Doubts in Ms Office

[Revolution]

Dear Gurus,

I am sorry to ask this question in this community. I want get to know about Microsoft Word Header Infomation.

I had decided to write a software in that It stores some information about the user, so whenever the user opens it. It shows a dialog box about it.

--> Now I had an Idea that instead of storing the Information in a separate file why can't we store it in the Windows Header Information file so that if the file moves to another machine and If my software running there I can able to get the Information ( without database file ).

--> Now My question is that is it possible to write some user information in Windows ( or MS Office ) File Header and whether it is possible to read the information.

--> Tell me the site having information about it

Please guide me Gurus

Thanks in Advance

[NoHero]

[ Moved Thread ]

Regards

[olivthill]

Don't be sorry for asking any questions you like. A forum is a place for questions.

You can try to write some data in MS-Word file header, but personally, I wouldn't do that because:

1. It might overwrite data useful to Word.

2. The internal structure of a Word document, as far as I know, is officially undocumented. A few years ago, I searched for pieces of information about it. I found the specification of the ".wri" files which is the same as the definition of old Word documents, in the book "Inside Windows Format", by Tom Swan. I found a detailed description of the format of "Word for Windows" as it was called in 1994 in the book "Mixed language programming by M.A. Telles. I know that the open sources of "Star Office" contains the format of the file. But with each new version of Word, the format is subject to changes. It is said that the next format will look like XML.

3. Saving data about a user in a Word file might lead to duplicates. Maybe you will have to put the same informations in several Word files.

4. It seems easier to save data (and procedures if you want) in the VBA code associated with Word files.

[NigelQ]

There is space for some summary information within a Word document that often (but not always) goes unused.

This information is displayed when you access the file properties after you've opened the document or when you display the properties of the document from the shell interface (such as "Author", etc.).

If you can store whatever you need here this might work, while remaining within the bounds of what will not break the document.

Search for DocumentSummaryInformation for more details of this summary information, and accessing it.

Hope this helps,

- Nigel