Testing if Word is Running on a Windows or Mac System

Cleveland is creating a couple of macros that need to open a template that may or may not exist on the system. His problem is that the macro needs to run on both Windows and Mac systems, and the two systems store templates in different locations. He wonders if there is a way, in the macro, to test whether it is running on a Windows system or a Mac and set the path to the templates accordingly.

There are two ways you can determine if your macro is running on a Windows or Mac system. One method is to rely on compiler constants. You can find more about these universal constants at this page:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/language/concepts/getting-started/compiler-constants

You access them by using a special variation of the If...Then structure that utilizes a hash mark (#) in front of the keyword. Here's a code snippet that demonstrates how you can do this:

    #If Mac Then
        ' Set your path variable for a Mac system
    #Else
        ' Set your path variable for a Windows system
    #End If

The #If command indicates that a compiler constant is being tested, and Mac is the name of the compiler constant to test. This constant will be True if the macro is running on a Mac system and False if not. Again, you can find more information about compiler constants at the URL previously provided.

The second method to determine the type of system on which your macro is running is to examine the contents of the OperatingSystem property for the System object, in this manner:

    If InStr(System.OperatingSystem, "Mac") Then
        ' Set your path variable for a Mac system
    Else
        ' Set your path variable for a Windows system
    End If

This works because the OperatingSystem property returns a text string that will either be "Macintosh" on a Mac system or contain "Windows" for a Windows system. Note that in this case the hash mark (#) is not required with the If...Then structure because you are not testing a compiler constant.

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