From: carlos tirado <tirado.carlos@...>
Date: 2007-03-03T15:09:11+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby and MS WORD

On 3/2/07, Ww Ee <poxvuibr@mail.ru> wrote:
> just wanted to ask if it had any means to create or edit MS Word documents

Yes. Basically you use the same VBA calls Office provides using Ruby
through the Win32Ole library.

How do you find what methods or attributes to call/use?, there are
several ways to find them:
+ one is by using Word itself: go to Tools > Macro > Visual Basic
Editor and once there go to View > Object Browser, then go crazy and
experiment with the gazillion options.
+ Open a doc through IRB (see sample code below), and inspect objects
by something like word_object.ole_methods (sadly you can't .sort them)
+ download and run a Ruby OLE browser, again go crazy. One can be
found at http://dave.burt.id.au/ruby/ole_browser.rb

Now some Ruby:

require 'win32ole'
word = WIN32OLE.new('word.application')
word.visible = true
word.documents.count

# open/create new document
word.documents.add

# or open file
word.documents.open(path_to_file)

# type something
word.selection.typetext("Hello World!\n")

# select whole text
word.selection.wholestory

# delete selection
word.selection.delete

# move to start of document
word.selection.start = 0
word.selection.end = 0

# search for a string
word.selection.find.text = 'my search'
result = word.selection.find.execute

# read the selection
puts word.selection.text
# and position
puts word.selection.start
puts word.selection.end
# or set the position, and selection
word.selection.start = 20
word.selection.end = 23
puts word.selection.text

# printing
word.options.printbackground = false
word.activedocument.PrintOut

# SAVING document
word.activedocument.saveas file_name, wdFormatText
# notice the 2nd parameter which is a numeric constant
# indicating the file format to save in thusly:
# I believe omitting 2nd parameter would save in native .doc)
# 	wdFormatDocument = 0 (no conversion)
# 	wdFormatTemplate = 1
# 	wdFormatText = 2
# 	wdFormatTextLineBreaks = 3
# 	wdFormatDOSText = 4
# 	wdFormatDOSTextLineBreaks = 5
# 	wdFormatRTF = 6
# 	wdFormatUnicodeText = 7  # it repeats!
# 	wdFormatEncodedText = 7
# 	wdFormatHTML = 8
# 	wdFormatWebArchive = 9
# 	wdFormatFilteredHTML = 10
# 	wdFormatXML = 11


# close document
word.activedocument.close( true )  # presents save dialog box
word.activedocument.close( false ) # no save dialog, just close it

# quit word
word.quit


HIH
--CT