How do I get the name of the current document Excel?

Chrish3677 · May 4, 2004, 8:30am

I am trying to get the path and name of the current document in Excel. I have tried various means, but it keeps giving me the name of the earliest opened document

Here’s my latest attempt which I was sure would work…


		set this_path to path of front document
		set this_file to name of front document

It doesn’t work in AppleWorks either - and it generates an error saying it can’t get the path of Document 1. MS Word also gives that errorr

So AppleScript is translating this Document 1, which Excel treats as the earliest opened document.

So how do I get Excel to know that I mean the document which currently has focus?

And how do I get this to work at all in Appleworks and MS Word?

thankyou

General · May 4, 2004, 9:40am

That’s pretty annoying. But you can work around it with System Events.

[This script was automatically tagged for color coded syntax by Convert Script to Markup Code]

Chrish3677 · May 4, 2004, 11:35am

Thanks jakacmar

that works… but not in Word!

General · May 4, 2004, 8:54pm

Strangely, Word does not support the Path property for documents (or any kind of file) so it doesn’t look like its’ going to be possible with Word. It doesn’t look like PowerPoint does either. However, Office X does support VB Script for Applications which may be able to get this info for you. Unfortunately, I don’t really know anything about VB Script. Maybe someone at the Microsoft forums (uggghh)?

jonn8 · May 5, 2004, 12:34am

This works for me (this assumes the document has already been saved):

Jon

[This script was automatically tagged for color coded syntax by Convert Script to Markup Code]

General · May 5, 2004, 12:51am

I guess I just assumed “name” would return the name. Oh well, glad someone found it. Then you can just parse the path to get the actual name if you need it.

Chrish3677 · May 5, 2004, 2:07am

thanks Jon, that works for both Word and Excel, but how do I get it to be generic AND use the document that has focus (using “front” doesn’t work in Office)? I don’t want to specify the application name.

thanks

jonn8 · May 5, 2004, 2:25am

I don’t quite understand. If you’re trying to make a script that generically gets the path to the document in the frontmost app no matter what that app is, well, that’s going to be a lot of work and will be a Sisyphean effort. To just get it from Excel or Word, you can use this code but running it from Script editor will not work because it will always be the frontmost app unless you add some sort of delay at the beginning, run the script, then switch to the appropriate app:

Jon

[This script was automatically tagged for color coded syntax by Convert Script to Markup Code]

Chrish3677 · May 5, 2004, 3:05am

Jon, that didn’t seem to work… it seems to return the front_app as “System Events”

I want to link an open (and saved) file into DevonThink. I thought it would be as simple as:
Get full file name (inc path)
link to it in DT

Here’s the code I expected to work…

–Open this script in a new Script Editor window.

tell application (path to frontmost application as string)
try
if not (exists document 1) then error “No document is open.”
set this_path to path of front document
set this_file to name of front document
if this_path begins with the “/” then
set link_file to this_path
else
set link_file to (this_path & “:” & this_file)
end if

      --[i][color=olive] The following three lines are for debugging and should be removed for production[/color][/i]
      [color=blue]display dialog[/color] "PATH IS  " & [color=green]this_path[/color]
      [color=blue]display dialog[/color] "FILENAME IS   " & [color=green]this_file[/color]
      [color=blue]display dialog[/color] "PATH & FILE IS   " & [color=green]link_file[/color]
      
      [b][color=blue]tell[/color][/b] [color=blue]application[/color] "DEVONthink" [b][color=blue]to[/color][/b] [color=blue]link[/color] ([color=green]link_file[/color])
 [b][color=blue]on[/color][/b] [b][color=blue]error[/color][/b] [b][color=blue]the[/color][/b] [color=green]error_message[/color] [color=blue]number[/color] [b][color=blue]the[/color][/b] [color=green]error_number[/color]
      [b][color=blue]if[/color][/b] [b][color=blue]the[/color][/b] [color=green]error_number[/color] [b][color=blue]is[/color][/b] -2753 [b][color=blue]then[/color][/b]
           [color=blue]display dialog[/color] "Path of document not available." [color=blue]buttons[/color] {"Cancel"} [color=blue]default button[/color] 1
      [b][color=blue]else[/color][/b] [b][color=blue]if[/color][/b] [b][color=blue]the[/color][/b] [color=green]error_number[/color] [b][color=blue]is[/color][/b] [b][color=blue]not[/color][/b] -128 [b][color=blue]then[/color][/b]
           [color=blue]display dialog[/color] [b][color=blue]the[/color][/b] [color=green]error_message[/color] [color=blue]buttons[/color] {"Cancel"} [color=blue]default button[/color] 1
      [b][color=blue]else[/color][/b]
           [b][color=blue]error[/color][/b] [color=blue]number[/color] -128
      [b][color=blue]end[/color][/b] [b][color=blue]if[/color][/b]
 [b][color=blue]end[/color][/b] [b][color=blue]try[/color][/b]

end tell

[This script was automatically tagged for color coded syntax by Convert Script to Markup Code]

The problems are:

Office sees front document as the earliest open one. This was fixed by Jak’s first script, but it specified the app.
My script above doesn’t work in all apps. This was rectified by your script

tell application "Microsoft Word" to set doc_path to name of document 1

but again, is app dependent and specifies doc 1.

But I don’t seem to be able to combine it all into one. Also, with the script jak provided which returns the full path and file (which is perfect), I’f have to change the If clause.

thanks for your help

PS I don’t work for DT. This is just a feature that is missing which can be achieved (hopefully!) with scripting.

Chrish3677 · May 5, 2004, 11:47am

ok!! am getting somewhere!

Developed this code which sort of works…

try
set front_app to (path to frontmost application as string)
display dialog "FRONT_APP: " & front_app
set appname to name of application (front_app)
display dialog "APPNAME: " & appname
tell application “System Events” to tell process appname to set winName to name of front window
display dialog "WINNAME: " & winName
tell application appname to set winno to index of (window winName)
display dialog "WINNO: " & winno
– tell application appname to set docPath to (path of document winName)
tell application appname to set docname to name of document winno
display dialog "DOCNAME: " & docname
 (*[i][color=olive]display dialog "DOCCPATH: " & docPath[/color][/i]
if docPath does not start with “/” then
set file_path to docPath
else
set file_path to docPath
end if

display dialog "FILE_PATH: " & file_path*)

on error the error_message number the error_number
display dialog error_message
end try

[This script was automatically tagged for color coded syntax by Convert Script to Markup Code]

Now, in Word or Excel I have three documents open.
When I am in Document 3, it returns window no. 3 and the name of document 3
When I am in Document 2, it returns window no. 2 and the name of document 2
when I am in document 1, it returns window no. 1 and the name of document 3, which is the earliest opened document!!!

am i allowed to swear??

I will try to fix this with a loop…

Chrish3677 · May 5, 2004, 12:14pm

realised I didn’t need a loop just had to get the list of open documents and select it from the list.
thus…


	tell application appname to set alldocs to documents
	display dialog "ALLDOCS: " & alldocs
	tell application appname to set the_doc to name of item winno of alldocs
	display dialog "THE_DOC: " & the_doc

And works in Word!! But not Excel which doesn’t recognize the all documents command

it also failed in TextEdit

There must be some generic way for getting this info!! (ie. the name and path of the current doc in the current app)