AutoExec alternative (Word 2003)

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Can anyone help?

I have a template in StartUp that runs code stored in AutoExec. The code will run, when opening the Application and opening a document from Windows Explorer/Outlook, which is expected behaviour. The company at present are testing a Document Management Tool which integrates with Word. I am finding that the template stored in StartUp does not run when opening a document stored within the Document Mangement Tool.

Is there another way of opening Word and bypassing any templates stored in StartUp? I need to trap the opening event but am struggling to find a way of doing this.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Jack

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Does it work if you put the AutoExec code in Normal.dot? Admittedly, not an attractive option if you need to do this for many users, but things do get very ugly if you use a document management system.

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Would be happy to place the code in Normal.dot but the Document Management System appears to be manipulating this template (which is a concern of mine).

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In that case, I hope that someone will chime in who is unfortunate enough to have experience with the interaction of document management systems and Word.

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Afternoon Hans

This relates to the issue I had with the Document Management System and AutoExec not running. It looks like an exe will need to be created in VB.Net. I have put some code together to open Word but I am having problems (due to lack of knowlege) on how to run the AutoExec in the global template stored in Word. So far I have:

Dim oWord As Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Application

oWord = CreateObject(“Word.Application”)
oWord.Visible = True

What I need to include is Call modGeneratedToolbar.AutoExec(). I’m presuming that I need to somehow declare the global template so the exe has a reference. Any ideas?

Thanks
Jack

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Sorry, no.

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Have you consulted the vendor of Meridio about this? Surely you are not the first and only to struggle with this problem…

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If the document management software is preventing AutoExec from running, then your best bet would probably be to ask the document management vendor how to do what you want to do.

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I don’t understand the relationship between the document management tool and Word. Is it external to Word (e.g., Sharepoint or similar web interface) or internal to Word? Note that AutoExec should run when Word is first launched. It doesn’t run again after that until Word is launched again. Depending on your configuration, a new session of Word may be launched each time a document is double-clicked, or not. (Not definitely is more memory efficient.)

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(Edited by JanB on 12-Dec-06 08:26. added last paragraph)

You don’t state which Document Management Tool you use, so maybe this is not relevant, but here goes anyway.
We use Documentum and had some difficulties with the Word integration. One of the problems was that Documentum (and I think that goes for most if not any Document Management System) stores empty docs based on company templates in it’s database. When creating a “new” Word document from within Documentum, it doesn’t actually let Word just do that, but copies a stored empty doc to a specific folder and “tells” Word to open that. So the code for new documents is never fired and the code for (re)opened documents is fired instead…
So we ended up using a CustomDocumentProperty (CDP) to evaluate if a “new” document is opened from within Documentum or an existing one. If it’s “new” the code for new documents is fired and the value for that CDP is changed, so next time it’s opened it isn’t flagged as “new”.

If a user experiences problems with AutoExec not firing, which only occasionally is the case (we never found out why!), we recommend opening Word first, before starting Documentum. Documentum doesn’t close Word after each document it’s handling. Don’t know if that is default or is configured that way. I haven’t access to that info right now.

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The system we are testing is called Meridio which plugs into Outlook (in fact there are five packages that need to be installed before the application can work).

Meridio takes control of the Save, SaveAs functions in Word. All documents created in this environment are opened from a storage area so Word, potentially, may not be opening as expected. If Word is already opened, then we do not receive any errors when opening documents but if Word is closed then the AutoExec does not run.

I fully appreciate that Document Management Systems are generally not the easiest applications to integrate with, so am not expecting a miraculous answer. As a number of you guys and girls are very knowledgeable I thought it would be beneficial asking !!

Cheers
Jack

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I’m not at all familiar with Meridio, so I cannot assist you any further on this. The only advice is, train your users to open Word first. Good luck!

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Have you tried putting the code from the AutoExec in a COM addin that gets loaded when Word starts?

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Hi Howard

The Document Management System (Meridio) has a COM addin that manipulates the Word environment, so to add another one may cause problems. I think my only option is to hand the issue over to Meridio and tell them they have to fix it !!

Thanks
Jack

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