TIA

Joe Gabay

I'm assuming by ComboBox you're refering to an ActiveX control and that by
Dropdown your refering to a Dropdown Form Field.

To reset a Dropdown FormField named "Dropdown1":

    Dim ffDropDown As Word.FormField
    Set ffDropDown = ActiveDocument.FormFields("Dropdown1")
    With ffDropDown.DropDown.ListEntries
        .Clear
        .Add "Red"
        .Add "Green"
        .Add "Blue"
    End With

To reset a ActiveX ComboBox control called "cboTest":

    With cboTest
        .Clear
        .AddItem "Red"
        .AddItem "Green"
        .AddItem "Blue"
    End With

Both examples clear any existing items, then add three new ones: Red, Green
and Blue.

I hope this helps + Cheers - Peter

Thank you very much for your assistance, it turned out to
be quite helpful.  If I may impose upon you once more, I
am trying to load this items with a second programs which
opens the original document and then follows down the
inlineshapes list.

i.e.
  With objWordDoc
    For i = 1 To .InlineShapes.Count
      Debug.Print .InlineShapes.Item(i)
      .OLEFormat.ClassType
      Debug.Print .InlineShapes.Item(i)
      .OLEFormat.object.Name,
      Debug.Print .InlineShapes.Item(i)
      .OLEFormat.object.Value
    Next
  End With

When I get to the item I am looking for, in this case
combo boxes, how do I clear and reload their select lists?

You really don't have to send me code samples, just point
me in the right direction.

TIA

Joe Gabay

Why don't you do this from within the applications that create and maintain
these documents. What "documents" (Excel, etc.) are you embedding/linking in
you Word document?

If you're embedding shapes created with other applications your going to have
to do some very complex stuff! You'll need to determine each shapes
application and use that application programatically to manage the objects.

Good luck + Cheers - Peter

I want to build/rebuild several combobox/drop-down lists
from an Access database.  They are included in a rather
complex word document and I do not want to expose either
my source code for building the lists or my database to
the end user.  This would also have the advantage of
making the document itself rather dynamic, and any changes
in the database structure would only have to be reflected
in the program that builds the document.  Am I making any
sense or am I trying to do the impossible?

Joe

If you can do what you want directly from Word VBA then you can do it using
COM. The code I provided if prefixed with a Word Application instance
variable will work just as well from Access using COM. Just make sure you
create a Reference to Word from the Access IDE, Tools/References. Here's the
first option modified for COM:

    Dim wdApp as Word.Application
    Dim docNew as Word.Document
    Dim ffDropDown As Word.FormField

    ' Create an instance of Word
    Set wdApp = New Word.Application

    ' Create a new Word document based on the template Test.dor
    Set docNew = wdApp.Documents.Add "c:\my template\test.dot"

    ' Populate the documents dropdown control
    Set ffDropDown = docNew.FormFields("Dropdown1")
    With ffDropDown.DropDown.ListEntries
        .Clear
        .Add "Red"
        .Add "Green"
        .Add "Blue"
    End With

    ' Dispose of Word
    wdApp.Quit
    Set wdApp = Nothing

I hope this is what you were looking for.

Cheers - Peter

Peter;

Thanks again.  However, since I built the prototype
document by hand, the combo boxes I'm concerned with show
up in the Watch Window as InlineShapes and their ClassType
is "Forms.ComboBox.1".  What I can't figure out is how to
open these things up so that I can build their select
lists.  Any help would be appreciated.

TIA

Joe Gabay

What you're trying to do does not make sense! The problem is that the ActiveX
ComboBox control does not have persistent values (no ActiveX controls do)!
When an ActiveX control is placed on a UserForm (a form built in the VBA IDE)
the control is normally initialised in the Forms UserForm_Initialize event.
When an ActiveX control is placed on a document the control is normally
initialised in the documents Document_New or Document_Open event.

But wait - it gets even worse :(. Although it's possible to active and work
with the embedded document none of it's event handlers are going to work
(these are the procedures that respond to ComboBox selection, CheckBox clicks
etc.) because there is already code running - your code that just activated
the embedded document. You could possibly kludge around it by activating the
embedded document and then having your code run the documents Document_New or
Document_Open procedure to initialise the documents controls. You would then
have to terminate your macro so the embedded documents event handling
procedures would work. At this stage the user is manually ineracting with the
document. You've then got the problem of how do you get programatic control
back. Essentially this can't happen unless the users somehow starts more of
your code.

Only the FormField Dropdown field has persistent values, but is limited to a
maximum of 20 values.

I hope the above is helpful even if it's not what you wanted to hear!

Cheers - Peter

Thank you for your help and patience.  I sort of thought
that I was entering the realm of the impossible when I
started this project.  I'll just have to figure another
way.

Thanks again,

Joe Gabay