AppleScript and VBA Extract Word Properties

[Petroleum]

I have reposted this question having gleaned a bit more info.

I want to get the content of the properties (Summary) in Word documents, I understand that this can be done using VBA.

This link shows how to use VBA to extract said properties:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=212724

How do I implement these from AppleScript so that the properties are returned as variables? I get TmpDDE errors and that’s it.

Thanks,

P.

[digest4d]

Post what you tried using.
What version of Word?

[jonn8]

I don’t have Word 2004 which is supposed to have the largest AppleScript dictionary of any application ever so it’s possible you can do this without having to resort to the kludge I’m about to present. In older versions of Word, however, the best you can do is to use the “do Visual Basic” command to execute a VBA for Word script. The problem with this, and it is a huge problem, is that you cannot get Word to return a value from a VBA command issued this way. You can have it enter a result in your document and then read that text or, as I do in the following script, you can write the result to a file in your temporary items folder and then read the result. So, here’s a script that will get Word to read a property from the current document, write that property to a temp file, then the script will read the file and get the result. Make sure you’ve got a document open in Word that has the properties for which you’re looking.

–Open this script in a new Script Editor window.

property CR : ASCII character 13
property all_props : {“Title”, “Subject”, “Author”, “Manager”, “Company”, “Category”, “Keywords”, “Comments”, “Hyperlinkbase”}
property last_prop : “Title”

set temp_file to (path to temporary items as string) & “wdProp.txt”
my [color=green]erase_file/color

set the_prop to (choose from list all_props default items {last_prop}) as string
if the_prop = “false” then return
set last_prop to the_prop
tell application “Microsoft Word”
do Visual Basic “Dim dp As Object” & CR & ¬
“Set dp = ActiveDocument.BuiltInDocumentProperties” & CR & ¬
“theProp = dp(wdProperty” & the_prop & “)” & CR & ¬
“Open “” & temp_file & “” For Output As #1” & CR & ¬
“Print #1, theProp” & CR & ¬
“Close #1”
end tell
set the_prop_value to read file temp_file
display dialog the_prop & " = " & the_prop_value buttons {“OK”} default button 1 with icon 1
return the_prop_value

on [color=green]erase_file/color
set the_file to the_file as string
try
set f to open for access file the_file with write permission
set eof of f to 0
close access f
return true
on error the_error
try
close access file the_file
end try
return the_error
end try
end erase_file

Jon

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

[Petroleum]

Good one, this solves the problem!

Wonder if 2004 handles this better?