How to populate a Content Control Combo Box with multiple items in a Word 2010 document via a Macro

I am building a data entry form using a word document.  The logic of why this is a good choice is not relevant.  My problem was that I needed to add a set of combo boxes in table cells, each loaded with a list of option for the user to pick from.

There is the option to hand enter each list item... but as I had about 100 items and a dozen duplicate combo boxes... this would have been painful.  The fact that I would need to update this list in the future just made it torture. So... is there a faster way?

After some googling without any success, I came up with a very quick and dirty method.


My over view is:

I have the list of items I want in the combo box in a text file in the same directory as the word document.  (Note that each item must be Unique as the combo boxes do not like duplicates)

I have built the word document with the Content Control Combo boxes in the correct locations and saved it to the same directory as the text file.

I then added a new module to the word doc via the VBA Editor in Word and wrote this simple little macro.

Option Explicit

Sub PopulateCareProviderComboBoxes()

    Dim itemFromFile As String
    Dim cc As ContentControl
    For Each cc In ActiveDocument.ContentControls
        If cc.Type = wdContentControlComboBox Then  'checks if the control is a combo box
            cc.DropdownListEntries.Clear 'get rid of any existing entries in the combo box
            Open "CareProviderDumpList.txt" For Input As #1  'this is my text file with the items I want to add
                Do While Not EOF(1)
                    Input #1, itemFromFile
                    cc.DropdownListEntries.Add itemFromFile 'put the item from the text file into the combo box
                Loop
            Close #1
        End If
    Next
   
End Sub

I only needed to check if the control is a combo box, as all the combo boxes on my form are the same.  You may need to identify a specific combo box.  You can do this by testing the Title property on the Content Control object.

E.g:

If cc.Title = "Customers" then .... 

Once thats done, I simply ran the macro to load the list from the text file to each of the combo boxes. Then saved the word doc with the new items in place.

Job done.