How to: Reference Documents in the Documents Collection
You can refer to a Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Document object as a member of the Documents collection by using the name of the document or its index value in the collection.
Applies to: The information in this topic applies to document-level projects and application-level projects for Word 2007 and Word 2010. For more information, see Features Available by Office Application and Project Type.
Referring to a document by its name is usually the better choice if you want to work with a specific document. You rarely refer to a document by using its index value in the Documents collection because this value can change for a given document as other documents are opened and closed.
Referencing Documents
To reference a document by its name
Set an object variable to point to the named document, SampleDoc.doc. To use the following code example, run the code from the ThisDocument or ThisAddIn class in your project.
Dim doc As Word.Document = CType(Application.Documents("SampleDoc.doc"), Word.Document)Word.Document doc = Application.Documents["SampleDoc.doc"];
If you want to refer to the active document (the document that has focus), you can use the ActiveDocument property of the Application object.
To reference the active document
Retrieve the name of the active document using ActiveDocument. To use the following code example, run the code from the ThisDocument or ThisAddIn class in your project.
Dim documentName As String = Application.ActiveDocument.Namestring documentName = Application.ActiveDocument.Name;
If you are only working with the document that is associated with a document-level customization, you can use the Globals.ThisDocument reference from anywhere in the project when you need to refer to the document that has the focus.
To reference the document associated with a document-level customization
Retrieve the name of the document using Globals.ThisDocument.
Dim documentName2 As String = Globals.ThisDocument.Namestring documentName2 = Globals.ThisDocument.Name;
See Also
Tasks
How to: Open Existing Documents
How to: Insert Text into Word Documents