Hyperlink Question

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello Monks, I am somewhat new to Perl but am trying to learn it because I have seen several examples over the years of what this language is capable of, it is very powerful in the right hands. I am trying to use Win32::OLE and am working with an example I found on your website so the code may look somewhat familiar. All I am doing is creating a word document, writing and formatting 3 lines, then writing a hyperlink, then writing the 3 lines again. For some reason, the calculation of the range object AFTER the hyperlink is formatted is not calculated correctly even though it is exactly the same code that I used BEFORE formatting the hyperlink (that worked correctly). Can you please enlighten me as to what I am missing? Thank you in advance!

 #!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Win32::OLE;

my $word = Win32::OLE->new('Word.Application') or die $!;
$word->{'Visible'} = 1;

# Create new document
my $d = $word->Documents->Add;

# define selection
my $s = $word->Selection;

my @lines = (
    "This is test line 1",
    "This is test line 2",
    "This is test line 3",
);

# $c is the color
# $start is the start of Range
# $end is the end of Range
# $r is the Range object

my ($c, $start, $end, $r) = (2, 0, 0, );

# Write out the @lines

for my $line (@lines) { 
    $start = ($d->Characters->Count)-1;
    $end = length($line)+ $start;
    $s->TypeText($line);
    # define the Range
    $r = $d->Range($start, $end);
    # Set font properties
    $r->Font->{Size} = 18;
    $r->Font->{ColorIndex} = $c++;
    $r->Font->{Name} = 'Courier New';
    $s->TypeText("\n");
}

# Now insert a hyperlink

my $line = 'hyperlink';

$start = ($d->Characters->Count)-1;
$end = length($line) + $start;
$s->TypeText($line);
# define the Range
$r = $d->Range($start, $end);
# Set font properties
$r->Font->{Size} = 12;
$r->Font->{Name} = 'Arial';
$r->Font->{Bold} = 1;

$d->Hyperlinks->Add({Anchor => $r,
                    Address => "http://www.perlmonks.org"});
                        
$s->TypeText("\n");

# Now write out the @lines again

for my $line (@lines) { 
    $start = ($d->Characters->Count)-1;
    $end = length($line)+ $start;
    $s->TypeText($line);
    # define the Range
    $r = $d->Range($start, $end);
    # Set font properties
    $r->Font->{Size} = 18;
    $r->Font->{ColorIndex} = $c++;
    $r->Font->{Name} = 'Courier New';
    $s->TypeText("\n");
}                                
    $word->WordBasic->FileSaveAs("c:\\test.doc");

# house keeping, clean up our instances
$d->Close();
$word->Quit();
undef $word;
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Comment on Hyperlink Question Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Hyperlink Question by haukex (Archbishop) on Sep 27, 2020 at 17:47 UTC
This is more of a VBA question than a Perl question, since Win32::OLE basically gives you direct access to that API. The problem seems to stem from how Word internally implements hyperlinks, and retreiving the contents of the document is not as straightforward as character indexes when there are hyperlinks present. For example, if you add `print "<",$d->Range(62,111)->{Text},">\n";` to your code after adding the hyperlink, you'll see the output `<HYPERLINK "http://www.perlmonks.org" hyperlink>`. Perhaps something like this SO answer could be helpful to you in implementing this correctly. Once you have the code figured out in the VBA world, it should be trivial to translate it to Perl.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Hyperlink Question by Anonymous Monk on Sep 29, 2020 at 23:36 UTC
Thank you very much for your help	[reply]


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