File Properties 1

[cwalshe]

I am trying to access and copy some of the file properties that appear in the file properties dialog box for MS Office products. I tried the filesystemobject and got back data like path, size, etc. However the data that I really wanted to capture is keywords, comments, author,etc that the user is allowed to enter into the file prop box.

Any ideas?

 

[HermanvLimbeek]

check threads thread222-83455 and thread222-83493. That should help you on your way.

Herman :-Q

 

[strongm]

The problem here is that the 'properties' that you are trying to examine are not really properties of the file system, so they are not easy to access.

The way the office apps works is to use structured storage (a sort of variant of compund documents), and the properties that you want to look at are held in one of the data streams within that structured storage document.

Now Microsoft were bright enough to figure out that people might want to look at this info (or, more accurateley, create their own Office-compatible documents), so they started a project (and provided ActiveX objects) to allow this to be done. Trouble is that they never finished it properly, in that it only works in VBA in an Office application and not in VB itself. If this seems suitable then check out:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?URL=/library/techart/msdn_docprop.htm

for info and examples.

Of course, the an additional problem with the above is that it appears to require that MS Office be installed on the target machine (I don't believe that the important DLL, MSOC.DLL, is redistributable).

So, let's reject that option. Microsoft did, and came up with a better alternative, which you can find here:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q224/3/51.ASP