Read from and write to document properties
You can store document properties along with a document. Office applications provide a number of built-in properties, such as author, title, and subject. This topic shows how to set document properties in Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office Word.
Applies to: The information in this topic applies to document-level projects and VSTO Add-in projects for the following applications: Excel; PowerPoint; Project; Word. For more information, see Features available by Office application and project type.
Set document properties in Excel
To work with built-in properties in Excel, use the following properties:
In a document-level project, use the BuiltinDocumentProperties property of the
ThisWorkbook
class.In a VSTO Add-in project, use the BuiltinDocumentProperties property of a Workbook object.
These properties return a DocumentProperties object, which is a collection of DocumentProperty objects. You can use the
Item
property of the collection to retrieve a particular property, either by name or by index within the collection.The following code example shows how to change the built-in Revision Number property in a document-level project.
To change the Revision Number property in Excel
Assign the built-in document properties to a variable.
Increment the
Revision Number
property by one.
Set document properties in Word
To work with built-in properties in Word, use the following properties:
In a document-level project, use the BuiltInDocumentProperties property of the
ThisDocument
class.In a VSTO Add-in project, use the BuiltInDocumentProperties property of a Document object.
These properties return a DocumentProperties object, which is a collection of DocumentProperty objects. You can use the
Item
property of the collection to retrieve a particular property, either by name or by index within the collection.The following code example shows how to change the built-in Subject property in a document-level project.
To change the Subject property
Assign the built-in document properties to a variable.
Change the
Subject
property to "Whitepaper".
Robust programming
The examples assume that you have written the code in the ThisWorkbook
class in a document-level project for Excel, and the ThisDocument
class in a document-level project for Word.
Although you are working with Word and Excel and their objects, Microsoft Office supplies the list of available built-in document properties. Attempting to access an undefined property raises an exception.