " & CStr(level)
    
    Do While .Execute(FindText:=formStr)
        If Selection.Paragraphs(1).Range.ListFormat.ListString = headingNumber Then
            Set myRange = Selection.Paragraphs(1).Range.Duplicate
            headingFound = True
            Exit Do
        End If
        
        DoEvents
     Loop
End With

This works, but as expected, using selection instead of ranges, the page usually ends up somewhat shifted,
after restoring the original range of the selected text.

I tried using a range instead, but then the following didn't work as desired:

HTML Code:

myRange.Paragraphs(1).Range.ListFormat.ListString

That was until I realized (thanks to you) that I should use .Parent when using ranges:

HTML Code:

.Parent.Paragraphs(1).Range

So the following works now, without the page shifting:

HTML Code:

With ActiveDocument.Range.Find
    .ClearFormatting
    .MatchWholeWord = True
    .MatchCase = False
    .ClearHitHighlight
    .ClearAllFuzzyOptions
    .Wrap = wdFindContinue ' needed because we don't start from first page
    .Style = "Heading " & CStr(level)
    
    Do While .Execute(FindText:=formStr)
        Set myRange = .Parent.Paragraphs(1).Range
        
        If myRange.ListFormat.ListString = headingNumber Then
            headingFound = True
            Exit Do
        End If
        
        DoEvents
     Loop
End With

In the above, I use the heading level and heading number which were extracted from the string obtained
from the following string array:

HTML Code:

.GetCrossReferenceItems(wdRefTypeHeading)

This list provides the full header, inclusive the heading number, as single strings per header.

I search this list for all headings with text that contain my highlighted text, and created a Form that pops up when there is more than 1 match.

If there is only 1 header with the exact same text as my selection, then it is automatically selected (no Form shows), and I perform the heading search for the bookmark insertion using that heading number as reference instead of using the header text.

Both methods above work, but although it doesn't move the page, the 2nd method with the range is very slightly but noticeably slower than the selection method (I have a large document of about 700 pages here).

Thanks again for forcing me to think again about using ranges!

p.s. I do the bookmark creation an hyperlink insertion after that. If an existing bookmark exists, I first check its range, to see if it corresponds to that of the header just found. If a bookmark exists, but has different range, then I create a new bookmark by adding a simple index (1,2,...) to the bookmark name.

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