user command and MS Word

[franklekens]

I have a very simple user command to open a file in Word instead of in another word processor (I have several, and Word is not the default programme for all file types).

It looks simple enough.
>"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\root\office15\WINWORD.EXE" "$N"

Suddenly, this no longer works. It says "the operating system doesn't currently have the right configuration to execute this application". Changing $N to $F doesn't help.

Word is still in the same location, and it starts up fine if I double click files associated with it. What can be wrong?

[nikos]

what if you start winword like this without passing argument at all?
a reboot helps sometimes

[franklekens]

Same result without argument. I'll try a reboot this week and report back whether that changes anything.

[Robert2]

On my Windows 10 system, the following user command works fine:
>C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\WINWORD.EXE $N
Note that it doesn’t use quote marks.
HTH

[FrizzleFry]

Are you sure winword.exe is in the same location?

If there was an update for Word the file association would probably have been adjusted but the user command would not. Check if the file association is using the same path for winword.exe as the user command.

[franklekens]

Hi, thanks for the tips. Rebooting didn't help.

When I right click on a docx file, it'says to open it with "appvlp".
So I tried the following.

This command line: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\root\client\AppVLP.exe $N
Nothing happens. No error dialogue, no error sound. Either with or without quotation marks around the path, with or without > before it.

This command line, i.e. no quotation marks and no > in front of it: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\root\office15\WINWORD.EXE $N
I get an error sound but no message.

If I put a > in front of it, I get an error sound *and a dialogue window* (see my first post about this for the message).

That's it. The only way to open a Word document is by dragging or double clicking. The user commands I can't get to work again. But they do work fine for other word processors.

By the way, i haven't done any installs or major updates on Word that I know of. This suddenly just stopped working for no reason that I can see.

Cheers.

[nikos]

what if you use windows explorer?

[franklekens]

Well, I can still open a Word file in Word by double clicking it, that file association seems to be intact.

However, rtf files don't currently seem associated with anything. So if I try to open them I get the question how I want to open them. I get a list of programmes to chose from. If I choose Word 2013, I get the same error messsage as with the command through xplorer 2.
If I choose appvlp, it opens in MS Word.

But not when I fill in appvlp in the command line.
Where does this appvlp suddenly come from and why is it messing things up this way?

[Robert2]

Have a look at What is appvlp.exe?

[FrizzleFry]

You could use Nirsoft FileTypesMan or Sysinternals Process Explorer to determine the actual command line used to load doc/docx files.

[franklekens]

Just to report back on this: it's finally fixed. And without re-installing MS Office, as I had even been planning to do.

Funny thing: the Windows shortcut on the taskbar to MS Word didnt't work anymore either. With the same error message.
Then I found the shortcuts to MS Office and found their command line ran like this:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\root\client\AppVLP.exe" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\Root\Office15\WINWORD.EXE"

So a double command for the shortcut, for some reason. I don't know why this is, but copying this into the user command worked, like so:
>"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\root\client\AppVLP.exe" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\Root\Office15\WINWORD.EXE" "$N"

Now it works like it used to. Just putting this up here in case someone else runs up against it.
Thanks for all the advice.