Reading Document Properties

Part I

We are going to discuss about a interesting topic which can be used in SharePoint and also in .Net.

It is possible to reading the summary properties and custom properties of the word document and it is also one of the requirements now a days.

This can be done through using DSO dll which can be downloaded from the below link

DSO Setup Download Link

(Important Note: This is a 32 bit dll )

What is DSO dll ?

The Dsofile.dll sample file is an in-process ActiveX component for programmers that use Microsoft Visual Basic .NET or the Microsoft .NET Framework. You can use this in your custom applications to read and to edit the OLE document properties that are associated with Microsoft Office files, such as the following: 

• Microsoft Excel workbooks

• Microsoft PowerPoint presentations

• Microsoft Word documents

• Microsoft Project projects

• Microsoft Visio drawings

• Other files that are saved in the OLE Structured Storage format

The Dsofile.dll sample file is written in Microsoft Visual C++. The Dsofile.dll sample file demonstrates how to use the OLE32 IPropertyStorage interface to access the extended properties of OLE structured storage files.

Features of this DLL

1. This dll is 32 bit and can read only Microsoft word 2003 (ie., .doc) formats only.

2. It has a OLE property reader class which can read the properties of the word document.

3. Using this dll, we can read both the Summary properties and also the Custom properties we create for the documents.

4. Also with this dll, we can set the custom properties programmatically.

Also, Read how to extract the summary properties of the word document in this article Part II.