[RESOLVED] Different Word Versions for one VB program

[JonnyPoet]

Hi friends !

I have a VB solution which has some methods to call Word and creating a complex document there. The original code was done using the word dll of office 2003
Now my customer also has some workplaces where he still uses word 2000 My code would worki in both.
Is it possible in VB6.0 to bind to the needed version of the Office word dll depending on what is existing in the given enviroment ? So if there is word 2000 then it will reference and use word 2000, if its office 2003 then it should reference to word 2003 without needing recompilation at the customer directly.?

how do you handle such situations ?

[dglienna]

Early binding works only if you know the versions deployed. Late binding will work with any version that's installed, but you can only use the lowest common features, and they'd fail in the 2000 version, for instance.

Option Explicit
' These are both examples of Late Binding

Public Sub RunAccessMacro(strDB As String, strMacro As String)
'================================================================
'for late binding declare it As Object and use CreateObject() function
  Dim AccessDB As Object
  Set AccessDB = CreateObject("Access.Application")

    With AccessDB
        .OpenCurrentDatabase strDB
        .DoCmd.RunMacro strMacro, 1
        '.Visible = True    'you decide
        .CloseCurrentDatabase
    End With
    Set AccessDB = Nothing

End Sub

Public Sub ExcelMacro()
  Dim excl As Object
  Dim wrbk As Object

    Set excl = CreateObject("Excel.Application")
    excl.DisplayAlerts = False
    Set wrbk = excl.Workbooks.Open("myfile", , True, , "mypassword")
    excl.Run "MacroName", "arg1", "arg2"
End Sub

[JonnyPoet]

Early binding works only if you know the versions deployed. Late binding will work with any version that's installed, but you can only use the lowest common features, and they'd fail in the 2000 version, for instance.
....

But is it not compatible that way that I could use a Word 2000 dll and access all the common methods like ActiveDocument, Select and all that. What happens when a program compiled with a word 2000 dll is run in an 2003 enviroment ?
Are the word versions not compatible to older versions and older dlls?
( Maybe a stupid question as I never tried that but I had hoped that simple using the older version will also work when word is upgraded. )

[dglienna]

You want to use the version of Word that is already installed on the machine. You can't distribute the Word .dll for any system

[JonnyPoet]

You want to use the version of Word that is already installed on the machine. You can't distribute the Word .dll for any system

I see, but what happens when the user changes from word 2000 to word 2003 or 2007 and the program was delivered when he had word 2000 ? I think as long as the office 2000 dll is still used by any program it hopefully will not be deleted during installing the new office version. So my question is wil this stop working and needing an update or will this still work after changing to 2003 ?

[dglienna]

If it works for w2k users now, it will probably work if they upgrade, if you are using LATE Binding. If your setup program send the w2k dll, (which it can't) then it would break.