Select everything, affect only text

[Joe]

Hello! First post here.

Started trying to make my own VBA macros just yesterday to ease a specific task (importing a bunch of CAD drawings, resizing all of them by a percentage, etc) and have already snowballed out of control by making a crazy toolbox:



Yes, it's something only a father would love

Anyways, a question: I'd like to select a bunch of things on a page and then just press a button like "Top Left" to set the Alignment of Text (You can see this in the sort-of Joystick like thing next to the "Insert text" button). My code is such:

For Each Current In ActiveSelectionRange
     Current.Text.Frame.VerticalAlignment = cdrTopJustify
     Current.Text.Selection.Alignment = cdrLeftAlignment
Next Current

And it works ok as long as no non-text shapes are selected. What would be nice, though, would be to make it work on anything - if there is text, adjust, if it's a shape, ignore.

I realize some check is needed, but really can't find how to do it. This forum has already helped with the Alignment settings, hopefully this can be solved as well.

Thanks!

Edit: D'oh! With all this typed up I click "New posts" and bam! This one already has the necessary check visible:

For Each Current In ActiveSelectionRange
  If Current.Type = cdrTextShape Then
    Current.Text.Frame.VerticalAlignment = cdrTopJustify
    Current.Text.Selection.Alignment = cdrLeftAlignment
  End If
Next Current

Btw, is there a reliable code formatter/beautifier for VBA, preferably online?

Originally Posted by Joe

Btw, is there a reliable code formatter/beautifier for VBA, preferably online?

I use free Smart Indenter VBA Add-in.

[Joe]

Now that looks rather nice, thanks!

And another question has popped up, this one may be a little weird. I would like to select a bunch of complex shapes and simple rectangles. We can assume that every complex shape resides within the rectangle. The task would be to somehow find the shape and its rectangle and then align the shape to the rectangle. I can handle the alignment, finding the rectangle "under" is what seems damn hard.

Any ideas?

[shelbym]

Just name the shape and find it by its name.

Set s = ActivePage.FindShape(Name:="MyShapeName")

If you are sure all the other shapes are inside the shape you just found then select them from the bounding boxes of this shape.

Sub MySelection()
    Dim s As Shape, sFound As Shape
    Dim x As Double, y As Double, w As Double, h As Double
    
    ActiveDocument.ReferencePoint = cdrBottomLeft
    Set s = ActivePage.FindShape(Name:="MyShapeName")
    
    s.GetPosition x, y
    s.GetSize w, h

    Set sFound = ActivePage.SelectShapesFromRectangle(x, y, x + w, y + h, False)
End Sub

Best of luck,
-Shelby

[Joe]

Thanks! Noticed that I wasn't clear enough when defining the task as each complex shape would have its own rectangle. But that's ok, found a way to overcome this in a way and this reply helps with another idea I have been having.

And with that another question - I'm trying to implement a selection buffer of sorts - say, select your shapes, click the button and it marks them. Then later you just click another button and all your special shapes get selected. When you decide to create a new selection group or click a, say "Remove selection group" button it would remove all the shapes from the selection ring.

The approach I had in mind was going through the given shapes and adding a tag of sorts, say "Sel1" followed by the shape name so that the tag can be removed later. And then selecting the shapes based on their tags.

But then doing something like CurrentShape.Name = "Tag1 " & CurrentShape.Name only produces "Tag1" as the name of the shape.

Any ideas about this?

And on another note couldn't get the nice looking code identer to work - on CorelDraw X4 and Windows Vista no matter what. Any other suggestions? (Surprisingly google helps very little with this).

Edit: Gonna add a pic here to illustrate the selection idea, this should explain it better:

[shelbym]

Instead of storing your tag in the name, try using Shape.Properties. Also Alex has already written something very similar to this, you might want to check it out.

Oberon Selection Manager

Best of luck,

-Shelby

[Joe]

Thanks for the lead, gonna check both out.

I realize that there will be several macros which have similar or the same functionality, but would like to put everything that's useful in one panel that can just hang around there and ease all these things which need to be done so often (of course these things differ depending on your approach, hence Joe's toolbox )

So far it has already really made life easier, and learning VBA is pretty fun so it's all good.

[Joe]

Yet another possibly stupid question - would like to implement such a thing: You have a selection, press a button and only the text shapes (or vice versa) within that selection get selected. Tried some things, but no cigar. It's a shame that something like:

ActivePage.FindShapes(Type:=cdrTextShape).AddToSelection

Isn't available as, say:

ActiveSelectionRange.FindShapes(Type:=cdrTextShape).AddToSelection

Any ideas on how to best approach this?

And another one - For example there is a shape, a rectangle is drawn around it and then I'd like to group them together. Always use something like:

For Each Current In ActiveSelectionRange
    'My Code
Next Current

So a Rectangle is drawn, then there's a Current.Move or align or some such action. And after that grouping them would be great.

And sounds like if something decent comes out of this I'll have to give half the credit to Shelby

[shelbym]

You almost have it, try:

ActiveSelectionRange.Shapes.FindShapes(Type:=cdrTextShape).CreateSelection

Best of luck,

-Shelby

[shelbym]

If you want to group your ActiveSelectionRange it would be like this:

Set s = ActiveSelectionRange.Group

Best of luck,

-Shelby