#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# Uses
use strict;
use Win32::OLE;
use Win32::OLE::Const;

# Create MSWord object and load constants
my $MSWord = Win32::OLE->new('Word.Application', 'Quit') or 
    die "Could not load MS Word\n";
my $wd=Win32::OLE::Const->Load($MSWord);

# Open document (full path)
my $doc = $MSWord->Documents->Open('c:\full\path\to\document.doc');

# Ask word to print the contents of a field named "TheFieldIWant"
print $doc->FormFields("TheFieldIWant")->Result,"\n";

# Close document (without save)
$doc->Close({SaveChanges=>$wd->{wdDoNotSaveChanges}});
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On Win32, you may want to consider:

use Win32::OLE;
my $word=Win32::OLE->new('word.application');
my $doc=$word->Documents->Open('C:\foo\bar.doc');
my $text=$doc->{Text};
#
$text=~s/\r/\n/g;
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perl -MWin32::OLE -d -e 42
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I had to use:

my $text=$doc->{Content}->{Text};
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...but after that it works like a charm, and just happens to be exactly the code I need today!

Peace,
-McD

Way back I used a program which was called "mswordview" those days. It appears they now have changed it's name to wvware (sourceforge). The core program is called "wv" (from "wordview") and there's a library called "libwmf".

This should allow you to extract text, although I don't think there are any Perl bindings available.

HTH!

--
Cheers, Joe

You are on a mined ground, Preceptor

Word files could have a lot of crap inside. Maybe the best thing you could do is to use a directory server and web based forms to put the data into it.

I worked on a framework for this kind of things. After having a working version I am rewriting it from scratch, since when I started I didn't know enough OOP and LDAP, and the design wasn't that good

I'm looking for help for the rewrite ;-) If you are interested we could join forces!

Ciao!
--bronto

# Another Perl edition of a song:
# The End, by The Beatles
END {
  $you->take($love) eq $you->made($love) ;
}

Another option would be to Save as HTML (perhaps a VBA macro to convert a batch). You could then use regexes to snarf from the HTML or possibly XPath.

catdoc is cool. Not a perl module, you don't need MSWord. It saves me from evil .doc attachments every day.