Article ID: 220392 - Last Review: June 17, 2005 - Revision: 2.0

WD2000: Visible Property to Hide a Document Is Not Hidden from Window List

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This article was previously published under Q220392

SYMPTOMS

When you set or change the Visible property to hide a document, the document still appears in the Windows List on the Window menu within Word. If the hidden document is activated from the Windows List, it will become the active window and be affected by current cursor movements, commands, and text entry, while remaining invisible.

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WORKAROUND

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To demonstrate the problem, the following Visual Basic macro creates a new invisible document:

Sub Test()
   Application.Documents.Add
   ActiveDocument.ActiveWindow.Visible = False
End Sub

When you view the Windows List on the Window menu, the new invisible document appears as a selectable item with the symptoms listed at the beginning of this article.

To avoid this situation, Visual Basic for Applications developers should use the Visible property with due precautions and never leave an invisible document around after a code block is done processing with it. The invisible document created in the code block above can be closed without any prompt to save changes with the additional line of code in the example below:

Sub Test()
   Application.Documents.Add
   ActiveDocument.ActiveWindow.Visible = False
   .
   .
   .
   ' Close the hidden document without save changes.
   ActiveDocument.ActiveWindow.Close SaveChanges:=wdDoNotSaveChange 
End Sub

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