Attempting to automate savingnew word document using user input - ms-word

Question

I'm using Applescript and I'm having trouble getting this to work, probably because my understanding of variables is quite limited. Anyhow, this is the script I have so far:
tell application "Microsoft Word"
activate
end tell
display dialog "Input Document Name" default answer ""
set answer to text returned of result
tell application "Microsoft Word"
create new document
save document as answer
end tell
I would appreciate any help or even a redirect to a relevant post. Thanks.

Answer 1

You have to follow the relevant Applescript dictionaries closely, and work out what Applescript is expecting. In this case, you need "save as". If you look up "save as" in the Word applescript dictionary the first things you see are
save as document
[file name text]
Let's try to plug what you have into that. Instead of "save document as answer" you would at least need
save as document file name answer
But that is not quite enough, because "document" on its own isn't the name of anything, or a reference to any document. At this point you need to look up what "create new document" does.
create new document
(various parameters)
-> document
So what you probably need is something like
set theDocument to create new document
save as theDocument file name answer
It isn't always quite a straightforward as that, and not everything is obvious from the dictionary. For example, I do not think the dictionary tells you that when word creates a new document it typically becomes the "active document". If you knew that in all possible circumnstances, that is what Word does, you could also use
create new document
save as active document file name answer
But the first approach is IMO more robust.