Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Counting Open Document Windows.
Christine is writing a macro and needs to figure out how many document windows are open. The traditional means of doing this is to use the Windows.Count property, in the following manner:
iNumWindows = Application.Windows.Count
When executed, iNumWindows will contain the number of open document windows in Word. The problem is that it returns a count of any window that Word may consider a document, even those that contain e-mails.
As far as we can determine, there is no way around this inclusive behavior of Word. If a person is using Word as their e-mail editor, and they open an e-mail or two, those windows are considered document windows by the program. Granted, they are not documents destined for a disk file or for the printer, but they are documents nonetheless.
In addition, there is no other flag that we could locate that would allow one to differentiate between a regular document window and an e-mail message window. If such a flag were available, then someone could easily check the windows and produce their own count of documents vs. e-mail messages.
Note:
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (10516) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Counting Open Document Windows.
Create Custom Apps with VBA! Discover how to extend the capabilities of Office 2013 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Access) with VBA programming, using it for writing macros, automating Office applications, and creating custom applications. Check out Mastering VBA for Office 2013 today!
The main body of your text is only one part of what makes up the entire document. Documents can consist of other ...
Discover MoreWord is very dynamic in how it "flows" text from one line to another and one page to another. In most cases we are ...
Discover MoreOne of the common things done in macros is to somehow "process" documents, which often means moving the insertion point ...
Discover MoreFREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
2017-11-04 13:23:17
If the user were to have one document open and then use View...New Window to open another window for that document, the windows count will be 2 even though they display the same document. Note that when you open a new window on a document, Word adds a colon + the window number to the displayed name of the document at the top of the screen, for example, "My Document.docx:2". Any macro running in that situation has to ensure it operates against the correct window, since the cursor position could be different for each window.
If your intent is to count documents rather than windows, it might be more effective to use "iNumWindows = Application.Documents.Count" instead. Word will not count an open VBA editor window as a document using this technique, whereas Application.Windows.Count will count an open VBA editor as one of the windows.
Got a version of Word that uses the ribbon interface (Word 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the menu interface.
FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
Copyright © 2018 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.
Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: 
Comments