Using VBA to Set Multiple Styles in the Footer in Word

Solution 1:

Thank you Timothy Rylatt for the pointers to alignment tabs and character styling. I was able to avoid tables and generating a template file (which would be a lot more work as I need to distribute this Excel file to many users). My solution is as follows:

With rngFooter
.Style = A8
.InsertAlignmentTab 1, 0
.InsertAlignmentTab 2, 0
.Fields.Add rngFooter, wdFieldPage, , False
.InsertBefore vbTab & "Page "
.InsertAfter vbTab & "Other Support Page"
End With

' Make "Other Support Page" bold
With rngFooter.Find
.ClearFormatting
.Text = "Other Support Page"
.Replacement.ClearFormatting
.Replacement.Style = AB8
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceOne
End With

'Add border to entire footer
With rngFooter
     .Expand Unit:=wdParagraph
With .Borders(wdBorderTop)
    .LineStyle = wdLineStyleSingle
    .LineWidth = wdLineWidth075pt
    .Color = Options.DefaultBorderColor
End With
End With

Essentially I applied the base style (now a character style and not a paragraph style), then inserted the alignment tabs as the base tab stops from the Normal template were wiped out. I then add the page number, then the "Page " text, then the "Other Support Page" text. I do a find and replace on the specific expression to format, and apply a character style to ensure it doesn't expand the formatting to the full paragraph. The border issue is fixed by using .Expand on the range prior to applying the border. Order of operations was very important to making this work.

For me, the documentation on the Word object model is more confusing than Excel is, and I appreciate the specific topics to research. I also used this StackOverflow answer for the tip on using find and replace to change the styles, which worked once they were converted to Character Styles.