VB Forum / COM / June 2004

¤ Hi all,
¤
¤ i'm trying to open and handle a Word (XP) application from my aspx page (on
¤ a Win2000 server, lastest SP on both server and office): i can instantiate
¤ it (i've tried with "new" keyword or also the CreateObject method, they both
¤ do work), but when i execute w.Documents.Add it throws a COM Exception that
¤ says "Out of memory". I can't understand what is the real problem, cause if
¤ i use the same code on the same machine in a win32 application (vb.net) it
¤ works perfectly. So Office installation is *maybe* OK...the only difference
¤ between two cases is that winword.exe executed from asp.net app runs under
¤ IWAM user and from win 32 app runs under administrative user. So i tried to
¤ login with IWAM user and do the couple of steps needed to configure Word for
¤ that user (first-time run stuff, like giving name initials...) but as i
¤ expected it didn't help.
¤ I know that Microsoft do not support OLE Automation in a Server-Side
¤ enviroment, but i can't figure out why it should not work from asp.net when
¤ it works in win32 enviroment...could it be something dependant to IIS
¤ settings (like particular security settings...but what?) ?
¤

Server side automation of Office apps is not recommended for a number of reasons. One is that the
Office applications typically involve user interaction with a visual interface and when an error
occurs there must be some way to provide the user with this information. Web apps are not suited for
handling such scenarios. You can find a list of a number of other issues in the following MS KB
article:

INFO: Considerations for Server-Side Automation of Office
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;257757


Paul ~~~ pclement@ameritech.net
Microsoft MVP (Visual Basic)