Trying to get author / title of a DOC file in VB2005

[AlJones]

The title says it all, almost I want to be able to do this on a macine
which may not have office installed.
I've spent last evening and most of the day so far perusing the web and
most of what I've found has been vb6 or vba.
If someone has the code to do that I'd sure appreciate it (okay, I'm lazy)
-or-
a specific reference in MSDN or from the web would also be appreciated.

email if you wish alfredmjones .at. hotmail .dot. com. It's my trash
account, but I do look before I delete everything.
thanks //al

[ralph]

Post by AlJones
The title says it all, almost I want to be able to do this on a macine
which may not have office installed.
I've spent last evening and most of the day so far perusing the web and
most of what I've found has been vb6 or vba.
If someone has the code to do that I'd sure appreciate it (okay, I'm lazy)
-or-
a specific reference in MSDN or from the web would also be appreciated.

First off, (and hopefully without starting a flame war <g>) this
newsgroup is visited and used mostly by users of the "Visual Basic
Development Platform" (VB) and not by users of the ".Net Framework",
thus you will likely get better and more responses from a .Net Forum.

[I don't use VB.Net myself, preferring VC++/CLI and C#, but the
following general background might help.]

The retrieving and editing this information without automation has
typically* been done via the OLE Compound document interfaces -
IPropertyStorage and IPropertySetStorage.
for example:
"How To Read Compound Document Properties Directly with VC++"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q186898/

Another way of doing this ...
"The Dsofile.dll files lets you edit Office document properties when
you do not have Office installed"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q224351/

A little research online with those intefaces as keywords should
produce several VB.Net examples (or more likely C# solutions which you
can convert or employ directly within your VB.Net application.)

hth

-ralph
[* there are also several schemes to mine this 'meta-information'
directly from the binary file, but such 'hacks' are usually very
fragile and always version dependent. Files stored in the new XML
formats (eg. docx) can also be mined as you might any ASCII file.]

[ralph]

On Sun, 24 Apr 2011 13:42:01 -0500, ralph <***@yahoo.net>
wrote:

Oops!

Post by ralph
A little research online with those intefaces as keywords should
produce several VB.Net examples (or more likely C# solutions which you
can convert or employ directly within your VB.Net application.)

Meant to say "A little research online with those intefaces OR DLL as
keywords ..."

-ralph

[AlJones]

Post by ralph

Post by AlJones
The title says it all, almost I want to be able to do this on a macine
which may not have office installed.
I've spent last evening and most of the day so far perusing the web and
most of what I've found has been vb6 or vba.
If someone has the code to do that I'd sure appreciate it (okay, I'm lazy)
-or-
a specific reference in MSDN or from the web would also be appreciated.

First off, (and hopefully without starting a flame war <g>) this
newsgroup is visited and used mostly by users of the "Visual Basic
Development Platform" (VB) and not by users of the ".Net Framework",
thus you will likely get better and more responses from a .Net Forum.
[I don't use VB.Net myself, preferring VC++/CLI and C#, but the
following general background might help.]
The retrieving and editing this information without automation has
typically* been done via the OLE Compound document interfaces -
IPropertyStorage and IPropertySetStorage.
"How To Read Compound Document Properties Directly with VC++"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q186898/
Another way of doing this ...
"The Dsofile.dll files lets you edit Office document properties when
you do not have Office installed"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q224351/
A little research online with those intefaces as keywords should
produce several VB.Net examples (or more likely C# solutions which you
can convert or employ directly within your VB.Net application.)
hth
-ralph
[* there are also several schemes to mine this 'meta-information'
directly from the binary file, but such 'hacks' are usually very
fragile and always version dependent. Files stored in the new XML
formats (eg. docx) can also be mined as you might any ASCII file.]

Thanks Ralph I'll go look at your references and sorry for being OT. Would
you mind pointing me to a more appropriate NG.
//al

[ralph]

Post by AlJones
Thanks Ralph I'll go look at your references and sorry for being OT. Would
you mind pointing me to a more appropriate NG.
//al

You're not necessarily OT, it is simply that few .Netters hang out
here.

Microsoft has abandoned most of the newsgroups so you should probably
use Forums...
http://www.microsoft.com/communities/default.mspx ... ->
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/categories

Here is a general observation that IMHO will help you with future
questions in those forums.

1) .Net development is centered around three major areas.
1) A particular management language (VB, C#, VC, ...)
2) The .Net Framework, and
3) The Visual Studio IDE itself.
Try to insure your question is directed to the proper area, and ...

2) leave "VB" out of your question unless it is specifically a VB
question.

Because, I've found .Netters tend to be amazingly elitist and language
snobs. <bg>

-ralph

[Mayayana]

Also try here:

microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vb

As Ralph said, MS has abandoned their newsgroups
in favor of web forums that they can control, but
the newsgroups are still there; people are still
posting and answering.

[Steve Rindsberg]

Post by ralph
The retrieving and editing this information without automation has
typically* been done via the OLE Compound document interfaces -
IPropertyStorage and IPropertySetStorage.
"How To Read Compound Document Properties Directly with VC++"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q186898/
Another way of doing this ...
"The Dsofile.dll files lets you edit Office document properties when
you do not have Office installed"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q224351/
A little research online with those intefaces as keywords should
produce several VB.Net examples (or more likely C# solutions which you
can convert or employ directly within your VB.Net application.)
hth
-ralph
[* there are also several schemes to mine this 'meta-information'
directly from the binary file, but such 'hacks' are usually very
fragile and always version dependent. Files stored in the new XML
formats (eg. docx) can also be mined as you might any ASCII file.]

Or rather, the XML and other data in DOCX files can be mined once you extract
them from the ZIP container. All of the Office *.*X files are ZIP files.

I'm guesing that DSOFile doesn't know what to do with these. Is that
correct?

[GS]

Post by Steve Rindsberg

Post by ralph
The retrieving and editing this information without automation has
typically* been done via the OLE Compound document interfaces -
IPropertyStorage and IPropertySetStorage.
"How To Read Compound Document Properties Directly with VC++"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q186898/
Another way of doing this ...
"The Dsofile.dll files lets you edit Office document properties when
you do not have Office installed"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q224351/
A little research online with those intefaces as keywords should
produce several VB.Net examples (or more likely C# solutions which you
can convert or employ directly within your VB.Net application.)
hth
-ralph
[* there are also several schemes to mine this 'meta-information'
directly from the binary file, but such 'hacks' are usually very
fragile and always version dependent. Files stored in the new XML
formats (eg. docx) can also be mined as you might any ASCII file.]

Or rather, the XML and other data in DOCX files can be mined once you extract
them from the ZIP container. All of the Office *.*X files are ZIP files.
I'm guesing that DSOFile doesn't know what to do with these. Is that
correct?

AFAIK, Dsofile reads/writes the 'properties' that list on the "Details"
tab of the file's 'Properties' dialog. These used to be found on the
"Summary" tab on files stored on NTFS volumes prior to Win6.x arriving.

The newer versions no longer support NTFS SummaryProperties but I
believe the newer version of Dsofile still works with the new file
structure. The only change is the "Keywords" prop has been renamed
"Tag", but using the old name still works for both.

[GS]

The newer versions no longer support NTFS...

The above should read...

The newer OS versions no longer support NTFS...