From: Caolan McNamara (Caolan.McNamara at domain ul.ie)
Date: Tue 24 Aug 1999 - 16:41:41 IST
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 domain ul.ie * Phone: +353-86-8790257 URL: http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan * Sig: an oblique strategy Re-evaluation (a warm feeling)
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