Leading the way in Microsoft Office Development

What are Fields ?

A field is a set of instructions that you can place in a document to produce some specific text and place that text inside a field.

Fields can also be used to mark text, such as index entries which you want Word to keep track of.

You can also use fields to run macros

There are several different types of fields that can be inserted into a document.

What can they be used for ?

They can be used to number figures and tables consecutively throughout a document.

Insert a date or time that will be updated automatically

Word disguises many of its field codes behind dialog boxes such as a table of contents.

Although it is worth becoming familiar with the underlying field codes.

Result Fields

These give details about what text to insert into a document (eg ??)

Fields that specify instructions that Word can use to determine which text to insert in your document

The information they generate is often referred to as field results.

The field instruction is stored in your document and not the field result which means the field result can be updated automatically.

Examples of result fields include information stored in the Properties or Statistics dialog boxes.

Marker Fields

These allow Word to mark items of text that can be tracked later (eg TOC)

These fields simply mark the text so that you (or even another field) can track it at a later date.

For example the TC field can be used to mark all the entries you want to use in a table of contents.

Action Fields

These can be used to perform a specific action (eg MACROBUTTON))

An action field tell Word to perform a specific action. This does not insert any visible text into the document.

The MACROBUTTON field inserts a button that when pressed can run a macro.

Every field contains a name

Most fields can also include additional switches to modify the behaviour

Some fields can also include additional text otherwise referred to as arguments

Field arguments are always enclosed on quotation marks

Arguments can be text, numbers or graphics.

Things to Remember

Word correctly recognises one-word arguments without the need to enlcose them in quotation marks but it is a good habit to get into.