Advanced VB/Office Guru™ Word SpellChecker™.NET

[RobDog888]

Gangsta Yoda™ ®

Description:
I wrote this to demonstrate how to take full advantage of MS Word's built in Spelling and Grammar checker. There
are a few other code examples that show how to do spell checking with Word but they are all using the same technique that
seems to have a few issues like showing the spell dialog behind your app, messing up the line breaks so you need to
apply a code fix to restore them, flashing window, etc.

What makes my spell checker different is that I use the actual spell/grammar checking dialog window and not invoking it by
coding the usual - "Document.CheckSpelling" which seems to cause the mentioned issues.

Since I use the dialog window I preset the type of spelling I wish to perform. Now you can make it dynamic by having a
spell options form in your app to allow the user to preset it to either Ignore words in UPPERCASE, urls, mixed words and
numbers, check grammer, and whether to show spelling suggestions, etc.

Requirements:
Microsoft Word
Versions 10.0 - 11.0 (2002 - 2003)

Note: I converted my VB6 version to VB.NET 2003. The VB6 version can be located here.

Option Explicit On 
Option Strict On
'Copyright © 2005 by RobDog888 (VB/Office Guru™). All Rights reserved.
'
'Distribution: You can freely use this code in your own
'              applications provided that this copyright
'              is left unchanged, but you may not reproduce
'              or publish this code on any web site, online
'              service, or distribute as source on any
'              media without express permission.
Imports Microsoft.Office.Interop
 
Public Class clsSpellMe
 
    Friend moApp As Word.Application
    Private mbKillMe As Boolean
 
    Friend Property KillMe() As Boolean
        Get
            InitializeMe()
            KillMe = mbKillMe
        End Get
        Set(ByVal Value As Boolean)
            mbKillMe = Value
        End Set
    End Property
 
    Friend Sub InitializeMe()
        Try
            '<INITIALIZE WORD>
            moApp = DirectCast(GetObject(, "Word.Application"), Word.Application)
        Catch ex As Exception
            If TypeName(moApp) = "Nothing" Then
                moApp = DirectCast(CreateObject("Word.Application"), Word.Application)
                mbKillMe = True
            Else
                MessageBox.Show(ex.Message, "VB/Office Guru™ SpellChecker™.NET", _
                MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Exclamation)
            End If
        End Try
    End Sub
 
    Friend Function SpellMe(ByVal msSpell As String) As String
 
        Dim oDoc As Word.Document
        Dim iWSE As Integer
        Dim iWGE As Integer
        Dim iResp As Integer
        Dim sReplace As String
 
        If msSpell = String.Empty Then Exit Function
        Try
            InitializeMe()
            Select Case moApp.Version
                Case "9.0", "10.0", "11.0"
                    oDoc = moApp.Documents.Add(, , 1, True)
                Case "8.0"
                    oDoc = moApp.Documents.Add
                Case Else
                    MessageBox.Show("Unsupported Version of Word.", "VB/Office Guru™ SpellChecker™.NET", _
                    MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Exclamation)
                    Exit Function
            End Select
            oDoc.Words.First.InsertBefore(msSpell)
            iWSE = oDoc.SpellingErrors.Count
            iWGE = oDoc.GrammaticalErrors.Count
            '<CHECK SPELLING AND GRAMMER DIALOG BOX>
            If iWSE > 0 Or iWGE > 0 Then
                '<HIDE MAIN WORD WINDOW>
                moApp.Visible = False
                If (moApp.WindowState = moApp.WindowState.wdWindowStateNormal) Or _
                    (moApp.WindowState = moApp.WindowState.wdWindowStateMaximize) Then
                    moApp.WindowState = moApp.WindowState.wdWindowStateMinimize
                Else
                    moApp.WindowState = moApp.WindowState.wdWindowStateMinimize
                End If
                '</HIDE MAIN WORD WINDOW>
                '<PREP CHECK SPELLING OPTIONS DIALOG BOX (MODIFY TO YOUR PREFERENCES)>
                moApp.Dialogs(Word.WdWordDialog.wdDialogToolsSpellingAndGrammar).Application.Options.CheckGrammarWithSpelling = True
                moApp.Dialogs(Word.WdWordDialog.wdDialogToolsSpellingAndGrammar).Application.Options.SuggestSpellingCorrections = True
                moApp.Dialogs(Word.WdWordDialog.wdDialogToolsSpellingAndGrammar).Application.Options.IgnoreUppercase = True
                moApp.Dialogs(Word.WdWordDialog.wdDialogToolsSpellingAndGrammar).Application.Options.IgnoreInternetAndFileAddresses = True
                moApp.Dialogs(Word.WdWordDialog.wdDialogToolsSpellingAndGrammar).Application.Options.IgnoreMixedDigits = False
                moApp.Dialogs(Word.WdWordDialog.wdDialogToolsSpellingAndGrammar).Application.Options.ShowReadabilityStatistics = False
                '</PREP CHECK SPELLING OPTIONS DIALOG BOX (MODIFY TO YOUR PREFERENCES)>
                '<DO ACTUAL SPELL CHECKING>
                moApp.Visible = True
                moApp.Activate()
                iResp = moApp.Dialogs(Word.WdWordDialog.wdDialogToolsSpellingAndGrammar).Display
                '</DO ACTUAL SPELL CHECKING>
                If iResp < 0 Then
                    moApp.Visible = True
                    MessageBox.Show("Corrections Being Updated!", "VB/Office Guru™ SpellChecker™", _
                    MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Information)
                    oDoc.Select()
                    oDoc.Range.Copy()
                    sReplace = DirectCast(Clipboard.GetDataObject.GetData("System.String", True), String)
                    '<FIX FOR POSSIBLE EXTRA LINE BREAK AT END OF TEXT>
                    If (InStrRev(sReplace, Chr(13) & Chr(10))) = (Len(sReplace) - 1) Then
                        sReplace = Mid$(sReplace, 1, Len(sReplace) - 2)
                    End If
                    '</FIX FOR POSSIBLE EXTRA LINE BREAK AT END OF TEXT>
                    SpellMe = sReplace
                ElseIf iResp = 0 Then
                    MessageBox.Show("Spelling Corrections Have Been Canceled!", "VB/Office Guru™ SpellChecker™.NET", _
                    MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Exclamation)
                    SpellMe = msSpell
                End If
            Else
                MessageBox.Show("No Spelling Errors Found" & Environment.NewLine & "Or No Suggestions Available!", _
                "VB/Office Guru™ SpellChecker™.NET", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Exclamation)
                SpellMe = msSpell
            End If
            '</CHECK SPELLING AND GRAMMER DIALOG BOX>
            oDoc.Close(False)
            oDoc = Nothing
            '<HIDE WORD IF THERE ARE NO OTHER INSTANCES>
            If KillMe = True Then
                moApp.Visible = False
            End If
            '</HIDE WORD IF THERE ARE NO OTHER INSTANCES>
        Catch ex As Exception
            MessageBox.Show(ex.Message, "VB/Office Guru™ SpellChecker™.NET", _
            MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Exclamation)
        End Try
 
    End Function
 
End Class