How to Extract text from MS Word? - perl

Question

I'm trying to open a word document and just extract all the text that is in the document and display it to the user using Win32::OLE
#usr/bin/perl
#OLEWord.pl
#Use string and print warnings
use strict;use warnings;
#Using OLE + OLE constants for Variants and OLE enumeration for Enumerations
use Win32::OLE;
use Win32::OLE::Const 'Microsoft Word';
$Win32::OLE::Warn = 3;
#set the file to be opened
my $file = '/work/Test.docx';
#Create a new instance of Win32::OLE for the Word application, die if could not open the application
my $MSWord = Win32::OLE->new('Word.Application','Quit') and "Opened Word" or die "Unable to open document ", Win32::OLE->LastError();
#Set the screen to Visible, so that you can see what is going on
$MSWord->{'Visible'} = 1;
#open the request file or die and print warning message
my $Doc = $MSWord->Documents->Open('C:\work\Test.docx') or die "Could not open ", $file, " Error:", Win32::OLE->LastError();
#$MSWord->ActiveDocument->SaveAs({Filename => 'AlteredTest.docx',
#FileFormat => wdFormatDocument});
sub ShowObjs {
my $obj = shift;
foreach (sort keys %$obj) {
print "Keys: $_ - $obj->{$_}\n"; }
}
my $paragraphs = $Doc->Paragraphs;
ShowObjs($paragraphs);
# Get and print the Text inside the opened file
my $paragraphs = $Doc->Paragraphs;
my $txt = $Doc->Range->Text;
print $txt;
$MSWord->ActiveDocument->Close;
$MSWord->Quit;
I'm getting this error code:
OLE exception from "Microsoft Word":
Command Failed
Win32::OLE(0.1709) error ox800a1066
in METHOD/PROPERTYGET "Open" at OLEWord.pl line 20
Update: I can open up the Word application fine, it's just when I try to open up the file that is the problem

Answer 1

I have few scripts to convert DOC to various output format using Win32::OLE. They usually start like this:
use Win32::OLE;
use Win32::OLE::Const 'Microsoft Word';
my $wr = Win32::OLE->new('Word.Application')
or die "Failure - word. \n";
$wr->{DisplayAlerts} = wdAlertsNone;
$wr->{Visible} = 0;
my $Doc = $wr->Documents->Open({
FileName => $input_file_path,
ConfirmConversions => 0,
AddToRecentFiles => 0,
Revert => 0,
ReadOnly => 1,
OpenAndRepair => 0,
}) or exit;
...
Please note that $input_file_path has to contain absolute path to your file. You can also enable Visible and DisplayAlerts to see any error Word might give you.
Edit: You can traverse paragraphs using in enumerator:
use Win32::OLE qw(in);
...
my $paragraphs = $Doc->Paragraphs;
for my $par (in $paragraphs) {
print $par->Range->Text();
}
Or you can use Word's own exporting method and save document as one of supported formats:
$Doc->SaveAs({
FileName => 'c:\\work\\Test.txt',
FileFormat => wdFormatEncodedText,
});
The advantage of latter method is that formatting is retained if possible, which produces better results for bullets, numbering and such.

Answer 2

Win32::OLE can be a little funny about interaction. if anything triggers a prompt, you may get a message like this. Typically it may be that it wants to open the file read-only, for example, and put up a dialog, but these dialogs can break under the default initialization of Win32::OLE.
If this is the case, calling
Win32::OLE->Initialize(Win32::OLE::COINIT_OLEINITIALIZE);
before you do anything like instantiate any objects (i.e., before Win32::OLE->new) might do the trick.