Question

I’m having problems finding a specific section in word. It was recommended I try looking through the VB Object Browser in Word for help. I know there are at least 5 heading “sets” (I.E. if you look in the Document Map, I see numbered 1,2,3,4,5…). I don’t know how to navigate to that fifth heading, initially I thought it was sections, but when I viewed sections I realized that almost all of it is in one section, but in case anyone is looking for information on how to do sections, the below seems to work, since I already went through the trouble of writing it.

my($document) = $Word->Documents->Open($input) || die("Unable to open document ", Win32::OLE->LastError());
my $section = $document->{Sections}->Item(1); # put section number you're looking for in here
$section_five_paragraphs = $section->{Range}->Paragraphs();
$enumerate = new Win32::OLE::Enum($section_five_paragraphs); 
  while (defined($paragraph = $enumerate->Next()))
  {
     print $paragraph->{Range}->{Text} . "\n";
  }

So does anyone know how to get to this 5th heading area, or can point me to something that might help?

Answer 1

Tell me if I didn’t follow you correctly but you’re trying to find the 5th Heading 1 in the a certain section? If that’s the case, although Word clearly defines sections (which you note as $document->{Sections}->Item(1)), it does not clearly define Headings in specific or styles in general. For that you’ll have to go through all the styles looking for those of interest. The following VBA code (and I apologize for not writing perl) does just that and looks only in a specific section.

Sub FindHeading1()
    On Error GoTo MyErrorHandler

    Dim currentDocument As Document
    Set currentDocument = ActiveDocument

    Dim findRange As Range
    Set findRange = currentDocument.Sections(2).Range 'which section you want

    Dim endRange As Long
    endRange = findRange.end

    findRange.Find.ClearFormatting
    findRange.Find.Style = ActiveDocument.Styles("Heading 1")

    Dim headingCountFound As Long
    Do While findRange.Find.Execute(FindText:="")
        If findRange.End > endRange Then Exit Sub
        findRange.Select
        headingCountFound = headingCountFound + 1
        If headingCountFound = 3 Then 'which occurance you want
            MsgBox "Found."
            Exit Do
        End If

        DoEvents
    Loop

    Exit Sub

MyErrorHandler:
    MsgBox "FindHeading1" & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & "Err = " & Err.Number & vbCrLf & "Description: " & Err.Description
End Sub