How to overtype text at a bookmark in Word?

[Sebulba]

Hi,

I would like to insert some text in a Word document, at a bookmark, but have the text overwrite what is already there. I am using the following code snippet:

Set objWord = CreateObject("Word.Application")
objWord.ActiveDocument.Bookmarks("BookmarkName").Select
objWord.Options.Overtype = True
objWord.Selection.Text = "Some text"

The line “objWord.Options.Overtype = True” doesn’t appear to do anything… the text just gets inserted at the bookmark. Can anybody please suggest a solution? I searched the web and toyed in VBA but can’t see where to go from here.

Thanks.

[gmaxey]

Define a range and set it = the bm range
Define the range text
Recreate the BM.

[VBA]Sub ScratchMacro()
'A quick macro scratch pad created by Greg Maxey
Dim oRng As Word.Range
With ActiveDocument
Set oRng = .Bookmarks("TestBM").Range
oRng.Text = "Whatever"
.Bookmarks.Add "TestBM", oRng
End With
End Sub
[/VBA]

[Sebulba]

Thanks for your reply, Greg. I copied the code inside of the sub definition, pasted it into mine and modified the bookmark name. I am not familiar with ranges and so am assuming that this is all that needs to be done. It seems straight forward.

Sadly, when I run my code I still don’t get the text to overwrite existing characters.

[Sebulba]

Greg,

After some searching on the net I found that by adding two lines of code to your example makes things work:

Set oRng = .Bookmarks("TestBM").Range
oRng.start = oRng.start
oRng.End = oRng.start + 8
oRng.Text = "Whatever"

I guess this is what you meant by defining a range.

[Frosty]

Ranges are kind of a tricky concept. But make sure you're showing your bookmarks, which will help you understand whether your bookmark "TestBM" looks like this:
Isome text
or like this
[some text]

On one case-- the bookmark is just like an insertion point before "some text" ... in the other, it is bracketing "some text." If it is already bracketing text, then Greg's code is perfect. If it isn't already bracketing text... then your question doesn't really make sense. There's nothing to "overwrite" if your bookmark is just an insertion point.

[Sebulba]

Thanks for the information regarding bookmarks, Frosty. I had no idea that there were two kinds. My bookmarks look like this I, which I later came to know as “placeholder” bookmarks. That would also explain why I did not see the bookmark disappear after inserting the text and why Greg’s last line was not needed.

In my application I have in a table cell a signature line, which is created by underlining a series of nonbreakable spaces, with a placeholder bookmark at the start of the line. The font is mono-spaced. I wanted to overwrite the spaces with the name of the signatory and not have the length of the line change.

[Frosty]

I'd have to see a mockup of your document to give a better answer. But rather than hard spaces, this is a good time to use an underlined tab character immediately after your bookmark and put the tab stop wherever you want your line to end. Probably not necessary to use hard spaces or coding for that effect.

However, if you're in a table cell... You could also use a cell border.

Or, you could use a paragraph border and adjust indents.

Many ways to format a signature line without hardspace/underline formatting or a lot of underscore characters

[Sebulba]

Thanks for the suggestions! I'll try them out when I have some free time.