How to Perform a DDEPOKE from FoxPro to Word for Windows

This article was previously published under Q101009

You can use the DDEPOKE() function to insert information from FoxPro for Windows into a document created in Microsoft Word versions 2.0c and 6.0 for Windows.

In order to use the DDEPOKE() function, you must declare in the Word document a specific location to poke the information into. To declare the location, create a bookmark within the Word document. For example, the following code will poke information into a Word document that has a bookmark called "test":

   run /n i:\winword\winword.exe i:\winword\letter.doc
   mchannel=DDEinitiate("WinWord","i:\winword\letter.doc")
   =DDESETOPTION('SAFETY',.F.)
   =DDEPOKE(mchannel,"test","Hello World!")
   =DDETERMINATE(mchannel)
		

NOTE: =DDESETOPTION('SAFETY',.F.) is an option to set safety off so the program doesn't ask if you want to start the other program if it's not already started.

The topic name for the DDEINITIATE() function must be the document name; in this example, the document name is "c:\winword\letter.doc". The string "Hello World!" will be inserted in the document at the "test" bookmark.