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Assign Color from String in MS Word

Hi All

I have list of colors:
wdColorAqua
wdColorBlue
wd....

and so on.

What I would like to do is apply shading to the paragraph text based on the text string, e.g. if text is wdColorBlue the paragraph should be shaded in that same color.

My code does not work, I'm stuck:

Sub applyColor()
Dim oPar As Paragraph, Color As WdColor, strColor As String

For Each oPar In Selection.Paragraphs
strColor = (Left(oPar.Range.Text, Len(oPar.Range.Text) - 1))
Color = strColor
oPar.Range.Shading.BackgroundPatternColor = Color
Next oPar
End Sub

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I get a type mis-match at Color = strColor :-(

Thanks!

GrahamSkan

Morning/Evening Steve
There are several ways of defining colours in VB(A).

Internally a colour is a Long integer. This can be produced using the RGB function from the individual values or red, blue and green, so

Dim MyColour as long
MyColor = RGB(255,0,0)

defines Red (255)

Also there are several series of enumerated constants:

1. VBA.ColorConstants e.g. vbRed = 255
2. SystemColorConstants e.g. vbButtonFace = -2147483633 (&H8000000F)
3. wdColor e.g. wdColorRed = 255
4. There is also a set of predefined colours with arbitrary index numbers:
wdColorIndex e.g. wdRed = 6

To convert a string to a colour would require using Select Case

Function GetColour(strColour As String) As Long
    Select Case strColour
        Case "PaleYellow"
            GetColour = &H99FFF
        Case "Red"
            GetColour = wdColorRed
    End Select
End Function

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It is possible to copy the text from any of the enumeration list tables in the Help file on to a document and to use find and replace to construct the cases in the body of he Select Case block:
Something like this:

Sub FormatToSelectCase()
    With ActiveDocument.Tables(1)
        .ConvertToText vbTab
    End With
    With ActiveDocument.Range.Find
    .MatchWildcards = True
        .Text = "(wd[A-z0-9]{1,})^t([0-9\-]{1,})^t([A-z0-9 .\-]{1,})^13"
        .Replacement.Text = "Case \1^t'\2^p^tstrText = ""\3""^p"
        .Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    End With
End Sub

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Function GetColour(strColour As String) As Long
Select Case strColour
Case "wdColorYellow"
GetColour = wdColorYellow
Case "wdRed"
GetColour = wdColorRed
'...
End Select
End Function

DrTribos

ASKER

Ok! I do believe you have provided a solution to the problem I have.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Rgonzo1971

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DrTribos

ASKER

Hats Off to you Rgonzo!!

Works a treat!