How to create a menu to navigate to the non-hidden bookmarks in a document

Article contributed by Astrid Zeelenberg

It's easy to navigate around the Headings in a document; just use Outline View. But what if you have set up some bookmarks of your own; for example, in an alphabetical listing, to mark where each letter of the alphabet begins? How can you make it easy for people to navigate around them?

You can't use hyperlinks, because they wouldn't appear on every page (unless they were in the Header, but then they wouldn't be accessible). You could just ask people to select Insert + Bookmark + Goto, but that's not very user-friendly.

A better idea would be to create a menu to do the job, and create an item on your menu for each bookmark, to go to that bookmark when selected.

The following macros make this very simple – just paste the following code into a module, run the first macro once, and from then on you can use the “Bookmarks” menu which it creates (click the “Refresh list” button on the “Bookmarks” menu whenever you subsequently add or remove bookmarks, and the menu will update).

Option Explicit

Sub CreateBookMarkMenu()

Dim oBookmark As Bookmark
Dim oBar As CommandBar
Dim oPopup As CommandBarPopup
Dim oButton As CommandBarButton
Dim ShowHiddenStatus As Boolean

'Find out whether hidden bookmarks set as "visible" or not,
'storing this setting in a variable so it can be returned to at the end.
'Then make the hidden bookmarks invisible
'(we don't want cross-refs etc to appear in our menu)
ShowHiddenStatus = ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.ShowHidden
ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.ShowHidden = False

CustomizationContext = ActiveDocument
Set oBar = CommandBars.ActiveMenuBar

'First delete Bookmark menu if it already exists
Set oPopup = CommandBars.FindControl(Tag:="Recreate")
If Not oPopup Is Nothing Then
    oPopup.Delete
End If

If ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.Count > 0 Then

      Set oPopup = oBar.Controls.Add(Type:=msoControlPopup, _
               Before:=oBar.Controls.Count + 1)

      With oPopup
          .Caption = "Bookmarks"
          .Tag = "Recreate"
      End With

      For Each oBookmark In ActiveDocument.Bookmarks
          Set oButton = oPopup.Controls.Add(Type:=msoControlButton)

          With oButton
              .Caption = oBookmark.Name
              .Style = msoButtonCaption
              .OnAction = "BookMarkSelect"
          End With

      Next

      'Add a Refresh button at the bottom
      Set oButton = oPopup.Controls.Add(Type:=msoControlButton)

      With oButton
          .Caption = "Refresh list"
          .Style = msoButtonCaption
          .OnAction = "CreateBookMarkMenu"
          .BeginGroup = True
      End With

End If

ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.ShowHidden = ShowHiddenStatus

Set oButton = Nothing
Set oPopup = Nothing
Set oBar = Nothing
Set oBookmark = Nothing

End Sub

Private Sub BookMarkSelect()
    If ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.Exists(CommandBars.ActionControl.Caption) Then
        ActiveDocument.Bookmarks(CommandBars.ActionControl.Caption). _
                Range.Select
    End If
End Sub

Sub AutoOpen()
    'Make sure the document's menu is visible when the document opens
    'If the "customisation context" has been changed since it was last opened,
    'the document-specific menus won't be visible!
    CustomizationContext = ActiveDocument
End Sub