'Batch' Editing of Word & Excel Docs?

[AstroCreep]

Good day folks,
So I have another one for you all: does anyone know of a way to change a massive 'Batch' of Word and Excel files?
What I'd like to do is to be able to do a large-scale 'sweep' of font & font-size changes to all these Word & Excel docs that sit on our one account server (they are used for financial statements and letters for our accounting/tax customers).
The reason for the changes is two-fold:
-we are using an old font that looks silly and doesn't even print correctly on the printers
-our marketing department is going to mandate Arial for all correspondences that go out our door (originally they wanted to use this Adobe font that would have cost $25 per workstation...that can't even be set as a 'Bolded' font-type)

Any one have any thoughts on how I can achieve this goal? It's not the end of the world if the users have to do it, but I'd really like to try and keep any chances for them to F things up to a minimum.

Thanks in advance! 🙂

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

It's probably going to have to be done manually and on a file-by-file basis. There are ways to make document-wide font and font size changes which could be done quickly by setting up a macro to apply to each file, but doing that could introduce its own problems. For example, some files may use special characters like Wing Dings or have subscripts/superscripts and changing the font/font-size would screw those up. Introducing a document-wide font size change may screw up line-breaks, page breaks, section breaks, headers, and footers as well.

If all your corporate documents used a standardized Styles template it would be easier to implement the changes but even then there could still be issues. And most compnaies don't bother to implement standardized Styles anyway.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but you're going to need someone who's decently versed in Word to sit down and tackle those documents one-by-one.

 

[mayest]

You could do this using VBA. Sorry I don't have the time to write the code, but it should be pretty simple. You just need to write a subroutine to open each file in the directory, select the entire worksheet or document, and then change the font. You will need one VBA macro for Excel, and another for Word. However, they should be almost identical. I haven't written code for Word in a long time, but I believe you will need to reference "document" instead of "workbook" or "worksheet" as you would in Excel.

A few Google searches should turn up the VBA code necessary for most or all of these steps.

 

[xtknight]

Maybe this'll get you started.

Sub MyDocMacro()
Dim sCurFile As String, sFolder as String
sFolder = "c:\my folder\docs"
sCurFile = Dir(sFolder & "\*.doc", vbHidden) ' filter *.doc; allow files with hidden flag

Do While (Len(sCurFile) > 0)
ProcessDocFile sCurFile ' call function on current file
sCurFile = Dir() ' next file in directory
Loop
End Sub

Private Sub ProcessDocFile(ByVal sFile As String)
Dim pWord As Word.Application, pDocument As Word.Document
Set pWord = Application ' get copy of current Application(Word)

Set pDocument = pWord.Open..................... ' finish
End Sub

 

[AstroCreep]

Thanks; I'll check it out Monday. 🙂