 |
 | Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us |
 | Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network |
| HomeDiscussionsAccessExcelInfoPathOutlookPowerPointPublisherWordDirectoryUser Groups Related Topics Outlook ExpressInternet ExplorerWindowsMS Server ProductsMore Topics ... |
MS Office Forum / Word / Programming / October 2005retrieve last 10 authors from Word file
Is this a magical question? I know there are tools that will give you this but I want to automate it in some code. Posted a similar question yesterday. Maybe it was too vague. I am looking at maybe parsing it at a binary level to get the info out. It doesn't look like a standard format. Will post it here if I don't get a response. Thanks in advance, --AC I'm not an expert but I don't believe Word holds that information. If you have track changes on, changes can be recorded by author and one might be able to extract all the authors who have made changes but I think that's the limit of it. Parsing the file at a binary level requires knowledge of the OLE structured storage format that Word uses and, except for file properties, Microsoft do not document this so, at best, it would require guesswork. -- Enjoy, Tony > Is this a magical question? I know there are tools that will give you this > but I want to automate it in some code. Posted a similar question [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > Thanks in advance, > --AC It's actually even harder than that. A Word document file doesn't have an OLE structured format. It's polymorphic and, by all accounts deliberately obfuscated, as a security measure. Document properties will tell the original and latest authors. That's it as far as I know. > I'm not an expert but I don't believe Word holds that information. If you > have track changes on, changes can be recorded by author and one might be [quoted text clipped - 24 lines] >> Thanks in advance, >> --AC > It's actually even harder than that. A Word document file doesn't have an > OLE structured format. It's polymorphic and, by all accounts deliberately > obfuscated, as a security measure. It is an OLE structured storage document, but an exceedingly complex one. I don't believe there is any obfuscation for security purposes, it is just a difficult file format. That will be changing in Office 12, where the native file format will be XML-based and the specification will be fully published. > Document properties will tell the original and latest authors. That's it > as far as I know. If you open a Word the document using the "Recover Text from Any File" option, the lat 10 authors are listed towards the end. But I don't know how to reliably select just the right paragraphs in order to machine-read the author list by this technique  SignatureRegards Jonathan West - Word MVP www.intelligentdocuments.co.uk Please reply to the newsgroup Keep your VBA code safe, sign the ClassicVB petition www.classicvb.org >> I'm not an expert but I don't believe Word holds that information. If you >> have track changes on, changes can be recorded by author and one might be [quoted text clipped - 24 lines] >>> Thanks in advance, >>> --AC Perhaps we have a different understanding of "OLE structured" -- the Word object model is OLE structured, but I don't know what it means to say that the file itself is: you can't link the file itself or make OLE calls to it. >> It's actually even harder than that. A Word document file doesn't have an >> OLE structured format. It's polymorphic and, by all accounts deliberately [quoted text clipped - 45 lines] >>>> Thanks in advance, >>>> --AC The file, itself, is not an OLE object, it allows for the storing of OLE objects. I also believe that what few API routines are available do not have VBA wrappers and, although I have a rough idea of the structure, for all practical purposes it is a black box. -- Enjoy, Tony > Perhaps we have a different understanding of "OLE structured" -- the Word > object model is OLE structured, but I don't know what it means to say that [quoted text clipped - 56 lines] > >>>> Thanks in advance, > >>>> --AC > Perhaps we have a different understanding of "OLE structured" -- the Word > object model is OLE structured, but I don't know what it means to say that > the file itself is: you can't link the file itself or make OLE calls to > it. "OLE structured storage" is a technical term for a class of file formats, just like "XML" is. Saying that a file is XML doesn't help you a while lot unless and until you know what the various XML tags within the file are supposed to mean. That meaning varies depending on what XML Schema(s) have been applied. So it is with the OLE structured storage format - there is a very long & detailed specification of the Word Binary File Format (which I have not seen) but which uses the overall "grammar" of the OLE structured storage format. SignatureRegards Jonathan West - Word MVP www.intelligentdocuments.co.uk Please reply to the newsgroup Keep your VBA code safe, sign the ClassicVB petition www.classicvb.org I suspect the script editor ALT+SHIFT+F11 will give you all that there is to get from the document, but I don't have to hand a document edited by multiple authors to check what is included. Signature<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<> Graham Mayor - Word MVP My web site www.gmayor.com Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org <>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<> > I'm not an expert but I don't believe Word holds that information. If > you have track changes on, changes can be recorded by author and one [quoted text clipped - 18 lines] >> Thanks in advance, >> --AC > Is this a magical question? I know there are tools that will give you > this [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > Thanks in advance, > --AC WordLeaker is all we have at this time that is freeware. There are some packages you can apparently pay for but didn't find demos to run and this works, so went with it. It works ok and I have sort of automated it. It comes with source too. Using it on Word97 files so not sure how well it works with later versions. http://tinyurl.com/aggad --AC P.S. for the search engines, Microsoft Word, Last Ten Authors , Author History Actually, Word does store info about the last 10 authors to edit a document and also complete path and filename info. It is called "metadata" and it has been biting a lot of people in the a__. There are numerous documents on Microsoft's Knowledge Base about Metadata and these articles tell you exactly what type of information is being stored in your documents. If you want to see the metadata that is in a document, from Word choose File, Open. In the file type drop down list select Recover Text From any File, then select a document that you know has been edited by several people. As you scroll down through the document you will see this info. Anne P. >> Is this a magical question? I know there are tools that will give you >> this [quoted text clipped - 20 lines] > P.S. for the search engines, Microsoft Word, Last Ten Authors , Author > History <snip/> >>> I am looking at maybe parsing it at a binary level to get the info out. >>> It doesn't look like a standard format. Will post it here if I don't >>> get a response. <snip/> >> WordLeaker is all we have at this time that is freeware. There are some >> packages you can apparently pay for but didn't find demos to run and this [quoted text clipped - 23 lines] > > Anne P. "There are numerous documents on Microsoft's Knowledge Base about Metadata and these articles tell you exactly what type of information is being stored in your documents." I know it stores the last ten authors which is what this thread is about. That's not the question. The question was how to retrieve the author history programmatically. If I am talking about handling Word files at the binary level don't you think I would know how to view the data as text? My "solution" post was an attempt to help others looking for programmatic information since it is hard to find. Regards Save your attitude for someone who deserves it. Maybe my reply got posted in the "wrong level" of this thread. I was not referring directly to your post, or impugning your knowledge. I was simply pointing out in reply to "other" posts that the author information most assuredly is stored and is referred to as Metadata. I assumed that an interested party would think to do a Google search on metadata. After all, there are a large number of solutions out there for sale to "clean" this information out of a file, so maybe the poster could find out how they retrieve this information. Anne P. > <snip/> >>>> I am looking at maybe parsing it at a binary level to get the info out. [quoted text clipped - 41 lines] > > Regards |
Reply to this Message |
 Sign In
 Join
 My Latest Posts My Monitored Threads My Blog My Photo Gallery My Profile My Homepage Start New Thread Enable EMail Alerts Rate this Thread
|
©2008 Advenet LLC Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.