How To Automate Word From Visual Basic or Visual Basic for Applications For Spell Checking (243844)

SUMMARY

Software written to work with Microsoft Office can take advantage of the spell checking capabilities of Microsoft Word to add spell checking to their own application.

Word's Automation model contains a CheckSpelling function that lets you check the spelling of a document hosted in Word. By using Word Automation, developers can dynamically create a new document, add some text they want to check, and then have Word check the spelling. This article shows you how to automate Word to provide this functionality.

MORE INFORMATION

You can use this code sample from either Microsoft Visual Basic or Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications without any changes. However, the sample assumes that you are using a Visual Basic client to create a new project.

Creating a Spell Check Client

Start Visual Basic and create a new Standard EXE project. Form1 is created by default.
Add a TextBox control and CommandButton to Form1.

In the code window for Form1, add the following code:

Option Explicit

Private Sub Command1_Click()
    Dim oWord As Object
    Dim oTmpDoc As Object
    Dim lOrigTop As Long
      
    ' Create a Word document object...
    Set oWord = CreateObject("Word.Application")
    Set oTmpDoc = oWord.Documents.Add
    oWord.Visible = True
   ' Position Word off screen to avoid having document visible...
    lOrigTop = oWord.Top
    oWord.WindowState = 0
    oWord.Top = -3000
    ' copy the contents of the text box to the clipboard
    Text1.SelStart = 0
    Text1.SelLength = Len(Text1.Text)
    Clipboard.Clear
    Clipboard.SetText Text1.SelText

    ' Assign the text to the document and check spelling...

    With oTmpDoc
        .Content.Paste
        .Activate
        .CheckSpelling
      
       ' After user has made changes, use the clipboard to
       ' transfer the contents back to the text box
        .Content.Copy
        Text1.Text = Clipboard.GetText(vbCFText)
        ' Close the document and exit Word...
        .Saved = True
        .Close
      End With
      Set oTmpDoc = Nothing
      
      oWord.Top = lOrigTop
      oWord.Quit
      Set oWord = Nothing
      
   End Sub

Compile and run the program. Press the Command1 command button to run the spell check. Word's spell check dialog box appears to confirm the spelling of the words "mispelled", "textt", "receive", and "resultes". After you correct the misspelled words, the text is returned to the text box.