Under Word's Hood

This is the first of a series of posts I have in mind about integrating ActiveWords and Microsoft Word for Windows.
After reading this post, you'll be able to create an active word that launches the most recently opened Word document. In addition to showing you an undocumented command line option for MS Word, I'd also like to explain how you create an active word that runs the WINWORD.EXE program independent of its installation folder. You can easily share your new active word with any other ActiveWords user.

Let's get started.

1. Click on the add button in the ActiveWords monitor bar;
2. In the ActiveWords Add Wizard dialog, choose the Scripting action (it's the last option), then choose Next;
3. in the Add New ActiveWord Wizard - Command dialog, type or paste the following text in the Action field:

<"<REGISTRY VALUE:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE±
Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\
WINWORD.EXE±Path>\winword.exe"/mfile1>

Make sure there are no carriage returns in the script (the layout of this page forces me to divide the script like this),
then press TAB to write a description of your choice in the Description field, then choose Next;
4. In the final dialog screen you may name your action. I suggest you name it wrd1. Leave the checkmark in the Confirmation Flag field as it is.
Choose Finish.

Your script is now ready. Trigger the command wrd1 to test it out.

I did not make this complex <REGISTRY VALUE> command tag up myself. Everything between double quotes in the script is documented in the ActiveWords Scripting Language (AWSL) Help Document. This link may not work on your system, it depends on the name of your ActiveWords installation path.
If you really like to master AWSL, then print out this excellent help document and study it. The commands are listed in alphabetical order with examples. Keep it at-hand while you are writing your own scripts.

The neat part of our new wrd1 command lies in the /mfile1 (or /mfileN for that matter) switch. It opens the specified file on the Most Recently Used (MRU) list on the MS Word File menu. MS Word allows up to a maximum of 9 document names to be listed on the File menu. You can specify this amount on the General tab of the MS Word Options menu (I don't want this blog to start sound like a MS Word tutorial though).

As always I welcome comments.

AWesome Scripting!