Overwriting Save Functions/Buttons

[Leon Pinkney]

Hi,

My company is the author of a document management system, and what we are
looking to do is override the save functions from within words, so that when
a user tries to save a document, they will be given the choice of saving to
the system (the normal) or saving to our document management system. Saving
to the document management system is no problem, this code is already there,
however on reading up on the word object model in visual basic, in order to
replace the filesave and filesaveas functions, there are a number of other
functions which will also need to be replaced, in order to capture all such
events where filesave might be called, such as shutting down word with a
document which is unsaved will cause a save prompt.

Is it possible that someone might list the events which I would need to
consider ?

Also once I override the save functions to trigger an option first, if the
user did decide to save simply to the system, how do we go about utilising
the save functions already built into word? As i understand it to override
the built in functions I need to name my functions the same as the
originals.

Simply writing macros is not really a possibility here as it would make
client role out extremely difficult!

Thanks in advance for any help given,

Leon Pinkney

 

[Malcolm Smith]

Leon

I find it very, very strange that a company who makes Document Management
Systems have to ask this question.

Did you look into using ODMA, for example?

Give my regards to leafy Surrey,
- Malc
www.dragondrop.com

 

[Leon Pinkney]

Malcolm,

I dont think my question is strange at all. I was aware of where I wanted
to go, how I needed to go about doing it, but just looking for a little
direction, and a shortcut (in terms of the list of functions).

This aspect of our DMS is one which has come about in the last day and as
such there has of yet been no real background reading into whats required to
achieve our goal. Its friday afternoon as im sure you can appreciate, so I
have taken a quick scan into ODMA and it appears to be almost exactly what
we were about to develop perhaps, and could save us a lot of time, or at
least provide a basis to work on.

Looking at your website you have obviously done a lot of work with the
office suite which gives reason for your knowledge of ODMA, however our
product uses but is not restricted to MS Office and therefore to pour our
time only into one product, probably to the depths you have would not be
best practice.

Thanks for your input anyhow, it should be most useful.

Many Thanks,

Leon Pinkney

 

[Malcolm Smith]

Leon

For Word applications why not put all these functions into a start-up
template and then distribute that to the clients along with your
application?

It's not uncommon to have some code to link between the application and
the DMS.

- Malc

 

[Jezebel]

The Application_DocumentBeforeSave event should be sufficient. (Better be,
because that's really all you've got!)

If you write a macro that over-rides a built-in command (eg FileSaveAs)
there is then no way to call the built-in function. However, the
functionality is all still available. Check help on the Dialogs collection
and its methods. Eg, you can call the FileSaveAs dialog and show it with or
without executing it, or execute it without showing it.

Bear in mind that a savvy USER can call any built-in function and by-pass
your over-ride macro (Tools > Macros : Select 'Word Commands' from the
'Macros In' list).

 

[Malcolm Smith]

Indeed, this is where we get ODMA.

ODMA is one of things which works great in theory but when it plays up
it's a mess. With DOCSOpen it worked well as that was a simple DMS, but
then when Hummingbird brought out PowerDOCS and DM5 when things went wrong
they went really wrong.

In my spare time I need to investigate iManage a little more and also get
on to SharePoint. For the latter I am owed a new machine so that will be
my forthcoming SharePoint server.

But, as you say, overriding these events is the way forward which is why I
suggested that extra start-up template.

Right, it's a Saturday morning and I still haven't looked at the St Leger
yet.

- Malc

 

[Jezebel]

Well presumably YOU know what you were trying to say. As an exercise in
communication, I'd have to say it's a total failure.

 

[Malcolm Smith]

Quite. Perhaps I ought to stand for parliament after all.

I'll get my coat!

- Malc