Making Open Office Work With Active X Control Designed for Microsoft W

[dranfu]

This is my first post, so first I'd like to say hello. Hello! Ok, on to the question:

At work, we use a web based program that has an ActiveX control that, when a button is clicked, launches word and transfers data from the web server to microsoft word. The ActiveX control uses two functions to start and check that word is running: startWord and IsWordRunning.

My question is: Is there any known way to trick ActiveX controls into thinking that winword.exe is running while running open office.org. I know that the when data is sent from the web server it comes as a formatted RTF document, which is saved in a temp file. The only problem is, when I click the button to begin the transfer, I get an error saying "cannot start word."

Also, I have already tried renaming abiword.exe ( a free word processor) and openoffice.orgs word processor to winword.exe. I've also placed both those files and their associated dll files in the Microsoft/Office directory, and it didn't help.

Any ideas?

 

[jebenson]

Is it possible to have the ActiveX control create the RTF temp file and not try to open it with Word? If this is possible, perhaps you could do this, and then open the RTF file with Open Office.



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[dranfu]

Well, the rtf file is created automaticaly before the Active X control even begins to call word. It is then stored in a temp file, which is easily accesible. The problem is, however, that this process needs to be automated (which it is already when we use microsoft word). It would be too much work to ask each user to go inside of a folder, pull out the temp file, and then open it in open office.

It seems that the Active X control has a function called StartWord, and that it is looking for the process name "winword." And yet, by renaming the file (either abiword or openoffice) to windword.exe, it does not change the process name that the actual executable provides to the system.

I need to figure out some way to really change the processor ID that is supplied to the system by either Abi Word or Open Office?

Any ideas?