VBA Word: Difference between Font.TextColor and Font.ColorIndex?

Question

I have a macro that insert text. It was working well so far but... Now for some documents, I get an error 445 when it applies color. Here is the code:

'Some code before that insert a first page with a different section and writes into the header
ActiveWindow.ActivePane.View.SeekView = wdSeekMainDocument
Selection.TypeParagraph

With Selection.Font
    .Name = "Calibri"
    .Size = 14
    .Bold = True
    .Italic = False
    .TextColor = RGB(68, 114, 196)
End With

With Selection.ParagraphFormat
    .Alignment = wdAlignParagraphCenter
    .SpaceAfter = 6
End With

Selection.TypeText Text:="eReference file for work order: "
ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.Add Range:=Selection.Range, Name:="workorder"

Selection.TypeParagraph

I've notice that if I change "Selection.Font.TextColor = RGB(68, 114, 196)" and replace it by "Selection.Font.ColorIndex = wdDarkBlue", it works. Hence my question: What's the difference between the two? Why is there some document for which "Textcolor"doesn't work ?

Thank you !

Answer 1

Font.TextColor and Font.ColorIndex are both documented on MSDN.

ColorIndex

Returns or sets a WdColorIndex constant that represents the color for the specified font. Read/write.

WdColorIndex is an enum that defines a number of predefined constants. Being an enum, its underlying value is a numeric value - a Long integer. When you assign it to the result of a RGB function call, you're giving it a Long integer, but not a WdColorIndex value - I very much doubt that the color you're getting matches the RGB value you've set.

TextColor

Returns a ColorFormat object that represents the color for the specified font. Read-only.

A ColorFormat object gives you much more control on how you want to format things. It's read-only because it's an object - that doesn't mean you can't change it (as in, modify its state), it only means you can't Set that object reference to something else... but you wouldn't need to do that anyway.

So instead of this:

.TextColor = RGB(68, 114, 196)

You could do that:

 .TextColor.RGB = RGB(68, 114, 196)

ColorFormat.RGB Property on MSDN.

FWIW I'm getting run-time error 5843 when trying to assign a non-WdColorIndex enum value to Font.ColorIndex, so I'm confused with what you mean by "it works" - especially given that IntelliSense gives you the possible values for it: