Checking for Office applications in Visual Basic

I recently got an email from one of our readers who found our Spellchecking from Visual Basic article useful but wanted to know if there was a way to ensure that Microsoft Word was installed before attempting to invoke the spellchecking function.

The short answer is “yes, there is”. The actual VB6 code required isn’t all that much but you’ll have to call the Windows API to do it. Put the following code into a module and name it something meaningful:

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API Guide

Sooner or later, every VB programmer needs to be able to plugin to the native Windows framework to perform some task which isn’t possible with their development platform. The KPD-Team from Belgium, offers a nicely documented and searchable database of over 900 useful functions which make up the API-Guide:

So, if (like us) you’re still occasionally having to support applications which haven’t been migrated to the .NET Framework, you’ll find the API-Guide an indispensable starting point to programmatically accessing the Windows user interface, network communications, numeric algorithms, data access, cryptography and more.

Sharpreader RSS aggregator

After trying a bunch of RSS readers, we finally settled on Sharpreader from a clever bloke by the name of Luke Hutteman.

Luke has managed to create a news aggregator which combines all the essential functionality with a simple and clean interface which took us less than two minutes to learn:

Sharpreader is free and only works on the Windows platform. It also requires the .NET framework, which you probably already have installed. If not, get the runtime package here.

The problem with Linux

Over at ZDNet Australia, Steven Deare asks a very pertinent question about why the decision by Kennards Hire to switch from Windows to Linux on all of it’s desktops has sadly remained inconspicuous:

Why has the country’s biggest known desktop Linux implementation gone relatively unpublicised for so long? This week I wrote about Kennards Hire’s project to migrate its whole IT infrastructure to Linux. The project should be a milestone reference point for vendors like Novell and Sun who keep telling us Linux is ready for the desktop, despite a dearth of local customers.

You’d think that this was indeed a golden opportunity for the major vendors to prove that Linux is ready for the desktop in a business environment.

Based on our experience, the only problem with Linux is the perception that it’s not as “good” as Windows. And the only way to change that is through more effective marketing and self-promotion.

Spellchecking from Visual Basic

Here’s a quick way to run a spellcheck on any data stream from within your VB6 application:

Function SpellCheck(Stream As String) As String
   On Error Resume Next
   Dim W As Object
   Set W = CreateObject("Word.Basic")
   SpellCheck = Stream
   With W
     .AppMinimize
     .FileNewDefault
     .EditSelectAll
     .EditCut
     .Insert Stream
     .StartOfDocument
     .ToolsSpelling
     .EditSelectAll
      If Mid(.Selection, Len(.Selection), 1) = Chr(13) Then
        .Selection = Mid(.Selection, 1, Len(.Selection) - 1)
      End If
      If Len(.Selection) > 1 Then
         SpellCheck = .Selection
      End If
     .FileCloseAll 2
     .AppClose
   End With
   Set W = Nothing
End Function

It will only work on those PC’s that have Microsoft Word already installed. You may want to modify the error handling logic to suit your taste. I’ve simply chosen to return the original text if the function encounters any serious errors with the spellcheck library.