Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint file formats. Selecting text encoding when opening and saving files Requires a converter to display the file correctly

In day-to-day IT tasks such as network administration and user support, there are often various files, especially documents written in text editors. Unfortunately built-in windows tools allow you to work with documents only as files; The standard tools do not handle internal Word data, such as document type conversion.

I have compiled a WSH (Windows Script Host) script called ConvertWord which is used as a command shell for Microsoft Word and makes it easier to work with documents. In addition, the script can be useful for testing invalid documents.

Requirements

Word 97 or later must be installed on your computer to use ConvertWord text editor. The full source code for ConvertWord can be downloaded from our magazine's Web site. The fragments of the ConvertWord script are shown below. The convertword.wsf and convertword.cmd files should be saved in the same folder.

ConvertWord can automatically use any file format converter implemented in Word. Comes with Word basic set file format converters for standard documents. However, this set does not include special converters, for example for Microsoft documents Works or WordPerfect. These and other optional converters require a custom installation of Word.

Standard Word converters included in the package Microsoft Office Resource Kits can be downloaded from office pages 2003 Editions Resource Kit at http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/2003/default.htm . The converters in the resource pack are compatible with Word 97 and newer versions of the editor. After installing the resource pack, go to the created directory (by default, \%programfiles%orktools) and find the file with the set of converters (oconvpck.exe), and then run oconvpck.exe on all computers where you want to deploy the converters.

Purpose of ConvertWord

The original purpose of creating ConvertWord was to perform some tasks that the Batch Conversion Wizard could not do. word editor. The Batch Conversion Wizard is a useful addition to any administrator's toolkit. A wizard is a Word template that converts one input format to one output format. More detailed information For more information about this conversion, see the Microsoft article "How to automatically convert many documents to Word 2002 format" at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=313714.

The Batch Conversion Wizard performs many tasks, but is not optimized for some of them, such as remote administration or automating simple conversions for end users sharing documents on separate sites. ConvertWord can help you solve these distributed conversion problems by performing the following basic operations.

• Sends a query to the system about the version of Word that it has.
• Automatically opens lists of documents of mixed types of arbitrary length.
• Guaranteed to save documents with unique names in Word format (default) or other formats.
• Tests documents looking for formatting issues and incorrect user passwords.

How convertword works

The ConvertWord conversion process is a four step process. In the first step, the script generates an instance of the Word application, as shown in the snippet Listing 1 labeled A. Part of the source code of the script is intended to minimize the number of dialog boxes. For example, source code labeled B blocks dialog boxes, when it's possible.

In the second step, ConvertWord opens each document. Word object contains a set of Documents; when calling the Open method of this set (fragment labeled A in Listing 2) the document is retrieved. If you know the name of the document and want Word to automatically determine its format, you can call the method with only the name of the document as an argument.

Or you can specify the document format as another parameter to the Open method. Unfortunately, depending on the version of Word, the Open method requires up to 16 parameters. Because the format control parameter is in tenth place, the previous nine parameters must be specified. The result is a long, unwieldy string. Parameter information can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/enus/dv_wrcore/html/wrconwordobjectmodeloverview.asp or in Word Help.

The ConvertWord parameters are FileName, ConfirmConversions, ReadOnly, AddToRecentFiles, PasswordDocument, PasswordTemplate, Revert, WritePasswordDocument, WritePasswordTemplate, and Format. The FileName parameter is the file name of the Word document. You can use the ConfirmConversions parameter to display a dialog box when Word converts an open document. In ConvertWord, this parameter is always set to False to facilitate automation.

The ReadOnly parameter controls the process of opening a read-only document; ConvertWord always sets this parameter to True so that the original document is not changed. AddToRecentFiles determines whether the opened document will be listed in the RecentFiles list current user. The document can be one of dozens or even hundreds, so adding it to the list is not recommended and the parameter is set to False.

PasswordDocument is the password for opening protected documents, and PasswordTemplate is the password for templates. These values ​​are useless for non-Word documents, so two double quotes ("") can be used instead of any parameter to indicate an empty string. The Revert parameter determines whether the script will return to the current open version document if the document to be converted is already open. ConvertWord sets this parameter to True to avoid losing changes and to activate only the open copy of the document.

The WritePasswordDocument and WritePasswordTemplate parameters specify the passwords required for saving open document or template. For the purposes of this article, these parameters are optional because ConvertWord does not overwrite the original document; so the script specifies "" for each of these arguments.

Finally, the Format parameter is a number that indicates the method that Word uses to determine the format of an open document. It is not easy to correctly specify a number, since numbers and the methods they represent depend on installed version Word, additional document converters and installation procedures. Suppose we need to open and convert an RTF (Rich Text Format) document with a format opening code of 3. To open a sample document using a standard RTF converter, the following procedure is used:

Set doc = Word.Documents._

Open("c:my.rtf", False, _

True, False, "", "", _

True, "", "", 3)

Some lines source code in this article are divided into several lines due to lack of space. List of additional document converters with corresponding numbers and standard extensions can be found using the FileConverters object set. The source code in Listing 3 shows a list of these converters. The list does not include standard word converters. A list of standard Word converters can be found at tab. 1 and Word Help.

The CreateFormatCollections routine of the ConvertWord script displays a list of Word converters. While the script does make it a little easier to determine the opening and saving formats, the format used to open or save a document depends on the version of Word and how the converters are installed.

After opening the document a new version saved using the SaveAs method (fragment labeled A in Listing 4). The SaveAs method accepts up to 16 parameters, but we only need two because the required SaveFormat parameter is the second one. As with the OpenFormat options, you must specify the format codes of the document you are opening in the SaveFormat option. To specify the save format - for example, to save the document in a pure text file C: my.txt - enter the command

doc.SaveAs "C:my.txt", 2

After saving the document, ConvertWord closes it with the Close method (label B of Listing 4). False specifies that Word should discard changes if the document has been modified since it was saved. When the script opens, saves, and closes all documents in sequence, the last step is to exit Word by calling Word's Quit method ( listing 5).

Using ConvertWord

Before starting ConvertWord for the first time, it is useful to familiarize yourself with the information about the local version of Word by running the command

convertword /version

This command shows important information, including the number of the version of Word installed on the machine. Microsoft has removed the version number from the product name since Office 95 (which would have been called Office 7), but the internal version number increases by 1 with each major release. updated version. The same numbering scheme is used in Word as a component of the Office suite. The internal version numbers are 8 (Word 97), 9 (Word 2000), 10 (Word 2002), and 11 (Word 2003).

By default, ConvertWord automatically opens files by making educated guesses about their format (e.g. Word, plain text, WordPerfect, RTF) and saves them as Word documents, giving them unique names consisting of the file name, an underscore, and a number. ConvertWord provides several ways to name documents. The file name can be entered as an argument to the following command:

convertword unicode.txt plain.txt

Otherdocscorel.wps

As a result of this approach, output files in Word format are saved as unicode.doc, plain.doc, and otherdocscorel.doc. Another option is to set up ConvertWord to read files from a standard source, like so:

convertword

The results of a command that creates a list of files can be sent to ConvertWord as follows:

dir /s /b c:inbox*.txt

| convertword

If the input data is not set, then ConvertWord asks you to specify the names of the input documents until the Ctrl + C key combination is pressed twice.

ConvertWord has a simple method to avoid overwriting files with the same name. Let's say you want to save a Word file as a text file called mylist.txt. If a file with that name already exists, then ConvertWord starts iterating through a sequence of derived names - mylist_1.txt, mylist_2.txt, etc. - until an unused name is found. This name is then assigned to the saved file. Typically, finding the file name takes less time than opening and saving a document manually.

Changing the storage location and file name

ConvertWord saves files in the same folder as original file, with the same base name. Thus, when converting files for many users or groups of users, new files will be placed next to the old ones. Usually users know "their" files and remember their names.

But you can change the directory where the converted documents are stored. To do this, just specify the / d switch with full name, which can be absolute or relative to a path that points to the folder where the script is running. ConvertWord expands the path to the full format and creates the appropriate directory if it doesn't already exist.

convertword /d:c:empexports

You can change the base name (file name without extension) using the /b switch. If ConvertWord finds multiple files with the same name, then ConvertWord changes the file names as explained above. You can also use the /x switch to specify a file extension other than the standard extension of the exported file type.

Create non-Word documents

By default, ConvertWord automatically generates Word documents. If you want to create a non-Word document, you can use the /sa option of the ConvertWord utility to change standard format conservation. The formats in which files can be saved vary depending on the version of Word and additional converters available on the system on which ConvertWord is running. The first step when saving a file in a particular format is to start Word with the /cnv switch to view the installed converters; converter number corresponds to the type in which you want to save new file. If all files need to be saved in a specific format, such as RTF (number 6), then the /sa:6 switch should be added to the ConvertWord arguments. For example, to convert all WordPerfect files in the current folder to RTF, run the command

dir /s /b *.wpd

| convertword /sa:6

Depending on the version of Word and installed converters, the number of available formats may be large. Before converting files, you should always check the types, because in different machines their numbers will be different. The only exception to this annoying rule is the standard built-in Word converters. Word 97 and later have the same values ​​from 0 to 6, and the numbers standard types increase with the addition of new versions. For Word 2003, the numbers 0 through 11 will be the same on all machines. The exception to the standard values ​​is the output with the number -1. This value does not match the Word converter, but is used as a ConvertWord command to write data from a document file to the console. It can be set using the /sa - /sa:-1 or /sa+ switch.

Error processing

During large-scale conversion operations, problems may occur with some files. You need a way to keep track of documents that have failed to convert. If the file cannot be converted, ConvertWord passes the file name and descriptive information to the standard error stream (StdErr); an administrator can monitor failures by watching filenames scroll on the screen, or by redirecting error data to a file for later analysis, such as:

Errors.txt

By default, ConvertWord shows errors by giving only the filename and error number:

c:demo.rtf FAILED: 2

Using the /v+ (verbose output) switch, you can get more detailed information about the error:

convertword
/v+>errors.txt

The /v- switch does not print error numbers; instead, the filename is simply passed to StdErr to facilitate subsequent processing.

The last error found by ConvertWord is always taken as the final error level; after the script terminates, this value is available in the command environment and can be read by another script that determines whether the call to ConvertWord succeeded or failed.

To detect potential errors without converting documents, you can run ConvertWord with the /w (what if) switch. This switch causes ConvertWord to open all documents without saving them. If any files fail, such as internal data being corrupted, a normal error message will be issued.

Solving the password problem

Passwords are particularly problematic in batch processing because they can be different for different documents. By default, ConvertWord uses the space character as the password, which opens all documents that do not have passwords, and documents with passwords generate an error that does not stop further processing.

This behavior can be changed with the /p (password) switch. If you specify an empty argument (for example, /p: ""), then Word asks you to enter a password for all protected documents. With the /p key, you can specify specific password. However, you will not be able to open documents without a password or with a password other than the specified one.

Practical application of ConvertWord

I've run approximately 30,000 conversions using ConvertWord and found a few common problems. Unusual crashes were almost invariably caused by Word automation bugs; the error number and message in most cases came from Word. Most errors (such as an incorrect password) are easy to fix or understand. The next three mistakes were repeated quite regularly.

The first of these is the pop-up Word dialog box for documents containing macros. By default, ConvertWord blocks macros in documents to protect the user from dangerous code. However, when Word opens documents that contain macros, a dialog box appears with a message about blocking macros. The only way I know of to fix this window is to allow macros to run. You can do this by running ConvertWord and specifying the /as (automation security) key with a value of 0 (/as:0). This is the default value for programmatically opened Word documents. Before using the /as switch, you must make sure that the document you are opening does not contain dangerous code.

The second error is related to some RTF documents that cannot be successfully opened but still display correctly in WordPad. They are usually incorrectly formatted and cannot be opened correctly in Word. ConvertWord fails to fix this problem, so ConvertWord cannot be used to convert such files.

The third error occurs because Word identifies text documents Unicode at the starting Byte Order Mark in the file. If there is no check mark, then Word treats the document as plain text, and when opening the converted document, the user will see spaces after each visible character (in reality, spaces correspond to null characters). The only way the solution is to convert files with the /oa (OpenAs) switch set to Encoded or Unicode text (/oa:5 for Word 97 and later).

Fortunately, such errors occur relatively infrequently. ConvertWord will be extremely useful for processing a large number of documents and will help you open and convert Word documents without tedious manual work.

Network specialist consulting in Indiana. He has MCSE, MCP+I and MVP certifications.

FOR THOSE WHO HAVE OLD MICROSOFT OFFICE SUCH AS 97, 2003, 2007 and 2010

FOR OFFICE FORMAT COMPATIBILITY, PLEASE INSTALL THE APPROPRIATE SOFTWARE.

so that new formats open in older versions

Review

Users Word programs, Excel, or PowerPoint packages for Microsoft Office XP and 2003: Before you download the Compatibility Pack install high priority updates from website Microsoft Update before downloading the Compatibility Pack.By installing the Compatibility Pack as an add-on to Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you can open, edit, and save files in the new file formats used in the latest versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. You can also use the Compatibility Pack with Microsoft Office Word 2003, Excel 2003, and PowerPoint 2003 Viewers to view files saved in the new formats. For more information about the Compatibility Pack, see the Knowledge Base article.

Note. If Microsoft program If you use Word 2000 or Microsoft Word 2002 to read or write documents that contain complex characters, you should refer to the information in this article to correctly display Word documents in newer versions of the application.

Administrators: You can download the Administrative Template for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Converters contained in the Compatibility Pack.

Update. The Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack has been updated to include Service Pack 2 (SP2). Now if DOCX or DOCM files contain custom XML tags, the tags are removed when the file is opened in Word 2003. For more information, see KB978951

System requirements

• OS: Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Vista Service Pack 1, Windows XP Service Pack 1, Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows XP Service Pack 3

Windows 7;Windows Server 2008

• Recommended Microsoft Office programs:
  • Microsoft Word 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) Microsoft Excel 2000 SP3 and Microsoft PowerPoint 2000 SP3

• Microsoft Word 2002 Service Pack 3 (SP3), Microsoft Excel 2002 Service Pack 3 (SP3), and Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 Service Pack 3 (SP3)

• Microsoft Office Word 2003 SP1 or later, Microsoft Office Excel 2003 SP1 or later, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 SP1 or later

• Microsoft Office Word 2003 Viewer.

• Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Viewer

• Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 Viewer

Instructions

Installing the update

1. Make sure your system is up to date by installing high priority and required updates downloaded from the Microsoft Update website (required for Microsoft users Office XP and 2003).

1. After you install the high priority and required updates from the Microsoft Update website, download the Compatibility Pack by clicking the button above and saving the file to your hard drive.

1. To launch the installer, double-click the executable file saved on your hard drive FileFormatConverters.exe.

1. Complete the installation by following the instructions on the screen.

Deleting an uploaded file

Review

Microsoft Office XP and 2003 Word, Excel, or PowerPoint users: Before downloading the Compatibility Pack, install high priority updates from Microsoft Update before downloading the Compatibility Pack.

By installing the Compatibility Pack as an add-on to Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you can open, edit, and save files in the new file formats that are used in latest versions Word, Excel and PowerPoint programs. You can also use the Compatibility Pack with Microsoft Office Word 2003, Excel 2003, and PowerPoint 2003 Viewers to view files saved in the new formats. For more information about the Compatibility Pack, see KB article 924074.

Note. If you use Microsoft Word 2000 or Microsoft Word 2002 to read or write documents that contain a complex character set, you should refer to the information in article 925451 to ensure that Word documents display correctly in newer versions of the application.

Administrators: You can download the administrative template for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint converters contained in the Compatibility Pack.

Update. The Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack has been updated to include Service Pack 2 (SP2). Now, if DOCX or DOCM files contain custom XML tags, the tags are removed when the file is opened in Word 2003. For more information, see KB978951

System requirements

OS:

Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Vista Service Pack 1, Windows XP Service Pack 1, Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows XP Service Pack 3
Windows 7;Windows Server 2008

Microsoft Word 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3), Microsoft Excel 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3), and Microsoft PowerPoint 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3)

Microsoft Word 2002 Service Pack 3 (SP3), Microsoft Excel 2002 Service Pack 3 (SP3), and Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 Service Pack 3 (SP3)

Microsoft Office Word 2003 SP1 or later, Microsoft Office Excel 2003 SP1 or later, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 SP1 or later

Microsoft Office Word 2003 Viewer.

Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Viewer

Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 Viewer

Instructions

Installing the update
Make sure your system is up to date by installing the high priority and required updates downloaded from the Microsoft Update website (required for Microsoft Office XP and 2003 users).

After installing the high priority and required updates from the Microsoft Update website, download the Compatibility Pack by clicking the Download button above and saving the file to your hard drive.

To launch the installer, double-click the FileFormatConverters.exe executable file saved on your hard drive.

Complete the installation by following the instructions on the screen.

Deleting an uploaded file

From the Windows Start menu, click the Control Panel icon.

Select Add or Remove Programs.

In the list of installed programs, select Compatibility Pack for 2007 release Office systems, and then click Remove or Add or Remove. If a dialog box appears, follow the instructions to uninstall the program.

Click Yes or OK to confirm the removal of the program.

When you open a text file in Microsoft Word or another program (for example, on a computer whose operating system language is different from that in which the text in the file is written), the encoding helps the program determine how the text should be displayed on the screen so that it could be read.

In this article

General information about text encoding

The text that appears as text on the screen is actually stored as numeric values ​​in a text file. The computer translates numerical values ​​into visible characters. For this, an encoding standard is used.

An encoding is a numbering scheme according to which each text character in the set corresponds to a specific numeric value. The encoding can contain letters, numbers, and other characters. Different languages ​​often use different character sets, so many of the existing encodings are designed to represent the character sets of their respective languages.

Different encodings for different alphabets

The encoding information saved with a text file is used by the computer to display the text on the screen. For example, in the "Cyrillic (Windows)" encoding, the character "Й" corresponds to the numerical value 201. When you open a file containing this character on a computer that uses the "Cyrillic (Windows)" encoding, the computer reads the number 201 and displays "Y" sign.

However, if the same file is opened on a computer that uses a different encoding by default, the character corresponding to the number 201 in this encoding will be displayed on the screen. For example, if your computer uses "Western European (Windows)" encoding, the "Y" character from the source text file based on the Cyrillic alphabet will be displayed as "É", since the number 201 in this encoding corresponds to this character.

Unicode: a single encoding for different alphabets

To avoid problems with encoding and decoding text files, you can save them in Unicode. This encoding includes most of the characters from all languages ​​that are commonly used on modern computers.

Since Word is based on Unicode, all files in it are automatically saved in this encoding. Unicode files can be opened on any computer with an operating system on English language regardless of the language of the text. In addition, Unicode files containing characters not found in Western European alphabets (such as Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, or Japanese) can be stored on such a computer.

Selecting an encoding when opening a file

If in open file the text is distorted or displayed as question marks or squares, it is possible that Word has incorrectly determined the encoding. You can specify the encoding to be used to display (decode) the text.

Open a tab File.

Click the button Options.

Click the button Additionally.

Skip to section Are common and check the box Confirm file format conversion on open.

Note: If this check box is selected, Word displays a dialog box File conversion whenever you open a non-Word file (that is, a file that does not have a DOC, DOT, DOCX, DOCM, DOTX, or DOTM extension). If you often work with such files, but you usually do not need to choose an encoding, be sure to disable this option so that this dialog box does not appear.

Close and then reopen the file.

In the dialog box File conversion select item Encoded text.

In the dialog box File conversion set the switch Other and select the desired encoding from the list.

In area Sample

If almost all text looks the same (like squares or dots), your computer may not have the correct font installed. In this case, you can install additional fonts.

To install additional fonts, do the following:

Click the button Start and select the item Control Panel.

Do one of the following:

On Windows 7

1. On the control panel, select an item Uninstalling programs.

   Change.

In Windows Vista

On the control panel, select the section Uninstalling a program.

In the list of programs, click Microsoft Office, or Microsoft Word if it was installed separately from Microsoft Office, and then click Change.

In Windows XP

In Control Panel, click the item Installation and removal of programms.

Listed Installed programs click Microsoft Office or Microsoft Word if it was installed separately from Microsoft Office, and then click Change.

In Group Changing the installation of Microsoft Office press the button Add or remove components and then click the button Continue.

In chapter Installation Options expand element Common Office Tools, and then - Multi-language support.

Select the font you want, click the arrow next to it, and choose Run from my computer.

Advice: When opening a text file in one encoding or another, Word uses the fonts defined in the dialog box Web Document Options. (To bring up the dialog box Web Document Options, click Microsoft button office, then click Word options and select a category Additionally. In chapter Are common press the button Web Document Options.) Using the options on the tab Fonts dialog box Web Document Options you can customize the font for each encoding.

Choosing an encoding when saving a file

If you do not select an encoding when saving the file, Unicode will be used. As a general rule, Unicode is recommended because it supports most characters in most languages.

If you plan to open the document in a program that does not support Unicode, you can select the desired encoding. For example, in operating system in English, you can create a Chinese (Traditional) document using Unicode. However, if such a document will be opened in a program that supports Chinese but does not support Unicode, the file can be saved in the "Chinese Traditional (Big5)" encoding. As a result, the text will display correctly when the document is opened in a program that supports Traditional Chinese.

Note: Since Unicode is the most complete standard, some characters may not be displayed when saving text in other encodings. Suppose, for example, that a Unicode document contains both Hebrew and Cyrillic text. If you save the file in "Cyrillic (Windows)" encoding, Hebrew text will not be displayed, and if you save it in "Hebrew (Windows)" encoding, Cyrillic text will not be displayed.

If you choose an encoding standard that doesn't support some of the characters in the file, Word will mark them in red. You can preview the text in the selected encoding before saving the file.

Saving a file as encoded text removes the text for which the Symbol font is selected, as well as field codes.

Encoding selection

Open a tab File.

In field File name enter a name for the new file.

In field File type select plain text.

If a dialog box appears Microsoft Office Word - Compatibility Check, press the button Continue.

In the dialog box File conversion choose the appropriate encoding.

• To use a standard encoding, select the option Windows (default).

  To use MS-DOS encoding, select the option MS-DOS.

  To set a different encoding, set the radio button Other and select the desired item from the list. In area Sample you can view the text and check if it is displayed correctly in the selected encoding.

  Note: You can resize the dialog box to make the document display area larger File conversion.

If you see the message "The text highlighted in red cannot be stored correctly in the selected encoding", you can select a different encoding or check the box Allow character substitution.

If character substitution is enabled, characters that cannot be displayed will be replaced with the nearest equivalent characters in the selected encoding. For example, the ellipsis is replaced by three dots, and the corner quotes are replaced by straight ones.

If the selected encoding does not have equivalent characters for characters highlighted in red, they will be stored as out-of-context (for example, as question marks).

If the document will be opened in a program that does not wrap text from one line to another, you can include hard line breaks in the document. To do this, check the box Insert line breaks and specify the desired break symbol (carriage return (CR), line feed (LF), or both) in the field End lines.

Finding encodings available in Word

Word recognizes several encodings and supports encodings that are included with the system software.

Below is a list of scripts and their associated encodings (code pages).

Indic languages ​​require operating system support and appropriate OpenType fonts to be used.

Only limited support is available for Nepali, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam and Oriya.