TIP: Starting Instant Text by a Word Macro

Posted by Jean Ichbiah ® , Thu, Mar 22, 2001, 21:37:27 Reply   Forum
Shalali asked on MT Daily "Is there a way to open IT using a shortcut key once you are in Word?"

The answer is yes. But it requires going into Word Macros. While it sounds difficult, you can try the following:

First create the skeleton of the macro. For this you select Tools/Macro/Record New Macro and type the name LaunchInstantText. Then click on keyboard and assign some key combination that is not yet used, such as Ctrl+Alt+F12. Click on Assign, then on Close and, immediately after, select Tools/Macro/Stop Recording.

Now that we have the skeleton of the macro, we need to have it do something. So you select Tools/Macro/Macros, highlight LaunchInstantText, and click on Edit. This opens the Microsoft Visual Basic editor in which you will see the following text:

    Sub LaunchInstantText()
    '
    ' LaunchInstantText Macro
    ' Macro recorded 2001-03-22 by Jean D. Ichbiah
    '
    End Sub

Now just before the End Sub, insert a line (cut and paste it) as follows, if you have Instant Text Pro:
    Call WinExec("c:\InstText\Exe32\ITPro32.exe /W", SW_NORMAL)

or if you have the standard version:
    Call WinExec("c:\InstText\Exe32\InsTxt32.exe /W", SW_NORMAL)

So, for the Pro, you now have:
    Sub LaunchInstantText()
    '
    ' LaunchInstantText Macro
    ' Macro recorded 2001-03-22 by Jean D. Ichbiah
    '
    Call WinExec("c:\InstText\Exe32\ITPro32.exe /W", SW_NORMAL)
    End Sub

You need to add three additional lines to the "declarations". Just do Ctrl+Home to get to the top of all macros and insert the following lines (again, cut and paste):
    Private Declare Function WinExec Lib "kernel32" (ByVal _
    lpCmdLine As String, ByVal nCmdShow As Long) As Long
    Const SW_NORMAL = 1

That's all. You can now close the Visual Basic Editor and now back in Word use "Ctrl Alt F12" to start Instant Text in lower position. Use " Alt Tab" to go to Instant Text and finally "Alt." (Alt together with a period) to link to Word - no mouse touched in this...

While this may sound complicated, you have do do the process only once and even if you go wrong, you cannot break anything.

Jean Ichbiah

PS. Marie Roberts pointed out that this works if C:\InstText is the Instant Text folder path. If not, then follow Marie's suggestion: "All I had to do, was go to my IT shortcut, right-click then click on Properties. The path of the program is already highlighted, so I just did Ctrl+C to copy that. I then pasted that within the quotes in the line you gave, Jean (to overwrite the path you gave). It worked wonderfully after that."

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