Any way to disable "More..." within the Research Pane?

[Marchand]

Since it looks like the Research Pane is literally unavoidable in Word 2003,
so be it. But I need to disable, or redeirect, the "More..." option on the
"Getting Started" variant of that pane. Currently this opens the standard
"File / Open" dialog box. In this particular solution I'm wrapping Word in a
C# application and need to either disable the "More..." function entirely or
substitute a custom form to replace the standard "Open" dialog . Does anyone
know if this can be done, and even better, how?

= M =

 

[Shauna Kelly]

Hi Marchand

I think the terminology might be getting away from you. If I do View > Task
Pane, what pops up on the right hand side of the screen (well, by default
it's on the right) is the Task Pane. I can click the very first text in that
and choose the Research pane. So the Research pane is just one of the
several panes shown in the Task Pane.

You can disable the "Getting Started" pane. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/ShowTaskPane.htm

You can intercept the File > Open command and replace it with your own. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/InterceptSavePrint.htm

Hope this helps.

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word

 

[Marchand]

Shauna,

Thanks for your detailed reply, and my apologies for the delay getting back
to this thread. I want to acknowledge both your links, one for the standard
way of turning off the Reaerch Pane initially and the standard way of
(re)defining Word macros. But neither seem to help me in this situation.
I'm working on a project where the standard "File / Open" dialog box
must be replaced with a more restictive version from wherever in Word that
dialog box can appear. Re-programming the relevant menus, icons, and shortcut
keys has been done. But there are still places within Word which bring up
that dialog box -- the "More.." link on the Research Pane is one such case --
that I'm having trouble with. As you know. the Task Pane (in all its
variants) can be brought up any number of ways (and times) within Word And
that's generally fine, with the exception of the either disabling the
"More..." link or intercepting/reprogramming what happens when that's
clicked. I simply don't know how to deal with that situation -- hence the
original question.
I suspect you're totally right when saying I'm on thr wrong track here.
Perhaps, for instance, instead of reprogramming Word's methods of invoking
that dialog box, I should intercept the API calls Word makes to bring up that
dialog box regardless of what object/event in Word invokes it. Is this a
feasible approach?

= M =

 

[Shauna Kelly]

Hi

Did you try intercepting the File > Open command as described in the link at
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/InterceptSavePrint.htm

What happens when you do that and you then click the "More" button?

Shauna

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word

 

[Marchand]

Do you know if there is a C# equivalent to this? There will no VBA on the
machines running this application. (You didn't think this was going to be
easy, did you?). While Visual Studio/PIA/CLR/whatever do expose some events,
like document opening, closing, etc. I've not seen any reference to an event
like "before opening the 'File/Open' dialog box". It may well be I'm not
looking in the right place, though. There are very many libraries involved
there. The core goal is to intercept the opening of the dialog box itself,
not to trap events which may be triggered from within the dialog box once
it's open.

= M =

 

[Russ]

You should have said from the beginning that no VBA solutions could be used.
Your are more likely to find C# answers in a different forum. It does appear
that you must use the operating system API's to do what you want.

 

[Marchand]

Russ,

You're right. The "I'm wrapping Word in a C# application" in the
original question didn't note that absence of VBA other than by implication.
More generally though, I had assumed a "Word Programming" group meant
folks who are doing Word programming. Should I understand that this group is
strictly for those programming Word just using VBA?

= M =

 

[Russ]

M,
Not necessarily just for VBA. Sometimes responders will show how to use
Windows API, shell, wshell, wscript, jscript, etc., from VBA, but usually
all tied to VBA. Of course most of those answers don't apply to my MacWord
at home, but I do use Windows at work. When you say no VBA allowed, then you
are cutting off the main reason for people looking at this forum.
You can always troll for possible answers in any forum, but try to make your
criteria for an answer more obvious up front, please, to eliminate any
wasted effort.
Another distinction is that VBA is an interpreted scripting language, unlike
VB which can be compiled. So many people here have never compiled a program
into an executable.
Have you tried the other forums dedicated to those kind of languages that
require compiling into executables? C#?

Other more technical Word forums are:
microsoft.public.word.programming
microsoft.public.word.oleinterop
microsoft.public.word.vba.addins

You can form one question and send it TO: multiple forums at the same time.
That way everybody can track what has been asked and answered already by
each forum.

 

[Marchand]

Russ,

Thanks for your detailed reply. It was preciseley those folks who know
how to access/use the API calls I was 'trolling' for. Since cross-posting is
generally frowned upon, I had to decide which forum to start with and this
seemed the obvious one.

= M =

 

[Russ]

Marchand,
Cross-posting is not as bad as multi-posting.