Get a collection of all open Word applications

Question

I would like to know whether there's a way to get a list of all Word instances open on the users machine?

I've tried this:

Process[]wordProcesses = Process.GetProcessesByName("WINWORD");

The line above always seems to be returning only one process, I suppose because only one MS Word process is running but many Word apps are open.

You're actually asking how many documents are open - you're not going to be able to do this using the Process class, you might have more luck with VSTO... — Dave, Aug 16 '12 at 12:07
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4757615/c-sharp-list-currently-open-files-and-programs - this might help — KyorCode, Aug 16 '12 at 12:08

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:07

One approach here is to reach out and use AccessibleObjectFromWindow() to obtain a Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Application instance from each of the running instances of Word. This makes it easy to then query their Documents collections and do whatever else you need to do.

The answer on this SO question will get you really close: How to access Microsoft Word existing instance using late binding. That answer uses an IDispatch reference to manipulate the Application instance obtained from AccessibleObjectFromWindow() but you should be able to do something like this:

if (hr >= 0)
{
    var app = ptr.Application;
    foreach (var item in app.Documents)
        {
            var doc = (Document) item;
            Console.WriteLine(doc.FullName);
    }
}

Get a collection of all open Word applications

1 Answers1