Automation with Office 365

[Mike Lewis]

I've just had a request for help from a VFP developer who is trying to do Automation with Office, but is getting server failure errors on a particular computer. I suspect that the reason is that the computer in question has Office 365 installed.

Am I right in assuming that you can't do Automation with Office 365, because the required COM components are not actually installed and registered on the computer? If that is right, is there any simple workaround, or will he have to install the full version of Office?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Mike

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Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[Olaf Doschke]

It's the easiest choice to install the full version.

As mentioned elsewhere last year I had a case of the very start of automation, the CREATEOBJECT("Outlook.Application") not working for some clients but still with others, though the customer swears all workstations are installed with the same image of software. Obviously they were not, but I never got hands on a non working station. Maybe it was too embarrassing for them to admit some got the full versions and other just access to the online office platform.

I haven't seen any components downward compatible, so you could reuse automation code and automate the cloud apps and we already discussed where to find the API of that (eg see

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/office365/howto/starter-projects-and-code-samples),

but that it will be a reimplementation of automation not allowing any code recycling.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[DSummZZZ]

Mike,

I'm guessing that if they are running strictly in the cloud the instance of the 'server' would be running in the browser rather than in local memory, so yeah. If 365 created an instance locally, in memory, VFP may be able to reference it. Possibly starting Office 365 before running automation may cure it but that's the part I'm unsure of.

Here's a possible helpful hit:

http://tinyurl.com/mjxgg7m

-Dave Summers-

Even more Fox stuff at:

http://www.dave-summers.net/foxprolinks.htm

 

[Mike Lewis]

Dave and Olaf,

Thanks very much for both those responses. I was about to write to the developer to suggest that he try starting Office before making the Automation call (as per Dave's suggestion), but then I got an email from him saying he had cured it by running his app in compatibility mode.

I'm not sure I completely understand why that should be the case. If I get any more information, I'll report back here for the benefit of anyone else who may have the same problem.

Mike

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Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads