VBA Code

Different Types of Shapes

Shapes can be classified to be any of the following:

• Pictures

• OLE Objects

• AutoShapes

• FreeForms

• ActiveX controls.

Shapes can appear in 2 places

• In the Drawing Layer

• In the Text Layer - any shapes in this layer are referred to as inline shapes.

What is a Shape ?

A shape object is an object that is in the drawing layer of the document.
They are anchored to a range of text but are free-floating and can be positioned anywhere on the page.
The shape object is a member of the Shapes collection, which includes all the shapes in the main story of a document or in all the headers and footers of a document.

There are two objects that represent shapes.
1) The shapes collection which represents all the shapes in the document
2) The shaperange collection which represents a subset of all the shapes, typically for the current selection.

Dim objShape As Shape 
   
   For Each objShape In ActiveDocument.Shapes 
       With objShape 
           If .Type = msoShapeType.msoLinkedOLEObject Then 
               .LinkFormat.Update 
               .LinkFormat.BreakLink 
           End If 
       End With 
   Next shapeLoop 

Converting Shapes and InlineShapes

You can use the ConvertToInlineShape and ConvertToShape methods to convert shapes from one type to the other.
You can only convert pictures, OLE Objects and Active X objects to inline shapes.
This code converts all the inline shapes to actual shapes ??

Dim objShape As Shape 
For Each objShape In ActiveDocument.InlineShapes 
   objShape.ConvertToShape 
Next objShape 

Selection.PasteSpecial Placement:=wdInLine 

The following line generates an error if track changes is on.

Shapes(2).ConvertToInlineShape 

Sub Macro1() 
    Dim oInlineShape As InlineShape 

    For Each oInlineShape In Selection.InlineShapes 
       oInlineShape.SoftEdge.Type = msoSoftEdgeType2 
    Next oInlineShape 
    
End Sub