How to: Reference Documents in the Documents Collection

Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office system (version 3.0)

Applies to
The information in this topic applies only to the specified Visual Studio Tools for Office projects and versions of Microsoft Office. Project type Document-level projects Application-level projects Microsoft Office version Word 2003 Word 2007 For more information, see Features Available by Application and Project Type.

Applies to

The information in this topic applies only to the specified Visual Studio Tools for Office projects and versions of Microsoft Office.

Project type

Document-level projects
Application-level projects

Microsoft Office version

Word 2003
Word 2007

For more information, see Features Available by Application and Project Type.

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.

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.

Visual Basic

Dim doc As Word.Document = CType(Application.Documents("SampleDoc.doc"), Word.Document)

object fileName = "SampleDoc.doc"; 
Word.Document doc = Application.Documents.get_Item(ref fileName);

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.
Visual Basic
Dim documentName As String = Application.ActiveDocument.Name
C#
string 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.

Visual Basic

Dim documentName2 As String = Globals.ThisDocument.Name

string documentName2 = Globals.ThisDocument.Name;

Tasks

How to: Open Existing Documents

How to: Insert Text into Word Documents

Concepts

Global Access to Objects in Visual Studio Tools for Office Projects

Host Items and Host Controls Overview