[Graham Mayor]

I avoided the use of a progress indicator as this would have only slowed the
process further - and you would still be up watching it run Glad you
found it useful.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org



Jeffrey L. Hook wrote:
Graham:

I've just finished running your excellent code on my entire data
directory. Thanks to you, I've been able to convert all but 47 of
those pesky WPS so far. The DOCX count is now 23,985.

I think your code performed very well. If by changing the
"presentation" you mean that you added some progress/activity
display, I think that would be good. The lack of a clear display of
what was happening was a little disconcerting, but Task Manager's
Performance tab showed high CPU-use and its Applications tab did show
names of files which were being processed. The best source of
information was the Recycle Bin. Because your code used the
Office\Convert converstion method, as I'd requested, rather than the
Office\Save As\Word Document method, the WPS files were all pitched
in the dust bin, as you might say, and it was actually fun to watch
them accumulate there. This also showed how your mighty macro was
plowing through the hierarchy. I indulged myself by trying to
intercept it as it whizzed by. By noting the file names on the
Applications tab in Task Manager I could expand some paths in the
Folder pane of Windows Explorer in the Windows Classic View, and it
was fun to see the WPS files shift to DOCX, so to speak, "as the
train went by."

An added benefit of the pitching of WPS files into the Recycle Bin is
the option of sorting the bin's contents by date and time of
deletion. This allowed me to select all items which had been
deleted, for example, at 3:08 AM, starting with the first item with
that minute value, and ending with the last items before 3:09 AM. I
then deleted all selected files from the bin by using the context
menu of the selected files, and Windows asked me if I wished to
delete all XX items. Your "machine" ran at speeds of up to 75
conversions per minute in the light sections of my hierarchy.

I was able to use my desktop search engine to work around the annoying
security warnings for which no "Yes to all" response option was
given. (I agree that none of that aggravation is your doing.) I
checked my records of when I installed Works 6.0 as an upgrade of
4.5a and I found that, as I'd suspected, the "Works 4.0" security
warnings were also given for all 4.5a files which hadn't previously
been saved to 6.0 or 7.0 but they stopped as soon as I'd installed
Works 6.0 so that showed me the chronological cut-off point for those
warnings. There were 636 files which all produced the warnings and I
was forced to convert them all "semi-manually" and individually using
their context menus in the search list of my search engine and then
using my own "one-shot" macro on each file in Word 2007.

Once those truly annoying security warnings were out of its way your
macro ran beatifully but the major impediment to this process was my
own ignorance. The train metaphor seems to be good. I must admit "I
left a lot of debris on the track." It derailed your macro many
times.

I'd been worrying about "propagating a taint" from Works to Word and
I'd actually planned only to retain converted WPS files temporarily,
until I could paste their converted contents to "clean, untainted"
DOCX templates, which hadn't been converted from WPS and which had
been created exclusively "from the keyboard" in Word 2007. I'd added
a file-name suffix -Delete to the names of the WPS files so that,
when they were converted to DOCX I'd be able to recognize them as
possibly tainted, and as appropriate only as a source of converted
content. I'd dutifully used the Office\Save As\Word Document
conversion method which had been recommened by Word 2007's Help
directory for a while, and that had left the original WPS files
behind, so there were enough of these screwball situations that Word
was hopelessly confused when it attempted to convert those files; it
found DOCX files with the same name had already been created and that
halted the process. I was able to use my desktop engine to search
for files by name and, when I found both a WPS and DOCX file with
the same name in the engine's search-results list, I simply deleted
the WPS parts of those "pairs" right in the engine's list.

Another problem wasn't in any way caused by your code. I do think
excellent Help is provided on-line for Word 2007 but I'm not so happy
about the organization of the information. I've found myself often
"dumped" at a Table of Contents type Web page when I'm looking for
guidance, as if I've been led to the library door and told to look
for myself. The conversion process was many times interrupted by
"serious problems" which crashed Word when Word attempted to convert
some old corrupted Works junk. This lead to "recovery" of files and
Word stubbornly insisted on showing me a lengthening list of such
files, which it seemed to be insisting should be "Saved As" with new
file names each time the conversion process was resumed. I admit I
didn't have the foggiest idea of what was happening, but I wasn't
given good guidance, and I didn't want to suspend this project while
I invested a week browsing around widely-scattered on-line Help
texts.

I admit that I may have stressed Works' word processor by mistakes
which I may have made in my past use of several versions of the
application, but I also think Works is not as stable as it could be.
I'm happy this is done at last.

Thanks, Graham. I will be interested to check out your presentation
of the code at your site, but right now I'm finally going to turn in
"for the night" as dawn is breaking!

Jeff Hook, NJ, USA


"Graham Mayor" wrote in message
...

The security warning will occur for any old files that don't use the
current Works converter and is out of my control. Microsoft has
identified what it believes to be a potential security issue with the
old converter and thus prompts for each such document.

I have made a few minor modifications to the macro code concerned with
presentation (that won't affect the security issue) and posted it with
instructions to my web site -
http://www.gmayor.com/Works_Batch_Converter.htm