Translate VBA syntax to Matlab for Activex control of Word document

Question

I am a newbie to using activex controls in matlab. Am trying to control a word document. I need help translating between VBA syntax and Matlab, I think. How would one code the following in matlab?

Sub macro()
With CaptionLabels("Table")
        .NumberStyle = wdCaptionNumberStyleArabic
        .IncludeChapterNumber = True
        .ChapterStyleLevel = 1
        .Separator = wdSeparatorHyphen
End With

Selection.InsertCaption Label:="Table", TitleAutoText:="", Title:="", _
        Position:=wdCaptionPositionAbove, ExcludeLabel:=0
End Sub

Thanks, I looked at the help and the source but I am still feeling dense. I want to be able to control caption numbering and caption text in an automated report. Am using Tables and figures. I just can't quite get my head around how to code the addition of the captions.

The following code gets me part way there. But I don't have control over numbering style, etc,. I have tried to figure out the activex structure but I can't make sense of it. In particular, In particular the first bit the VB subroutine above.

% Start an ActiveX session with Word
hdlActiveX = actxserver('Word.Application');
hdlActiveX.Visible = true;
hdlWordDoc = invoke(hdlActiveX.Documents, 'Add');
hdlActiveX.Selection.InsertCaption('Table',captiontext);

Answer 1

After some fiddling, I think I got it to work:

%# open Word
Word = actxserver('Word.Application');
Word.Visible = true;

%# create new document
doc = Word.Documents.Add;

%# set caption style for tables
t = Word.CaptionLabels.Item(2); %# 1:Figure, 2:Table, 3:Equation
t.NumberStyle = 0;              %# wdCaptionNumberStyleArabic
t.IncludeChapterNumber = false;
t.ChapterStyleLevel = 1;
t.Separator = 0;                %# wdSeparatorHyphen

%# insert table caption for current selection
Word.Selection.InsertCaption('Table', '', '', 0, false) %# wdCaptionPositionAbove

%# save document, then close
doc.SaveAs2( fullfile(pwd,'file.docx') )
doc.Close(false)

%# quit and cleanup
Word.Quit
Word.delete

Refer to the MSDN documentation to learn how to use this API. For example, the order of arguments of the InsertCaption function used above.

Note that I had to set IncludeChapterNumber to false, otherwise Word was printing "Error! No text of specified style in document" inside the caption text...

Finally, to find out the integer values of the wd* enums, I am using the ILDASM tool to disassemble the Office Interop assemblies (as this solution suggested). Simply dump the whole thing to text file, and search for the strings you are looking for.

Answer 2

Have a look at the help for actxserver and the source code for xlsread.m in the base MATLAB toolbox. If you're still stuck, then update your question with your progress.

EDIT: You'll need to check the VBA help, but the first part ought to be possible via something like:

o = hdlWordDoc.CaptionLabels('Table');
o.NumberStyle = <some number corresponding to wdCaptionNumberStyleArabic>;
o.IncludeChapterNumber = true;
o.ChapterStyleLevel = 1;
o.Separator = <some number corresponding to wdSeparatorHyphen>;

In my experience, you have to get the values from the enumerations, such as wdCaptionNumberStyleArabic and wdSeparatorHyphen from a VBA script then hard-code them. You can try the following, but I don't think it works:

o.NumberStyle = 'wdCaptionNumberStyleArabic';
o.Separator = 'wdSeparatorHyphen';

Answer 3

Instead of hard-coding the text values into the code, you can use the enum constants. This will help when a different language of Word is installed.

A list of the Enums can be found here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/word(enumerations)

So instead of:

Word.Selection.InsertCaption('Table', '', '', 0, false) %# wdCaptionPositionAbove

you can use this:

NET.addAssembly('Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word')
Word.Selection.InsertCaption(...
    Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.WdCaptionLabelID.wdCaptionTable.GetHashCode,...
     ' My custom table caption text', '', ...
  Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.WdCaptionPosition.wdCaptionPositionAbove.GetHashCode, false)