The Word object model consists of hundreds of objects, yet no two are more powerful than range and selection. These two objects are used to identify the parts of the document that are to be manipulated by the accompanying code. What is confusing is that, for most cases, either object can be used. The main difference is that a range is not visible to the end user; that is, you can identify a range and manipulate it, and the end user’s cursor location will not move. selection, on the other hand, does exactly what you’d expect—literally highlighting the selection on the end user’s screen. More often than not, range is preferred over selection for several reasons, not the least of which is performance.

Both the range and selection objects have dozens of properties and methods associated with them—everything from cut, insert, and delete to XMLNodes. For a thorough explanation of range and selection, see Writing Word Macros by Steven Roman (O’Reilly).

One of the powerful features of Word is its ability to quickly change the “view” of any document on the screen. You can turn individual formatting markers on or off, change the overall look from outline to print layout, view field codes or placeholder text. What may not have been apparent in the past but now becomes clearly evident is what, if ...