Chapter 12

Working with the Office Assistant

Chapter Objectives

Estimated time: 50 minutes

Set the characteristics and functions of custom balloons displayed by the Assistant.

Work with the elements of the Assistant's balloon, including the heading, labels, buttons, and check boxes.

Set text attributes such as color and underlining in the balloon's heading, labels, and check boxes.

Understand the similarities between the Assistant's Balloon object and the MsgBox function built into the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications language.

Determine if the Assistant is on and visible and learn when to display a message box instead of the Assistant.

Place a button on a custom dialog box that displays the Office Assistant—one that's similar to many of Microsoft Office's built-in dialog boxes, such as the toolbar Customize dialog box. (The custom dialog box is a file search dialog box based on the use of Office's FileSearch object.)

The Office Assistant provides a common interface for displaying Help information and tips to users who are working with any Office application. To allow Visual Basic for Applications solutions to use the Office Assistant as well, each Office application provides an Assistant property on the Application object. This property returns a reference to the Assistant object, as defined in the shared Microsoft Office 9.0 Object Library. By using the Assistant in your custom solution, you can provide Help tips that explain how to use your custom dialog box or wizard. You can also display a set of ways to get more information. Since the objects, methods, and properties associated with the Office Assistant are defined in the Microsoft Office 9.0 Object Library, you can write code that can be shared among, and executed in, all the Office applications without having to tailor the code to each one.

This chapter describes the Assistant and Balloon objects, along with their associated methods. It also contains an example that shows you how to create a custom dialog box with a button similar to the ones in wizards and in dialog boxes across the Office suite of applications that display the Office Assistant. This would be a button like the one at the bottom left of the Customize dialog box, which you access by clicking Customize on the Tools menu in any Office application. You build the functionality of the custom dialog box by using the FileSearch object, methods, and properties, which are also defined in the Microsoft Office 9.0 Object Library. The FileSearch object allows your code to return a list of files from a search with specific criteria.

Quick Guide: Elements of the Assistant's Balloon
The Office Assistant displays or gathers information through the Assistant's balloon. The balloon can display message text as well as numbered or bulleted list items, check boxes, bitmaps, and buttons. Each of these items lets the user get information or select an item from a set of choices. The following diagram shows the main elements of the Assistant's balloon. You use the methods and properties associated with these elements to set a balloon's display and purpose.

The following code is the procedure that generated the characteristics of the Assistant's balloon in the diagram above. The With…End block contains the properties on the Balloon object that you use to set the balloon's appearance.
Sub ShowBalloon()
    Dim bln As Office.Balloon
    Set bln = Assistant.NewBalloon
    With bln
       .Icon = msoIconAlertInfo
       .Heading = "Elements of the Assistant's Balloon"
       .Text = "Click OK when you've reviewed the elements."
       .Labels(1).Text = "There are 6 main elements."
       .Labels(2).Text = "Labels can be numbered" & _
            "or bulleted."
       .Checkboxes(1).Text = "Show more information."
       .BalloonType = msoBalloonTypeButtons
       .Mode = msoModeModal
       .Button = msoButtonSetOK
       .Show
    End With
End Sub
The following table lists each element of the Assistant's balloon and describes the property associated with it. The descriptions summarize those given in this chapter's step-by-step examples. You can assign text to the Heading and Text properties and to each label and check box in the BalloonLabels and BalloonCheckboxes collections. As you'll see in the "Setting Text Attributes in the Assistant's Balloon" section of this chapter, you can set attributes like underlining and color to any text in the balloon.

Balloon Element Property Description
Heading Use the Heading property for bold text displayed at the top of the balloon.

Icon You can set the Icon property to one of the MsoIconType constants. These icons are like those you see when you use the MsgBox function built into the Visual Basic for Applications language. The icon appears at the upper-left side of the Assistant's balloon, just to the left of the heading. If you don't want to display an icon, set the Icon property to msoIconNone.

Text Use the Text property for text that's displayed just below the heading but isn't bold. This text is displayed above any labels or check boxes.

Labels Use the Labels property to return the Balloon-Labels collection object. Using the Item method of the BalloonLabels object, or the shortcut syntax Labels(index), you can specify up to five labels in a balloon. You don't need to explicitly add a label. A label in the collection of five appears when you assign a value to the label's Text property.

Check boxes Use the Checkboxes property, similar to the Labels property, to return the BalloonCheckboxes collection object. Using the Item method of the BalloonCheckboxes object or the shortcut syntax Checkboxes(index), you can specify up to five check boxes in a balloon. You don't need to explicitly add a check box. A check box in the collection of five appears when you assign a value to the Text property of the check box.

Balloon type The BalloonType property of the Balloon object indicates whether the labels specified by the Label property appear as a numbered list, a bulleted list, or a list with circular buttons. You specify the numbered list with msoBalloonTypeNumbers, the bulleted list with msoBalloonTypeBullets, and the button list with msoBalloonTypeButtons. By default, if you don't set the ButtonType property, msoBalloonTypeButtons is used.

Button set Use the Button property to display the set of buttons that appear at the bottom of the Assistant's balloon. You can assign the Button property to one of the following MsoButtonSetType constants:
msoButtonSetAbortRetryIgnore
msoButtonSetBackClose
msoButtonSetBackNextClose
msoButtonSetBackNextSnooze
msoButtonSetCancel
msoButtonSetNextClose msoButtonSetNone
msoButtonSetOK
msoButtonSetOkCancel
msoButtonSetRetryCancel
msoButtonSetSearchClose
msoButtonSetTipsOptionsClose
msoButtonSetYesAllNoCancel
msoButtonSetYesNoCancel
msoButtonSetYesNo

By default, if you don't set the Button property, msoButtonSetOK is used.