Programmatically extract File Description Comments 1

[rockfish12]

Is there a way, using VBA, to extract any/all of the File Description elements for a given file?

To further clarify, in Win2K - and maybe other Win OS's (?) - , when you right-click on a file to get its properties, and click on the Summary tab, there are a number of Description elements that users can type stuff in, including Title, Subject, Category, Keyword, Comments, etc...

I have some text files where a user has entered values in the Comments portion of the File Description. Can I get at these programmatically using VBA? I'm trying to write the name of the file and the associated Comments to an Access table.

 

[sfvb]

The following example assumes that you are trying to get these properties from a document that is not currently open:

Sub Test()
   Call GetAttributes("C:\MyTestFile.doc")
End Sub


Sub GetAttributes(strFileName As String)
   Dim objApp        As Word.Application
   Dim strProps      As String
   Dim strRevNum     As String
   
   Set objApp = CreateObject("Word.Application")
   objApp.Visible = False
   objApp.DisplayAlerts = False
   objApp.Documents.Open FileName:=strFileName, _
      ConfirmConversions:=False, ReadOnly:=True, AddToRecentFiles:=False, _
      PasswordDocument:="", PasswordTemplate:="", Revert:=False, _
      WritePasswordDocument:="", WritePasswordTemplate:="", _
      Format:=wdOpenFormatAuto
    
   For Each prop In objApp.ActiveDocument.BuiltInDocumentProperties
      strProps = strProps & prop.Name & "= "
      On Error Resume Next
      strProps = strProps & prop.Value
      strProps = strProps & Chr(10)
   Next
   MsgBox strProps
   
   strRevNum = "Revision Number = " & objApp.ActiveDocument.BuiltInDocumentProperties(wdPropertyRevision)
   MsgBox strRevNum

   'the enumerated properties for BuiltInDocumentProperties are:
   '   wdPropertyAppName
   '   wdPropertyAuthor
   '   wdPropertyBytes
   '   wdPropertyCategory
   '   wdPropertyCharacters
   '   wdPropertyCharsWSpaces
   '   wdPropertyComments
   '   wdPropertyCompany
   '   wdPropertyFormat
   '   wdPropertyHiddenSlides
   '   wdPropertyHyperlinkBase
   '   wdPropertyKeywords
   '   wdPropertyLastAuthor
   '   wdPropertyLines
   '   wdPropertyManager
   '   wdPropertyMMClips
   '   wdPropertyNotes
   '   wdPropertyPages
   '   wdPropertyParas
   '   wdPropertyRevision
   '   wdPropertySecurity
   '   wdPropertySlides
   '   wdPropertySubject
   '   wdPropertyTemplate
   '   wdPropertyTimeCreated
   '   wdPropertyTimeLastPrinted
   '   wdPropertyTimeLastSaved
   '   wdPropertyTitle
   '   wdPropertyVBATotalEdit
   '   wdPropertyWords

   objApp.Documents.Close SaveChanges:=False
   objApp.Quit
   Set objApp = Nothing
End Sub

 

[rockfish12]

Thanks for your help.

I should have specified that all of the files are plain text files, in .txt format. I tried saving one of them as a Word Document, but unfortunately, it looks like Word loses the comments in the conversion.

Is there any way to either get Word to preserve these comments, or is there a way to run VBA that will get comments from a plain .txt file?