preview word files

[woodie63]

if there a way to read the body of a word file as plain text
and filter out all the characters like "

[jonn8]

You have to use Word to do it easily and then run a search and replace routine to strip out unwanted characters:

set the_file to (((path to desktop) as string) & “test.doc”)

tell application “Microsoft Word”
open the_file as alias
set the_text to contents of document 1
close document 1 saving no
end tell

set search_strings to {“”“, ““”, “””} –if you have smart quotes turned on in Word, you’ll need to replace all of these chars to strip quote marks
set replace_strings to {”", “”, “”}
repeat with i from 1 to (count of search_strings)
set the_text to my snr(the_text, (item i of search_strings), (item i of replace_strings))
end repeat

return the_text

on snr(the_string, search_string, replace_string)
set old_tid to AppleScript’s text item delimiters
set AppleScript’s text item delimiters to search_string
set the_string to (every text item of the_string) as list
set AppleScript’s text item delimiters to replace_string
set the_string to the_string as string
set AppleScript’s text item delimiters to old_tid
return the_string
end snr

–this script was automatically tagged for
–color coded syntax by Script to Markup Code

Jon

[woodie63]

Thanks Jon
I’m sorry but my post got chopped for some reason
it should have read:

is there a way to read the body of a word file as plain text
and filter out all the characters that make up the rest of the file?

e.g. all I want from a word file letter is :

1, infinite loop,
Cupertino
CA

1/4/00

Dear Sir,
blah blah blah
our most distinguished sentiments,
yours
Mr Ed

I’m not trying to get the formatting out of it just a preview of the files contents

thanks,

Peter

I would like a soloution that doesn’t use Word as I will be using it as a subroutine in my application
thanks again

Peter