Moving from Microsoft Office VBA to AppleScript:
MacTech's Guide to Making the Transition

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April, 2007
Page 15

Instead, the objects (such as headers and footers in Word) are "stand-alone" classes that can only be ’got‘ by proprietary commands in the dictionary, not as elements or properties of a containing class (such as section) as you might expect. Some examples of this sort will be mentioned as they come up in the various application chapters, and it is something you need to be alert to: always check the dictionary to verify if an object is "contained by" another class other than base object, or if you can only get it by a specific command that you might need to search for using the Search box.

An Example of Removing Code Not Needed in AppleScript

As a review, here's a fairly extensive example of the sort of code you might well run into in a macro in one of the Office applications, calling another one, and how much of the macro needs to be stripped away in AppleScript. This particular example needs to run some Word code from a macro in Excel. Not only the bit that invokes an existing or new instance of Word needs to be removed (as in "Invoking one Office application from another", above), but also, as we have now seen, every Dim declaration, and some of the error handling too.

Here is the VBA subroutine (derived from "Control Word from Excel" by Bill Coan and Dave Rado: <http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/InterDev/ControlWordFromXL.htm>):

Sub ControlWordFromXL()

Dim oWord As Word.Application

Dim WordWasNotRunning As Boolean

Dim oDoc As Word.Document

Dim myDialog As Word.Dialog

Dim UserButton As Long

'Get existing instance of Word if it's open; otherwise create a new one

On Error Resume Next

Set oWord = GetObject(, "Word.Application")

If Err Then

Set oWord = New Word.Application

WordWasNotRunning = True

End If

On Error GoTo Err_Handler

oWord.Visible = True

oWord.Activate

Set oDoc = oWord.Documents.Add

' code here to manipulate the document

oDoc.Close savechanges:=wdDoNotSaveChanges

If WordWasNotRunning Then

oWord.Quit

End If

'Make sure you release object references.

Set oWord = Nothing

Set oDoc = Nothing

Set myDialog = Nothing

'quit

Exit Sub

Err_Handler:

MsgBox "Word caused a problem. " & Err.Description, vbCritical, "Error: " _

& Err.Number

If WordWasNotRunning Then

oWord.Quit

End If

End Sub

And here's the AppleScript equivalent, presented this time as a subroutine (handler) rather than as a top-level script, which you would do especially if you might want to use the same code frequently in several scripts:

to ControlWord()

    -- no need for any Dim statements

    -- no need for a try/error block to invoke Word

    -- no need to create a new instance of Word specifically, but