[ILUG] more titbits about word and ms

[Caolan McNamara]

a forward of a forward of a forward of a ms employee on the word format, mostly 
nothing of importance except for some little titbits at the end, hopefully I 
should be able to extract some more. Japan's ms centre appears quite an outgoing
bunch of folk.

----forwarded message, originally from no one knows----

Hi,

   Unfortunately there is currently no support for Word's binary file
format.
The documentation on the MSDN is provided "as-is." I understand your
frustration
though. The "documentation" leaves much to be desired.

  There is an article about the be published describing the availability of
support for the various Office app's binary file formats. Here is the
preliminary article contents for reference:

============================================================================
==
Q239653 - INFO: Support for the Microsoft Office binary file formats

======================================================================

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---

The information in this article applies to:

- Microsoft Word 97 for Windows
- Microsoft Excel 97 for Windows
- Microsoft Access 97
- Microsoft PowerPoint 97 For Windows
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---


SUMMARY
=======

This article describes the availability of support for the Microsoft Office
file
formats.

MORE INFORMATION
================

Microsoft Excel:
The Microsoft Excel binary file format is supported. Available documentation
is
on the MSDN under "Microsoft Excel File Format." There is a helpful tool for
analyzing the contents of Microsoft Excel files called BiffView.Exe that
comes
with the Microsoft Excel SDK listed in the references section of this
article.
Also, here is a list of available Knowledge Base articles on specific topics
regarding the file format:

Q224518 - HOWTO: Determine If an Excel Workbook Contains Macros
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q224/5/18.asp

Q178605 - HOWTO: Determine the Version of a Microsoft Excel Workbook
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q178/6/05.asp

Q150447 - SAMPLE: How To Create a BIFF5 File
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q150/4/47.asp

Q147732 - Records Needed to Make a BIFF5 File Microsoft Excel Can Use
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q147/7/32.asp

Q187919 - INFO: BIFF8 BOUNDSHEET Record Data for Uncompressed Unicode
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q187/9/19.asp

Q198253 - DOC: Excel BIFF8 CONTINUE Record Information is Incomplete
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q198/2/53.asp

Microsoft Word:
The Microsoft Word binary file format is currently not supported, but
provided
as-is. Available documentation is on the MSDN under "Microsoft Word 97
Binary
File Format." Here is a list of available Knowledge Base articles on
specific
topics regarding the file format:

Q174140 - HOWTO: Determine the Version of a Microsoft Word Document
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q174/1/40.asp

Q78070 - WD97: How to Obtain the Word Binary File Format (BFF)
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q78/0/70.asp

Microsoft Powerpoint:
The Microsoft Powerpoint binary file format is currently not supported, but
provided as-is. Available documentation is on the MSDN under "Microsoft
Powerpoint 97 File Format SDK." There is a helpful tool available on MSDN
for
analyzing contents of Powerpoint files called FileViewer.exe. The FileViewer
application is found and described on MSDN under "File Format Overview."

Microsoft Access:
The Microsoft Access binary file format is proprietary and therefore not
documented or supported.

Microsoft Binder:
The Microsoft Binder binary file format is currently not supported, but
provided as-is. Available documentation is on the MSDN under "Microsoft
Office 97 Binder File Format."

Microsoft Office 97 Drawing File Format:
The Microsoft Office 97 Drawing File Format is currently not supported, but
provided as-is. Available documentation is on the MSDN under "Microsoft
Office
97 Drawing File Format."

Note: All of the applications, except Microsoft Access, save their data
using
structured storage. A lot of useful information, independent of the specific
application's file format in question, can be gathered by parsing the
structured storage. An example of this type of information is document
properties. See the following articles for more information:

Q186898 - HOWTO: Read Compound Document Properties Directly with VC++
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q186/8/98.asp

Q224351 - FILE: DSOFILE.EXE Lets You Read Document Properties w/o Office
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q224/3/51.asp

REFERENCES
==========

Microsoft Word Developer's Kit (ISBN:1-55615-880-7)
Microsoft Excel 97 Developer's Kit (ISBN: 1-57231-498-2)

============================================================================
==

  I know this isn't the answer your wanted, but is unfortunately all we can
provide. One other avenue you might try for more information is to examine
3rd party code.
There is a utility w/sources available called MsWordView at:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan/docs/MSWordView.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------

   The developers of it as I understand used the MSDN docs as their basis,
and reverse-engineered/experimented to figure out the rest. However, keep
in mind the Word file-format, as you might have already found, is very
difficult to parse.
It's amusing to read some of the comments from Word's source code itself,
as well as the creators of MSWordView, characterizing just how difficult the
Word file-format has become. I guess this is the main reason why it is
unsupported.

-----------------------end of message-------------------------

There you go, not much info really but interesting to note that the format
might be "secret" until recently not because of any commercial confidentialty
reasons, but for the impossibility of dealing with requests on what has become
a basically inpenetrable spec.

C.

Real Life: Caolan McNamara           *  Doing: MSc in HCI
Work: Caolan.McNamara at ul.ie          *  Phone: +353-86-8790257
URL: http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan    *  Sig: an oblique strategy
Re-evaluation (a warm feeling)