Word and Win32::OLE

[Bloodelf]

I am working on a script which needs to open a word (.doc) document, select all the text and then put the selected text into a variable. I can select the text, but have been unsuccessful in putting it into the variable. Here is what I have so far

use Win32::OLE;
my $Word = Win32::OLE->new('Word.Application', 'Quit');
$Word->Documents->Open("C:/test/test.doc");
$Word->Selection->WholeStory;

Any ideas....?

[cacharbe]

If you want the text, try this.

use Win32::OLE qw(in with);
use Win32::OLE::Const 'Microsoft Word';
    
$Win32::OLE::Warn = 3; # Die on Errors

my $Word = Win32::OLE->GetActiveObject('Word.Application')
    || Win32::OLE->new('Word.Application', 'Quit');

$Word->{'Visible'} = 1;
my $infile = <SOME FILE PATH>;
my $Doc = $Word->Documents->Open($infile);
$Doc->Content->Select();

my $text = $Word->Selection->{Text};
print $text;
print Win32::OLE->LastError();

The application object is actually the best place to get the selection text from in this case, not the document object.

Update: Although you can use the ->WholeStory; method that you used to select the whole document text and leave the creation of the document object alone, the Open method returns said object.

C-.

[CubicSpline]

Are you sure that the method WholeStory is the one you want to call? The default property for the Selection object is Text. try

$Word->Selection->{Text};

[CubicSpline]

Rereading your post, I think I might have jumped the gun. It looks like the WholeStory method selects the entire text of the document. So you'd still want to do that, but then try setting your variable with the Text property call as shown.

[Foggy Bottoms]

You can try this little script. It should work just fine.


package readWord;

use strict;
use Win32::OLE qw(in with);

require Exporter;
use vars qw(@ISA @EXPORT);
#use LTG::DocBuddy::Config qw($DEBUG); 

@ISA    = qw(Exporter);
@EXPORT = qw(readActiveDoc);

sub readActiveDoc
# this method returns the name of the active document and a hash containing every single
# word found in the document. Hence it is ready for use
{
   
   if (my $word = Win32::OLE->GetActiveObject('Word.Application'))# connect to word document
   {
      # next line for debug only
      # print "\nSuccessfully connected to existing word";   
      
      my $docName = $word->ActiveDocument->Name; # retrieve name

      my $wordRange = $word->ActiveDocument->Content; 
   
      return ($docName,$wordRange);
   }
   else
   {
      return undef;
   }
}

---

The method returns undef if no document was found. It actually take currently open document but it's easy to change and actually make it another file. Please note that the document needn't be saved which actually makes this code even better.