Microsoft Word - find open dialogs

[CharlesWaudby]

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If a Dialog is open in Microsoft Word then certain methods will fail, example below. We can get round this if there is a document open wrapping the call into an error handler but if no documents are open this cannot be done (I don't want to randomly open a temporary new document to test because if a Dialog is open we cannot close the new document it for the same reason).

One example:-

Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.WdProtectionType ProtectionType = document.ProtectionType;

This is a problem because we do not want to open a document if we cannot control things like ProtectionType (these are confidential clinical documents so control is critical).

Dialogs are Windows but Dialog objects do not have a "state" and there does not appear to be a collection of open dialogs.

Finding open Dialogs from Window handles is ?impossible as the parent handle of a Dialog window is the Desktop (I was surprised). (Short of maintaing a list of all Dialog Window Titles and hoping they are unique - which they are not, eg "Save As" - I have not found any clues.

Does anyone know if there is any way to check for open Dialogs?

Regards,

Charles

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[Xelliese]

Another approach you could try is checking for active windows outside of Word itself using the Windows API. It’s a bit more complex, but it can help identify when a dialog is open, even if it’s not directly accessible through Word’s object model.

For anyone dealing with Word’s quirks often, having a good selection of Microsoft products and tools can help streamline your workflow and avoid these kinds of headaches.