A Microsoft Office (Excel, Word) forum. OfficeFrustration

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Go Back   Home » OfficeFrustration forum » Microsoft Word » General Discussion
Site Map Home Register Authors List Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read  

Word 2000 DDE Speed



 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Old May 17th, 2004, 04:14 PM
Stefan German
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Word 2000 DDE Speed

Thanks for reply, Jay,
I will try to correct few wrong assumptions and bring discussion back
to the point I wanted to discuss. It's quite clear to me, that using
DDE (original DDE, not OLE) is not pretty way of document automation
nowadays, but it is something I have to live with.

I did not change anything in "data sending" application. I did not
change anything in word documents. I just started Word 2000 instead of
Word 97 and waited for result. Almost everything is fine, except
performance and problems of big data sets. As I wrote, I will try to
play with configuration of used PC, or change PC to solve problems. I
did not have time to do this by now.

To explain little more about word documents: They do not contain
macros. Only code within these documents is references (REF code) and
conditional references (IF code). That's all, nothing else.

I understand all pros of using newer scripting and interfacing Word
2000, but I cannot simply use them, because of "data sending"
application. It is programming language, but it is somehow closed and
old (8 years) and only way of data exchange is DDE. It can create DDE
connection and send data via DDE, send commands by DDE and close
connections. There are few more DDE commands, but after investigation
I can say, that they are useless for my purposes.

So, this is what I want: Force Word 2000 not to reformat whole
document after setting bookmark value (or inserting value into table).
Another thing is to clear Word's memory and buffers after each
document. I will play with DDE and connections to do this. I hope I'll
find something. Otherwise, without solution complete migration to Word
2000 is useless and we can wait for migration to new productive system
to be able to use it. ;-)

Thanks to all for all proposals and ideas.

Stefan.

"Jay Freedman" wrote in message ...
Hi, Stefan,

This post opens a new question that wasn't mentioned in the thread before.
When you brought your application from Word 95 to Word 2000, did you do any
reprogramming to replace the old WordBasic code with the corresponding VBA
constructs? I'm guessing you did not, and that may account for some of the
problems you're seeing.

In Word 97 and later, VBA is the macro programming language. It contains a
"WordBasic object" that implements most of the old WordBasic functionality
from Word 95 and before, but it is *not* the same thing. You're going
through an extra layer of abstraction and interpretation. I don't know
specifically of any memory leaks or other problems in the WordBasic object,
but you may be stressing it more than most users.

Besides that, VBA has ways of doing things that were difficult or impossible
in WordBasic. For example, you can manipulate objects in a document --
paragraphs, tables, graphics, etc. -- without having to select them. There
are many new string and array functions. By using only what was available in
Word 95, you're probably losing an order of magnitude of speed.

If you need to process large numbers of documents using VBA -- that is, if
you can ever get away from DDE -- then you should plan on rewriting your
macros in native VBA. Of course, if you wait a couple of years, you'll
probably be able to go straight to VB.Net. ;-)

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org

Stefan German wrote:
Hi all.

Just confirming Cindy: I (our application) really cannot use VBA code
to communicate with Word. I will try to persuade our admins to spare
some time on reinstalling some machines. ;-)

I hope this will also help to solve another problem (which in final is
more disturbing than performance problems). Word 2000 (unlike Word 95)
has problems with big sets of documents. After composing about 500
documents, Word 2000 is not able to close document and open following.
Bookmark setting is performed on open document, but another operations
are not done (opening, closing, printing). (No errors reported by
Word.) I don't know if it is caused by implementation of wordbasic in
Word 2000 or by problems with DDE connections. I have to remark again,
that with Word 95 everything is fine.

I will have to investigate and study something about DDE connections
and go trough Microsoft's knowledge base.

Cindy M -WordMVP- wrote in message
news:VA.00009708.00617df2@speedy...
Hi Doug,

He can't use VBA code if the application is communicating
with Word via DDE. It's the DDE configuration on a
particular machine that's the problem.

That would be why it is so slow.

Use

With ActiveDocument
.Bookmarks("bm1name").Range.InsertBefore [text]
.Bookmarks("bm2name").Range.InsertBefore etc.


End With


Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update
Sep 30 2003)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any
follow question or reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail
:-)

 




Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 06:36 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 OfficeFrustration.
The comments are property of their posters.