How does Powershell access Word and Word objects? - powershell

Question

I am using the following script to convery a directory full of txt and rtf documents to Word documents.
$global:word = new-object -comobject word.application
$word.Visible = $False
$srcfiles = \\Path\to\files
$savepath = \\Path\to\docfiles
$saveFormatDoc = [Enum]::Parse([Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.WdSaveFormat], 0);
function saveas-document ($docs) {
"Opening $($docs.FullName)"
$opendoc = $word.documents.open($docs.FullName)
$savepath = "$docPath$($docs.BaseName)"
"Converting to $savepath.doc"
$opendoc.saveas([ref]"$savepath", [ref]$saveFormatDoc)
}
ForEach ($doc in $srcfiles) {
saveas-document -docs $doc
}
With the way it's coded right now, I think it's opening a new instance of Word, opening the rtf/txt document in Word, saving as a Word doc and repeating. I'm not quitting Word (unless there's an implicit $word.quit() in there somewhere. I fear I'm killing performance with multiple instances of Word, but don't know if that's a concern I need to have or not.
What's a more efficient way of coding this to open a single instance of Word for document handling, and what's the syntax for opening Word as an application rather than opening a series of documents that launch the Application based on their file associations (which is what I fear it's doing now)?

Answer 1

Your New-Object is outside your loop so you're only using the one instance. When you assign the New-Object to a variable (the object reference) and reuse it, that same object get's reused unless you destroy it or create another. Your script, in it's current form, is not creating a new object for each $doc in $srcfiles as you might be thinking.

Answer 2

With COM Objects, you are not launching the application, or dozens of them. You are opening a binary interface to libraries
You don't need or want to open a Com Object over and over, as that would cause a delay and performance hit.
You should close the Com-Object ($word.Quit()) at the end of the script though.