Setting a VBA Variable from a Bookmark

As part of a macro, you may have a need to work with information stored in a bookmark. For instance, you may need to extract the text in a bookmark, assign it to a variable, and then do some processing based on the variable contents.

There are two ways you can assign the contents of a bookmark to a variable in a VBA macro. The first is to simply jump to the bookmark and select it, then make the variable equal to the contents of the selection. The following code lines will perform this action for a bookmark named MyBookmark:

Dim sMyString As String
Selection.GoTo What:=wdGoToBookmark, Name:="MyBookmark"
sMyString = Selection.Text

If you don't want to change the selection within the document, you can also simply work with the Bookmarks collection maintained by Word. Assuming you still need the contents of the MyBookmark bookmark, the following code will do the trick:

Dim sMyString As String
sMyString = ActiveDocument.Bookmarks("MyBookmark").Range.Text

Note that the name of the bookmark ("MyBookmark") doesn't have to be a static value as shown in both of these examples. If you want, you could simply replace the static value with a variable, as shown here:

Dim sMyString As String
Dim sBName As String
sBName = "Boilerplate"
Selection.GoTo What:=wdGoToBookmark, Name:=sBName
sMyString = Selection.Text

In this example, the bookmark name (the one whose contents you want to grab and place into sMyString) is contained within the sBName variable. As you develop your own code, you could easily create a way for a user to enter a bookmark name and just assign it to the sBName variable.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (8876) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Setting a VBA Variable From a Bookmark.