Moving from Microsoft Office VBA to AppleScript:
MacTech's Guide to Making the Transition

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April, 2007
Page 103

     set selectedShape to my GetSelectedShape() -- paste it in!

     tell text range of text frame of selectedShape

          tell its font

              set {font name, font size, font color, bold} to ¬

                   {"Arial", 24, {255, 0, 0}, true}

          end tell

     end tell

end tell

In AppleScript you can set those four properties (or as many as you want) of the font all in one line as a list. Note: This only works in a tell block to the object in question, not in an of format, although you can always get a list of properties using of font.

Working with just portions of the text in a shape

Test out this macro by running it from the UI, via Tools/Macros, rather than in the VBE Editor, so you can see what's going on as it runs. Don't use text that's too long because you're going to get a new MsgBox for every character in the first part. There are four parts: the first part makes every second character blue after flashing each character in a MsgBox; the second turns each word a different shade of green after flashing each word; the third displays each complete "run" of formatted text with the Long representing its RGB value; and the fourth just displays an arbitrary portion of the text : 6 characters starting from character 3.

Sub WorkWithPartOfText()

Dim x As Long, g As Long

With ActiveWindow.Selection.ShapeRange.TextFrame.TextRange

' access one character at a time

For x = 1 To .Characters.Count

MsgBox .Characters(x)

                ' make every second character blue

' if x divided by 2 = x mod 2 ...

If x / 2 = x \ 2 Then

.Characters(x).Font.Color.RGB = RGB(0, 0, 255)

End If

Next

' or a word at a time:

g = 0

For x = 1 To .Words.Count

MsgBox .Words(x)

'make every word a different shade

g = g + 100

If g > 255 Then g = 0

.Words(x).Font.Color.RGB = RGB(0, g, 100)

Next

' or a "run" at a time

' every change in formatting starts a new run

' if the number of runs in a textrange is 1,

' you know that all of the text

' in the range is formatted identically.

For x = 1 To .Runs.Count

' For each run, display the text and the Long that

' represents the text's RGB color

MsgBox (.Runs(x).Text & " - " & .Runs(x).Font.Color.RGB)

Next

' or arbitrary selections of text

' 6 characters starting at position 3, for example

MsgBox .Characters(3, 6)

End With

Again, this is mostly very straightforward in AppleScript, with just one or two adaptations needed, mentioned at the end:

tell application "Microsoft PowerPoint"