Hello again,

I am more and more intrigued. I found a document in Internet (in  
Japanese) explaining AppleScript scripting with MS Word. It says:

You can execute an AppleScript like this:

save as active document file name "Temp.doc"

where file name must be the name of the file or its file path.

So, I tried the following code:

set fpath to "Macintosh HD:Users:[me]:Documents:Backup:mydocfile.doc"
set convert_fpath to "Macintosh HD:Users:[me]:Documents:mydocfile.rtf"

tell application "Microsoft Word"
	activate
	open fpath
	save as active document file name convert_fpath file format format rtf
	close active document
end tell

and it worked perfectly. Then I tried:

set fpath to "Macintosh HD:Users:[me]:Documents:Backup:mydocfile.doc"

set convert_fpath to my replace_doc_with_rtf_MacPath(fpath)

tell application "Microsoft Word"
	activate
	open fpath
	save as active document file name convert_fpath file format format rtf
	close active document
end tell

on replace_doc_with_rtf_MacPath(fpath)
	set perl_scpt to "$_ = shift; s/\\.doc$//; s/$/\\.rtf/; print;"
	
	return (do shell script "perl -e '" & perl_scpt & "' " & quoted form  
of fpath)
end replace_doc_with_rtf_MacPath

Now, it says:

Microsoft Word got an error: active document doesn't understand the  
save as message.

I don't understand at all. What am I doing wrong...?

Thank you in advance for any insight.

Best regard,

Nobumi Iyanaga
Tokyo,
Japan


On Jun 5, 2010, at 1:35 PM, Nobumi Iyanaga wrote:

> Hello,
>
> As the title line says, I would like to make a droplet which  
> convert a ".doc" file into a ".rtf" file, in the same folder.
>
> I always used to use this code:
>
> tell application "Microsoft Word"
> 	activate
> 	try
> 		open theFile
> 		tell front document
> 			set fname to get name
> 			set fname to my replace_doc_with_rtf(fname)
> 			save as file name (fname) file format format rtf
> 			close
> 		end tell
> 	on error errMsg
> 		display dialog errMsg
> 		return
> 	end try
> end tell
>
> on replace_doc_with_rtf(fname)
> 	set perl_scpt to "$_ = shift; s/\\.doc$//; s/\\./_/g; s/$/\\.rtf/;  
> print;"
> 	
> 	return (do shell script "perl -e '" & perl_scpt & "' " & quoted  
> form of fname)
> end replace_doc_with_rtf
>
> and it worked without problem, but I suddenly realized that it  
> saves the converted file in the folder that was used the last time  
> to save a file -- so that this code can surely work only when Word  
> is launched just before. Otherwise, if Word saved a file in a  
> different folder, in the current session, it will save the  
> converted file in that folder.
>
> MS Word scripting dictionary says:
>
> save v : Save an object
> save reference : the object to save
> [in alias] : the file in which to save the object
> [as type class] : the file type of the document in which to save  
> the data
>
> I tried something like
>
> tell application "Microsoft Word"
> 	activate
> 	open theFile
> 	tell front document
> 		set fname to get name
> 		set fname to my replace_doc_with_rtf(fname)
> 		save in xxx as file name (fname) file format format rtf
> 		close
> 	end tell
> end tell
>
> But this does not compile. And the dictionary term "[in alias]"  
> seems odd, because the new file cannot be an alias, as far as I  
> understand.
>
> Could any of you indicate me how to specify a folder in such cases?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Best regard,
>
> Nobumi Iyanaga
> Tokyo,
> Japan