Listing the Settings in a Template

Andy wonders if there is any way to 'list' the settings in a template (margins, fonts, tab stops, etc.). He has seen lots of information about resetting to defaults, but nothing that will tell him what the settings actually are. He notes that opening a template and looking at the various items is clunky and less than comprehensive.

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to do this in Word. The primary reason is because there is no full list of what settings are stored in templates, and the sheer number of such settings can be quite daunting. The best you can do is to create a macro that will examine the settings you are interested in and then display those.

As an example, consider the following suite of macros:

Sub TemplateSettings()
    Dim templatePath As String
    Dim fleName As String
    Dim str As String
    Dim sTemp As String

    ' Select the template to be opened
    templatePath = Application.Templates(1).Path
    fleName = GetTemplateName(templatePath)
    If fleName = "" Then
        MsgBox "No template selected"
        Exit Sub
    End If

    Application.Documents.Open (fleName)

    str = ActiveDocument.Name & vbCr & vbCr

    sTemp = "Other"
    Select Case ActiveDocument.Sections(1).PageSetup.PaperSize
        Case wdPaperLetter
            sTemp = "Letter"
        Case wdPaperLegal
            sTemp = "Legal"
        Case wdPaperA4
            sTemp = "A4"
    End Select
    str = str & "Paper size: " & sTemp

    sTemp = "Landscape"
    If ActiveDocument.Sections(1).PageSetup.Orientation = wdOrientPortrait Then
        sTemp = "Portrait"
    End If
    str = str & "  Orientation: " & sTemp & vbCr

    str = str & "Margins " & marginsStr & vbCr
    str = str & vbCr & "User Defined Tab stops " & UserTabStops & vbCr
    str = str & vbCr & "User defined styles " & userStyles

    Application.Documents(fleName).Close SaveChanges:=wdDoNotSaveChanges

    MsgBox str
End Sub

Function GetTemplateName(templatePath As String) As String
    Dim dlg As FileDialog
    Set dlg = Application.FileDialog( _
      FileDialogType:=msoFileDialogFilePicker)
    With dlg
        .AllowMultiSelect = False
        .InitialFileName = templatePath
        .Filters.Clear
        .Filters.Add "Templates", "*.dot"
        .Filters.Add "All files", "*.*"
        .FilterIndex = 1
        .Show
        If .SelectedItems.Count > 0 Then
            GetTemplateName = .SelectedItems(1)
        Else
            GetTemplateName = ""
        End If
    End With
    Set dlg = Nothing
End Function

Function userStyles() As String
    Dim sty As Style
    Dim s As String

    s = ""
    For Each sty In ActiveDocument.Styles
        If Not sty.BuiltIn Then
            s = vbCr & sty.NameLocal & "  " & sty.Description
        End If
    Next sty
    userStyles = s
End Function

Function UserTabStops() As String
    Dim s As String
    Dim tbStop As TabStop
    Dim alg

    alg = Array("Left", "Center", "Right", "Decimal", "Bar", "?", "List")
    s = ""
    For Each tbStop In ActiveDocument.Paragraphs(1).TabStops
        s = s & vbCr & ptConvert(tbStop.Position) & _
          " Alignment: " & alg(tbStop.Alignment)
    Next tbStop
    UserTabStops = s
End Function

Function marginsStr() As String
    With ActiveDocument
        marginsStr = _
          "Left: " & ptConvert(.PageSetup.LeftMargin) & _
          ", Right: " & ptConvert(.PageSetup.RightMargin) & _
          ", Top: " & ptConvert(.PageSetup.TopMargin) & _
          ", Bottom: " & ptConvert(.PageSetup.BottomMargin)
    End With
End Function

Function ptConvert(p As Single) As String
    ptConvert = Format(PointsToInches(p), "###.##")
    ' use the following line if you want dimensions in centimeters
    'ptConvert = Format(PointsToCentimeters(p), "###.##")
End Function

The main macro that you start with is TemplateSettings. This macro, in turn, calls the other functions in the listing. It grabs some of the more common settings within a template (you get to specify the template, of course) and then displays those settings in a message box. Specifically, it displays the template's name, paper size, page orientation, margins, tab stops (for only the first paragraph in the template), and user-defined styles.

There are obviously many, many other settings that could be extracted and displayed. For instance, you might want to know what the characteristics of each style are, rather than just a list of user-defined style names. Or you might want to know how formatting for built-in styles differs from default formatting. Just these options alone would introduce a huge amount of complexity to the macro. (Consider that each style can have dozens of different formatting settings and "default formatting" for built-in styles is defined by what is stored in the Normal template.) In order to include such additions, you'd only need to modify the macro to compile the desired information.

Note, as well, that the macro suite presented here is designed to be simple, despite its length. All it does is put all the extracted settings into a string and then display that string in a message box. If the template you are looking at has many, many user-defined styles, then it is possible for the string to get quite long. If it ends up being longer than 1,024 characters, then you'll get an error because the MsgBox function can only display a string up to that length. If you anticipate that your string will be longer, you'll want to display it in "chunks" in multiple message boxes, or simply write the string out to a text file that you can later examine.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (10117) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Listing the Settings in a Template.