Odd vbTab behaviour when posting to a table in MS Word

[RobMatthews]

I'm copying some data from various places on spreadsheet into a text string on the clipboard, and wanting to manually paste into both a table in Word, and a table in an Outlook email.

The problem is that the spcl character vbTab does not seem to be recognised by either Word or Outlook in the context of a table. The only exception is if more than one cell in the target table is selected.

To test this, Run this code in Excel (or in word, I guess), then open Word and create a table, put the cursor into a cell in the table, and hit Ctrl-V.

Then highlight more than one cell in the table, and Ctrl-V again.

Private Sub TestCopyWithTab()Dim sString As String
Dim DataObj As New MSForms.DataObject
sString = "FirstCell" & vbTab & "2nd Cell"
DataObj.SetText sString
DataObj.PutInClipBoard
End Sub

I have also tried Chr(9) and a couple of other options as replacements for vbTab, but I can't figure it out.

Please help.

 

[Macropod]

To write to table cells with code, you need to address each cell individually; unless you resort to SendKeys (not recommended), you can't use vbTab to move between cells.

 

[RobMatthews]

Thanks for your reply.

I wonder why that is; something to do with the way the tables work, I suppose. I was hoping to just do a dumb paste into Word and Outlook rather than do it programmatically.

Oh well.

Cheers.

 

[Macropod]

Well, if you're copying from Excel, you could select the appropriate location in the destination table in Word, then use:
Selection.PasteAppendTable
PasteAppendTable merges pasted cells into an existing table by inserting the pasted rows between the selected rows. No cells are overwritten.

 

[RobMatthews]

Ah, ok.

That might be something I could work with...
Thanks for that.