Recognize when "Send To > Microsoft Word" completes

[Roland Krystian Alberciak]

Hello,

I have a question. I love to print my powerpoint slides with notes through
the "File -> Send To -> Microsoft Word - OK > " options. In doing so,
Microsoft word opens and a lot of processing happens where slides are
injected into MS word into a table and with notes next to it in a column. I
absolutely love this.

However, and here is my question, how can I detect when this process of
preparing the word document is complete? I know there are some commercial
products which offer to do handout generation for you, but I just want to
detect when the process of preparing a word doc is complete so I can script
it with Autoit3.


I would like to know if vb or something can be used to detect when this
process completes.


Currently, I know I can detect when this is done by:
1. (best idea I know of right now) Monitoring somehow the word doc
generation process and seeing when it completes and monitoring an exit code
(in case it terminates due to an error not due to natural causes). When it
successfuly completes, then move on. (which I detail in my question above)
1. (ok idea) When the word document creation process is complete, the word
document goes to page 1. Perhaps detecting when page 1 shows, would tell me.
However, what if my powerpoint presentation is less than 3 slides? Then I'll
only have a page.
2. (more crazy of an idea?) Whilst the process is going on, a mouse cursor
intermittently shows up as an hour glass and then rescinds into a cursor.
3. (most crazy of an idea?) Perhaps printing slides in powerpoint to
postscript, timeing how long that takes, then doing the "Send To - > word"
behaviour using the previous printing in powerpoint time and multiplying it
by some number to scale.




Thanks,
Krystian

 

[Roland Krystian Alberciak]

Any ideas and pointers greatly valued.

 

[Bill Dilworth]

Monitor CPU usage. I'd check at 1/2 second intervals looking for 5 or 6
consecutive readings below 50%. It won't directly tell you when the process
is done, but it will tell you when the system is ready for the next task.


--
Bill Dilworth
A proud member of the Microsoft PPT MVP Team
Users helping fellow users.
http://billdilworth.mvps.org
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
vestprog2@ Please read the PowerPoint FAQ pages.
yahoo. They answer most of our questions.
com www.pptfaq.com
..

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Monitor CPU usage. I'd check at 1/2 second intervals looking for 5 or 6
consecutive readings below 50%. It won't directly tell you when the process
is done, but it will tell you when the system is ready for the next task.

Hm. Maybe check it first, then look for it to drop back to that level (in case
it's already over 50% for some other reason).

 

[Roland Krystian Alberciak]

Hm. Maybe check it first, then look for it to drop back to that level (in
case
it's already over 50% for some other reason).

What if new processes spawn like a windows update, or my firewall software
starts detecting lots of traffic aimed at my pc- perhaps then this metric
may be problematic?

-Krystian.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

What if new processes spawn like a windows update, or my firewall software
starts detecting lots of traffic aimed at my pc- perhaps then this metric
may be problematic?

Yes. I suspect so. It may not be possible to do this with total reliability.

 

[Roland Krystian Alberciak]

rats. i respect you for keeping up with this thread. thanks.

if an 'aha' moment comes upon you, let me know by email me.

i'm krystian at gatech edu


is there no way to detect the process? I was using process explorer to try
to see if anything came up. I'm doing some scripting with autoit so if
anything is possible i can try it out.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

rats. i respect you for keeping up with this thread. thanks.

if an 'aha' moment comes upon you, let me know by email me.

i'm krystian at gatech edu

In Atlanta? I was there not long ago. A friend is doing post-doc work there
in materials science.

is there no way to detect the process? I was using process explorer to try
to see if anything came up. I'm doing some scripting with autoit so if
anything is possible i can try it out.

I didn't know autoit was that sophisticated. What can it tell you about a
running process. It looks like you may be able to distinguish a normal running
Word instance from one invoked from PPT: the normal instance appears in
Process Explorer as a normal child-process of Explorer.exe

But when you use Send To Word, the Word instance appears as a child of
svhost.exe.

That alone won't help, because it doesn't tell you when the instance of Word is
done with its work, but if you can get CPU usage for the Word process rather
than the system as a whole, you may have a solution. CPU for the process drops
to zero when Word isn't active.

Let us know what you find out, please!