From: jamesvtoomey@... (James Toomey)
Date: 2002-12-28T05:11:32+09:00
Subject: Code snippets to automate MS Word

I came across some old postings asking how to use Ruby to automate
Word. These code snippets aren't very elegant (I'm still a novice),
but they're pretty helpful for working with batches of Word documents.

To find and replace a word or phrase in a batch of Word docs:
require 'win32ole'
msword = WIN32OLE.new('Word.Application')
msword.Visible = true
msword.FileSearch.NewSearch
msword.FileSearch.LookIn = 'C:\test'
msword.FileSearch.SearchSubFolders = true
msword.FileSearch.FileName = '*.doc'
# In VBA, the constant msoFileTypeAllFiles is 1
msword.FileSearch.FileType = 1
msword.FileSearch.Execute
countOfFoundFiles = msword.FileSearch.FoundFiles.Count
#Open all the found Word documents.
1.upto(countOfFoundFiles){|i| 
  @docname = msword.FileSearch.FoundFiles(i)
  msword.documents.open(@docname)
  #Replace the old word with the new word
  msword.Selection.Find.Text = 'VBA'
  msword.Selection.Find.Replacement.Text = 'Ruby'
  msword.Selection.Find.Execute
  msword.ActiveDocument.Save
  msword.ActiveDocument.Close
} 

Use this code block to save a Word doc in RTF format:
1.upto(countOfFoundFiles){|i| 
  @docname = msword.FileSearch.FoundFiles(i)
  msword.documents.open(@docname)
  @rtfname = String.new(@docname)
  #Remove the .doc from the end
  @rtfname.chop!
  @rtfname.chop!
  @rtfname.chop!
  @rtfname.chop!
  #Append the .rtf extension
  @rtfname << '.rtf'
  #Save the RTF file
  #In VBA, the constant wdFormatRTF is 6
  msword.ActiveDocument.SaveAs(@rtfname, 6)
  msword.ActiveDocument.Close
}