When I wrote my first Word AfterSave Event entry, it was designed for Word 2007, and was – as it turns out – not a catch all. So I have updated it here (thanks for the catch go to Pat Lemm).
When the document was closed, you never got access to the Saved filename. So, I have updated the code here and it now works in all conditions and has been tested in Word 2013.
Here is how it works:
- Upon initialization you pass it your Word object.
- It attaches to the Before Save Event.
- When any save event occurs, it kicks off a thread that loops until the Background Save is complete.
- Once the background save is done, it checks to see if the document Saved == true:
- If Saved == true: then a regular save did occur.
- If Saved == false: then it had to be an AutoSave
In each case it will fire a unique event:
- AfterSaveUiEvent
- AfterSaveEvent
- AfterAutoSaveEvent
Additionally, if the document being saved is also being closed, we catch the filename on the WindowDeactivate event on the way out. This can now be accessed by the caller (as you can see in the example below), to get the full filename of the closed document.
Here is the code to the class:
{
public delegate void AfterSaveDelegate(Word.Document doc, bool isClosed);
// public events
public event AfterSaveDelegate AfterUiSaveEvent;
public event AfterSaveDelegate AfterAutoSaveEvent;
public event AfterSaveDelegate AfterSaveEvent;
// module level
private bool preserveBackgroundSave;
private Word.Application oWord;
string closedFilename = string.Empty;
/// <summary>
/// CONSTRUCTOR takes the Word application object to link to.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="oApp"></param>
public WordSaveHandler(Word.Application oApp)
{
oWord = oApp;
// hook to before save
oWord.DocumentBeforeSave += oWord_DocumentBeforeSave;
oWord.WindowDeactivate += oWord_WindowDeactivate;
}
/// <summary>
/// Public property to get the name of the file
/// that was closed and saved
/// </summary>
public string ClosedFilename
{
get
{
return closedFilename;
}
}
/// <summary>
/// WORD EVENT fires before a save event.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="Doc"></param>
/// <param name="SaveAsUI"></param>
/// <param name="Cancel"></param>
void oWord_DocumentBeforeSave(Word.Document Doc, ref bool SaveAsUI, ref bool Cancel)
{
// This could mean one of four things:
// 1) we have the user clicking the save button
// 2) Another add-in or process firing a resular Document.Save()
// 3) A Save As from the user so the dialog came up
// 4) Or an Auto-Save event
// so, we will start off by first:
// 1) Grabbing the current background save flag. We want to force
// the save into the background so that Word will behave
// asyncronously. Typically, this feature is on by default,
// but we do not want to make any assumptions or this code
// will fail.
// 2) Next, we fire off a thread that will keep checking the
// BackgroundSaveStatus of Word. And when that flag is OFF
// no know we are AFTER the save event
preserveBackgroundSave = oWord.Options.BackgroundSave;
oWord.Options.BackgroundSave = true;
// kick off a thread and pass in the document object
bool UiSave = SaveAsUI; // have to do this because the bool from Word
// is passed to us as ByRef
new Thread(() =>
{
Handle_WaitForAfterSave(Doc, UiSave);
}).Start();
}
/// <summary>
/// This method is the thread call that waits for the same to compelte.
/// The way we detect the After Save event is to essentially enter into
/// a loop where we keep checking the background save status. If the
/// status changes we know the save is compelte and we finish up by
/// determineing which type of save it was:
/// 1) UI
/// 2) Regular
/// 3) AutoSave
/// </summary>
/// <param name="Doc"></param>
/// <param name="UiSave"></param>
private void Handle_WaitForAfterSave(Word.Document Doc, bool UiSave)
{
try
{
// we have a UI save, so we need to get stuck
// here until the user gets rid of the SaveAs dialog
if (UiSave)
{
while (isBusy())
Thread.Sleep(1);
}
// check to see if still saving in the background
// we will hang here until this changes.
while (oWord.BackgroundSavingStatus > 0)
Thread.Sleep(1);
}
catch (ThreadAbortException)
{
// we will get a thread abort exception when Word
// is in the process of closing, so we will
// check to see if we were in a UI situation
// or not
if (UiSave)
{
AfterUiSaveEvent(null, true);
}
else
{
AfterSaveEvent(null, true);
}
}
catch
{
oWord.Options.BackgroundSave = preserveBackgroundSave;
return; // swallow the exception
}
try
{
// if it is a UI save, the Save As dialog was shown
// so we fire the after ui save event
if (UiSave)
{
// we need to check to see if the document is
// saved, because of the user clicked cancel
// we do not want to fire this event
try
{
if (Doc.Saved == true)
{
AfterUiSaveEvent(Doc, false);
}
}
catch
{
// DOC is null or invalid. This occurs because the doc
// was closed. So we return doc closed and null as the
// document
AfterUiSaveEvent(null, true);
}
}
else
{
// if the document is still dirty
// then we know an AutoSave happened
try
{
if (Doc.Saved == false)
AfterAutoSaveEvent(Doc, false); // fire autosave event
else
AfterSaveEvent(Doc, false); // fire regular save event
}
catch
{
// DOC is closed
AfterSaveEvent(null, true);
}
}
}
catch { }
finally
{
// reset and exit thread
oWord.Options.BackgroundSave = preserveBackgroundSave;
}
}
/// <summary>
/// WORD EVENT – Window Deactivate
/// Fires just before we close the document and it
/// is the last moment to get the filename
/// </summary>
/// <param name="Doc"></param>
/// <param name="Wn"></param>
void oWord_WindowDeactivate(Word.Document Doc, Word.Window Wn)
{
closedFilename = Doc.FullName;
}
/// <summary>
/// Determines if Word is busy essentially that the File Save
/// dialog is currently open
/// </summary>
/// <param name="oApp"></param>
/// <returns></returns>
private bool isBusy()
{
try
{
// if we try to access the application property while
// Word has a dialog open, we will fail
object o = oWord.ActiveDocument.Application;
return false; // not busy
}
catch
{
// so, Word is busy and we return true
return true;
}
}
}
And here is how you set it up and attach to it’s events:
{
WordSaveHandler wsh = null;
private void ThisAddIn_Startup(object sender,
System.EventArgs e)
{
// attach the save handler
wsh = new WordSaveHandler(Application);
wsh.AfterAutoSaveEvent += new WordSaveHandler.AfterSaveDelegate(wsh_AfterAutoSaveEvent);
wsh.AfterSaveEvent += new WordSaveHandler.AfterSaveDelegate(wsh_AfterSaveEvent);
wsh.AfterUiSaveEvent += new WordSaveHandler.AfterSaveDelegate(wsh_AfterUiSaveEvent);
}
void wsh_AfterUiSaveEvent(Word.Document doc, bool isClosed)
{
if (!isClosed)
MessageBox.Show("After SaveAs Event");
else
MessageBox.Show("After Close and SaveAs Event. The filname was: " + wsh.ClosedFilename);
}
void wsh_AfterSaveEvent(Word.Document doc, bool isClosed)
{
if (!isClosed)
MessageBox.Show("After Save Event");
else
MessageBox.Show("After Close and Save Event. The filname was: " + wsh.ClosedFilename);
}
void wsh_AfterAutoSaveEvent(Word.Document doc, bool isClosed)
{
MessageBox.Show("After AutoSave Event");
}