How to discover Oleobject ClassType of files? - excel

Question

I'm stuck how to determine files' Classtypes needed to use in code to embed these files into a Word document:
Selection.InlineShapes.AddOLEObject ClassType:="AcroExch.Document.11", _
FileName:="C:\Work\Dashbaord & ".pdf", LinkToFile:=False, _
DisplayAsIcon:=False
I need to embed csv, pdf, xlsx and txt files. How I can automatically loop all files in folders and automatically determine the ClassType of each?

Answer 1

In order to insert a file as an OLE Object the file type needs to have an available OLE Server installed on the machine, or it needs to be in a format that the Windows Packager mechanism can "wrap up" into an OLE type. Before you go this route you need to ensure that anyone who tries to work with such a document has corresponding OLE Server software installed on the machine on which the document is opened. Just because the machine that creates an embedded OLE object can do so doesn't mean another machine can work with the result, later on.
OLE Server software will be noted in the Registry. The Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) are able to function as OLE Servers. In the Registry you'll find corresponding entries such as Word.Document and Excel.Workbook... or AcroExch.Document for PDF files if Microsoft Office and the Adobe Acrobat Reader are installed.
One way to figure out which ClassTypes to use would be to manually insert each file type and inspect the resulting Embed field code.
To look the ClassTypes up in the Registry, something like the following code sample can be used in Word. Word has the function System.PrivateProfileString that wraps up a Windows API call to the Registry. It can be used to retrieve and to write information. (This code does not loop the files in a directory as the question was about how to determine the ClassType. For the sake of simplicity a file extension is hard-coded.)
A file type that does not have an OLE Server won't have a . in the default value of the Registry key. A .txt file, for example, is listed as txtfile. You may have to watch out for some file types; for example on my installation a csv file is listed as Excel.CSV, which may not be what you want...
Sub RetrieveOLEInfo()
Dim fileExt As String
Dim regKey As String
Dim oleServer As String
fileExt = "docx"
regKey = "HKEY_Classes_Root\."
oleServer = System.PrivateProfileString("", regKey & fileExt, "")
'Debug.Print oleServer
If InStr(oleServer, ".") = 0 Then
Debug.Print "Insert as a Package"
Else
Debug.Print "Insert as: " & oleServer
End If
End Sub