Macro code to convert text to fields in Microsoft Word

It is often necessary in this forum and others to illustrate Word fields as text with the field delimiters replaced with the curly brackets that the delimiters resemble when field codes are being displayed on the document. This means that the text cannot be used by simply be copying and pasting into another Word document. Each field must be inserted individually.

Sometimes there can be a complex structure of nested fields, in which case the task can be quite tricky. Here is a relatively simple example from a recent question.

{ IF {Mergefield creditors) > 300 "Employee 1
Employee 2
Employee 3" "{IF {Mergefield creditors} > 200 "Employee 1
Employee 2" "Employee 1" }" }


This macro set converts such text into the fields that it tries to portray. There is no error checking, so the text would have to be well-formed.  
 

Sub CallTextToFields()
    Dim rng As Range
    Set rng = Selection.Range
    TextToFields rng
End Sub

Sub TextToFields(rng1 As Range)
    Dim rng As Range
    Dim fld As Field
    
    Set rng = GetField(rng1)
    Do Until rng Is Nothing
        rng.Characters.First.Delete 'remove the "{"
        rng.Characters.Last.Delete 'and the '}'
        rng.Copy
        Set fld = ActiveDocument.Fields.Add(rng, wdFieldEmpty, rng.Text, False)
        fld.Code.Paste 'VBA bug. The line above corrupts nested fields, so we replace the range
        Set rng = GetField(rng1)
    Loop
End Sub

Function GetField(rng As Range) As Range
    Dim rngStart As Long
    Dim rng1 As Range
    Dim bFound As Boolean
    
    'looks for a potential field i.e. text bracketed with "{" and "}", but no contained "{"
    Set rng1 = rng.Duplicate
    bFound = True
    Do While bFound
        With rng1.Find
            bFound = False
            .Text = "{"
            .MatchWildcards = False
            If .Execute Then
                bFound = True
                rngStart = rng1.Start
                rng1.Collapse wdCollapseEnd
                rng1.End = rng.End
                .MatchWildcards = True
                .Text = "[\{\}]{1}"
                If .Execute Then
                    If rng1.Characters.First.Text = "}" Then
                        rng1.Start = rngStart
                        Set GetField = rng1.Duplicate
                        Exit Function
                    End If
                End If
                rng1.Start = rngStart + 1
                rng1.End = rng.End
            End If
        End With
    Loop
End Function

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As an adjunct, if you already have a worked-out field complex, and you want to show it outside of a Word document, this will do the rather simpler task of creating text from the fields.    

Sub CallFieldsToText()
    Dim rng As Range
    Set rng = Selection.Range
    FieldsToText rng
End Sub

Sub FieldsToText(rng As Range)
    Dim fld As Field
    Dim rnga As Range
    Dim rnge As Range
    
    For Each fld In rng.Fields
        Set rnga = fld.Code
        rnga.Copy
        fld.Delete
        rnga.Paste
        Set rnge = rnga.Duplicate
        rnga.Collapse wdCollapseStart
        rnga.Text = "{"
        rnge.Collapse wdCollapseEnd
        rnge.Text = "}"
    Next fld

End Sub

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To enter the macros into your Word template, switch to the VBA editor using Alt+F11.  The default top-left pane is the Project Explorer window. If you can’t see it, try using Ctrl+R to open it.

One of the projects will be the Normal project which holds the code for the Normal template. Use this project unless you have a reason to use another. All macros in the Normal template will be available to all documents. The code must go into a module, so if there are none in the project, add one via the Insert menu.

The code editor pane is the large one at the top-right. Paste or type your code in here.

While you have the VBA IDE open, you can easily run any macro that does not have any input parameters (aka arguments); macros which do have parameters have to be called from another macro. Simply place the text cursor somewhere in the macro code and press F5.

The two procedures to start here are the CallTextToFields and CallFieldsToText Subs. Set the document to show fields codes (Alt+F9). Select the text that you wish to convert and run the relevant procedure.