Microsoft Word blocking PowerShell creating a new Word Document

Tin Poon 1

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Emi Zhang-MSFT 21,706 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2022-11-28T08:58:47.59+00:00

Hi @Tin Poon ,
What version of Office did you use?
Where did you open the file?
Did you have full permission for the profile?
Please be a bit more precise to explain your problem so that I can get more accurate solutions to this problem. I’m glad to help and follow up your reply.

Tin Poon 1

Office 2019.

In a local drive.

Which profile the full permission is for? Not sure about which.

By the way, I ran a self-coded PowerShell script and the error happens from time to time. But today it doesn't.

The documents to be combined in main.docx are saved in the directory :

C:\Users\User\Downloads\_ps\d\

$document1      = 'C:\Users\User\Downloads\_ps\main.docx'
$resultDocument = 'C:\Users\User\Downloads\_ps\combined.docx'  # the output file

$word = New-Object -ComObject Word.Application
$word.Visible = $false
$doc = $word.Documents.Open($document1)

Get-ChildItem -Path 'C:\Users\User\Downloads\_ps\d\' -Recurse -Filter *.docx|
Foreach-Object {        
    
    $range = $doc.Range()
    # move to the end of the first document        
    $range.Collapse(0)     # wdCollapseEnd see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/microsoft.office.interop.word.wdcollapsedirection
    # insert a page break so the second document starts on a new page
    $range.InsertBreak(7)  # wdPageBreak   see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/word.wdbreaktype
    # $range.
    $range.InsertFile($_.FullName)
    
}

$doc.SaveAs($resultDocument)
# quit Word and cleanup the used COM objects
$word.Quit()

$null = [System.Runtime.Interopservices.Marshal]::ReleaseComObject($range)
$null = [System.Runtime.Interopservices.Marshal]::ReleaseComObject($doc)
$null = [System.Runtime.Interopservices.Marshal]::ReleaseComObject($word)
[System.GC]::Collect()
[System.GC]::WaitForPendingFinalizers()

Read-Host -Prompt 'Press Enter to exit'

1 answer

Rich Matheisen 44,776 Reputation points

2022-11-05T14:30:41.387+00:00

Why are you working with a file in that directory . . . and with that name?

bf4033f8-6b41-4798-b7ca-059ce6691e1d
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Tin Poon 1 Reputation point

2023-01-19T10:45:40.6966667+00:00

Please see another comment I made on Emi Zhang-MSFT's.

Rich Matheisen 44,776 Reputation points

2023-01-19T20:19:06.8233333+00:00

If you're working with files in the downloads directory they may be "blocked". In any case, working in the downloads directory isn't anything I'd recommend. You may be trying to use Word's temporary "save" file as an input, and that would prevent you from writing to that file.
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