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MS Office Forum / Word / Programming / February 2006Sanity check: What's wrong with this code?
This sub worked fine several times then suddenly stopped working. Can anyone help me figure out what is wrong? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Public Sub getLastRevisionDate() 'Set the title for the MsgBoxes which will be displayed. Const TITLE As String = "Custom Properties" 'Set the name of the custom property. Const REVISION_DATE_KEY As String = "LAST_REVISION_DATE" 'If there is no document open, there is nowhere to get custom properties either. Inform the user. If Application.Documents.count = 0 Then MsgBox "There are no documents open so no custom properties can be found. Open a document before trying this macro again.", vbOKOnly, "Custom Properties" Exit Sub End If 'If the desired property does not exist in this document, inform the user. 'Otherwise, display the value of the desired property. If (ActiveDocument.CustomDocumentProperties(REVISION_DATE_KEY).value = False) Then MsgBox "The " & REVISION_DATE_KEY & " is not defined for the Active Document.", vbOKOnly, TITLE Else Dim revisionDate As String revisionDate = ActiveDocument.CustomDocumentProperties(REVISION_DATE_KEY).value MsgBox "The value of the " & REVISION_DATE_KEY & " is " & revisionDate & ".", vbOKOnly, TITLE End If End Sub ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I get this error message on the second If statement, the one that is checking the value of the LAST_REVISION_DATE property: "Run-time error '5': Invalid procedure call or argument For what it's worth, I tried hardcoding the name of the key in the brackets and putting quotes around it but it made no difference at all. Also, there is an active document open within Word. Before the statement started crashing, it worked fine for several iterations. Prior to that, it also failed every time but those times the error message complained about a missing object. Then, it just started working right about the time I was getting really really frustrated. For the life of me, I don't know why this statement has been alternating between working fine and not working at all: I haven't changed it in hours. There's obviously some kind of technique or practice that I'm not following which is causing me to fall over my own feet; I just wish I could figure out what it is.... Anyway, if you can help me figure out what's wrong here, I'd be deeply grateful. This code is so close to finished it hurts. I really want to finish this. -- Rhino The problem is that your if statement is checking, not whether the value exists, but whether the value is equal to FALSE. This throws an error if the value is not defined at all. Simpler is to retrieve the value and trap the error if not defined ... On error resume next revisionDate = ActiveDocument.CustomDocumentProperties(REVISION_DATE_KEY) On error goto 0 If len(revisionDate) > 0 then Msg = "The value of the " & REVISION_DATE_KEY & " is " & revisionDate & "." else Msg = "The " & REVISION_DATE_KEY & " is not defined." end if Msgbox Msg Separately, there's no point putting the 'Dim revisionDate' statement within the If clause. 'Dim' is a compiler directive, not a runtime instruction, so the variable is always declared anyway. > This sub worked fine several times then suddenly stopped working. Can > anyone help me figure out what is wrong? [quoted text clipped - 59 lines] > -- > Rhino See remarks interspersed below.... > The problem is that your if statement is checking, not whether the value > exists, but whether the value is equal to FALSE. This throws an error if > the value is not defined at all. As Homer Simpson would say, "D'oh!". Yeah, I should have seen that. I found a similar fragment in a Google newsgroup search and didn't think through the difference between what problem the post was handling and what I was doing. I thought it was the way VBA tests for existence of a field but now I see that it isn't. > Simpler is to retrieve the value and trap the error if not defined ... > [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > end if > Msgbox Msg Thanks for the suggestion! > Separately, there's no point putting the 'Dim revisionDate' statement > within the If clause. 'Dim' is a compiler directive, not a runtime > instruction, so the variable is always declared anyway. Sure, but isn't it always better to declare the variable to be a specific type rather than let it default to variant? That's really the only reason I'm doing it. -- Rhino >> This sub worked fine several times then suddenly stopped working. Can >> anyone help me figure out what is wrong? [quoted text clipped - 60 lines] >> -- >> Rhino > Sure, but isn't it always better to declare the variable to be a specific > type rather than let it default to variant? That's really the only reason > I'm doing it. Absolutely. I was just being lazy. My point is that the declarations should all be at the top of the function, not interspersed with other code. Ahh, okay, thanks for clearing that up :-) Just for interest sake, why should the declarations always be at the top of the function? Is there any real functional benefit? In Java, my main language these days, it's really just a style thing: some programmers feel that declarations ought to be at the top where they are more visible, others prefer to do declarations just before the variable is needed but both approaches work just fine. By the way, I've got my CustomProperty-related subs working just fine thanks to your suggestion. Thanks for your help with this (and other questions)! -- Rhino >> Sure, but isn't it always better to declare the variable to be a specific >> type rather than let it default to variant? That's really the only reason [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > should all be at the top of the function, not interspersed with other > code. Coding styles and conventions are methods that programmers have found, through experience, to reduce the opportunities for bugs and to improve maintainability. Declaring your variables is one (try writing a large app without using 'option explicit'!); declaring them all before any code is another. There is one functional issue: remove the option explicit from your module, and insert another reference to the variable *before* the declaration (which is the sort of thing that happens when code gets modified by someone else) -- the code runs OK if the IF condition is not met, and throws a 'duplicate declaration' error if it is. > Ahh, okay, thanks for clearing that up :-) > [quoted text clipped - 19 lines] >> should all be at the top of the function, not interspersed with other >> code. |
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