Conditional Text display with Plain text Content Control

Question

I am working a word template which using plain text content control and XML mapping. Here, I want to use the third plain text content contral to display the first plain text content if the second plain text content is empty; otherwise display the second plain text content. Or should I use IF field instead of the third plain text content control? What is coding? 

Thank you very much!

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Answer 1

Did you use CTRL+F9 to create the field delimiters around cc1 and cc2?

You cannot use the { and } and you enter via the keyboard.

Answer 2

Thank you. I tried, but it only return "{cc1}" or "{cc2}". I don't know where I made mistake...

Answer 3

It is possible to point the content control to different nodes in the XML depending on what is in other nodes, but the problem is that Word does not update the results how you might hope, because it only updates the values of content controls already connected to the node whose value has changed. It does not update the values of content controls whose XPath will now change to point to that node.

It's probably easier to see with some sample ccs and xml, e.g. in a new blank document run experiment1_part1, put some values in the content controls, and you will see that cc4 does not update how you hope. However, at any point, if you run experiment1_part2, cc4 should now point to the correct node and its value should be what you expect. So you would need to consider using either contentcontrol events orxml store events to trigger updates to the controls.

In some respects it would nice if CCs could "autoupdate", but I imagine the Word developers realised that in the general case it would either mean updating every content control, every time something in the XML store changed, or trying to implement the kind of strategy a spreadsheet might implement (probably maintain a graph of cell dependencies, try to optimise recalculation, and have a mechanism to deal with loops in the graph). 

Sub experiment1_part1()

Dim cc As Word.ContentControl

Dim cxp As Office.CustomXMLPart

Dim i As Integer

Dim rng As Word.Range

Dim xml As String

With ActiveDocument

  ' clear out previous experiments

  ' remove ccs

  For i = .ContentControls.Count To 1 Step -1

    With .ContentControls(i)

      .LockContentControl = False

      .LockContents = False

      .Delete

    End With

  Next

  ' remove content

  .Content.Text = ""

  ' remove non-builtin CXPs

  For i = .CustomXMLParts.Count To 1 Step -1

    If Not .CustomXMLParts(i).BuiltIn Then

      .CustomXMLParts(i).Delete

    End If

  Next

  xml = "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>" & vbCrLf

  xml = xml & "<root>" & vbCrLf

  xml = xml & "<cc></cc>" & vbCrLf

  xml = xml & "<cc></cc>" & vbCrLf

  xml = xml & "<cc></cc>" & vbCrLf

  xml = xml & "</root>" & vbCrLf

  Set cxp = ActiveDocument.CustomXMLParts.Add(xml)

  Set cc = .ContentControls.Add(wdContentControlText)

  With cc

    .XMLMapping.SetMapping "/root[1]/cc[1]", , cxp

    .Title = "cc1"

    .LockContentControl = True

  End With

  Set cc = Nothing

  .Content.InsertParagraphAfter

  Set rng = .Content

  rng.Collapse WdCollapseDirection.wdCollapseEnd

  Set cc = .ContentControls.Add(wdContentControlText, rng)

  With cc

    .XMLMapping.SetMapping "/root[1]/cc[2]", , cxp

    .Title = "cc2"

    .LockContentControl = True

  End With

  Set cc = Nothing

  .Content.InsertParagraphAfter

  Set rng = .Content

  rng.Collapse WdCollapseDirection.wdCollapseEnd

  Set cc = .ContentControls.Add(wdContentControlText, rng)

  With cc

    .XMLMapping.SetMapping "/root[1]/cc[1]", , cxp

    .Title = "=cc1"

    .LockContentControl = True

    .LockContents = True

  End With

  Set cc = Nothing

  .Content.InsertParagraphAfter

  Set rng = .Content

  rng.Collapse WdCollapseDirection.wdCollapseEnd

  Set cc = .ContentControls.Add(wdContentControlText, rng)

  With cc

    ' one way to do the mapping...

    .XMLMapping.SetMapping "/root[1]/cc[1+boolean(string(/root[1]/cc[2]))]", , cxp

    .Title = "cc4:cc2, or cc1 if cc2 is empty"

    .LockContentControl = True

    .LockContents = True

  End With

  Set cc = Nothing

  .Content.InsertParagraphAfter

  Set rng = Nothing

  Set cxp = Nothing

End With

End Sub

Sub experiment1_part2()

Dim cc As ContentControl

With ActiveDocument

  For Each cc In .ContentControls

    cc.XMLMapping.SetMapping cc.XMLMapping.XPath

  Next

End With

End Sub

Answer 4

I don't think you can apply any logic like that to XML mapping of content controls. Your suggestion to use an IF field instead of the third content control is workable. You'll need bookmarks around the first two controls so you'll have something to refer to. Then you can set up the field like this:

A content control is never "empty"; if there is nothing entered, it shows the placeholder text. To create the string for the comparison in the IF field, copy and paste the content of the second bookmark. If you've gone into Design Mode and changed the placeholder text, then the copy in the IF field should be the modified text.

The drawback to this setup is that, unlike content controls that are mapped to the same XML node, the field won't update automatically. You can work around that by writing a Document_ContentControlOnExit event handler that updates the field, but then the template must be in a macro-enabled format (*.dotm) and users must be set up to enable the macro.

Answer 5

Hi Erin,

We understand your specific need with plain text control. For detailed information about content controls please check the following articles:  About content controls, Create forms that users complete or print in Word and Content controls in Word.

To answer your questions on mapping content controls to XML in a document file, please click here and find the "Answer" posted by Jay Freedman.

Fell free to post back should you have other concerns.