Spellchecking from Visual Basic

Here’s a quick way to run a spellcheck on any data stream from within your VB6 application:

Function SpellCheck(Stream As String) As String
   On Error Resume Next
   Dim W As Object
   Set W = CreateObject("Word.Basic")
   SpellCheck = Stream
   With W
     .AppMinimize
     .FileNewDefault
     .EditSelectAll
     .EditCut
     .Insert Stream
     .StartOfDocument
     .ToolsSpelling
     .EditSelectAll
      If Mid(.Selection, Len(.Selection), 1) = Chr(13) Then
        .Selection = Mid(.Selection, 1, Len(.Selection) - 1)
      End If
      If Len(.Selection) > 1 Then
         SpellCheck = .Selection
      End If
     .FileCloseAll 2
     .AppClose
   End With
   Set W = Nothing
End Function

It will only work on those PC’s that have Microsoft Word already installed. You may want to modify the error handling logic to suit your taste. I’ve simply chosen to return the original text if the function encounters any serious errors with the spellcheck library.

Posted in Programming, Tips, Visual Basic, Windows by Ivan