Why isn't a variable being set unless the script is run within Script Debugger's step debugger? - ms-word

Question

I have the following AppleScript that works fine when I step through each line one at a time using Script Debugger, but reports that the _doc variable has a missing value when it gets the the save as line.
use AppleScript version "2.4" -- Yosemite (10.10) or later
use scripting additions
tell application "Finder"
set _folder to choose folder
set _files to files of _folder
repeat with _file in _files
if creator type of _file is "MSWD" then
tell application "Microsoft Word"
open _file
set _doc to document of window 1
save as _doc file format format text
close _doc
end tell
end if
end repeat
end tell
I've tried pausing for as long as 5 seconds using delay 5 with no change in the behavior. Why might this be happening and what can I do about it?

Answer 1

The answer to "why might this be happening" seems to be "it probably is a timing problem" and "because there are a number of problems when automating Word from both AppleScript and VBA on Mac that Microsoft has not yet fixed". I don't think there's much you can do about it except report to Microsoft via the Smiley mechanism or via word.uservoice.com. On uservoice, best to add your vote than existing request if there is one. But there is no reason at all to believe that Microsoft will even acknowledge or fix quite serious automation problems at the moment.
I had not come across the problem where you couldn't even set _doc to document of window 1 successfully. I was always able to use
set _doc to open _file
Here, I found a "delay 5" was enough to solve the problem you report, but there has also long been a problem where the "_doc" variable becomes invalid after a save as. I had a solution to that that iterates through the windows, so have put together this script which
a. should reduce the delay as much as possible
b. works on simple test data here but could do with improvement, especially on error checking
use AppleScript version "2.4" -- Yosemite (10.10) or later
use scripting additions
tell application "Finder"
set _folder to choose folder
set _files to files of _folder
repeat with _file in _files
if creator type of _file is "MSWD" then
tell application "Microsoft Word"
--activate
set doc_count to (count of documents)
open _file
-- You have to set the maximum no. of repeats
-- high enough for your system
set repeats to 50
repeat until (count of documents) > doc_count or repeats = 0
set repeats to repeats - 1
end repeat
if (count of documents) > doc_count then
set _doc to (document (doc_count + 1))
set _windows to the windows
repeat with _window in _windows
if the full name of the document of _window is the full name of _doc then
set _windowIndex to the entry_index of _window
exit repeat
end if
end repeat
-- you need to create a new file name for each file.
-- this is a temporary kludge
set _textfilename to (posix full name of _doc) & ".txt"
save as _doc file name _textfilename file format format text
-- _doc now invalid, we need to "reconnect"
set _windows to the windows
repeat with _window in _windows
if the entry_index of _window is _windowIndex then
set _doc to the document of _window
exit repeat
end if
end repeat
close _doc saving no
else
-- you can make this more informative, and you might still need to
-- try to close something.
display dialog "Could not open document: " & POSIX path of _file
end if
end tell
end if
end repeat
end tell
Incidentally, when I tested on a single document using open recent file instead, there was never any problem getting a reference to the document. But that's useless for the kind of thing you're trying to do.