Can not get he ActiveDocument.SaveAs2 method to work on Word 2013

Question

For many years I have automated office applications from Visual Basic through the Office Object Model. This has been working fine for all versions from 2003 but
failed when I upgraded to Office 2013.
With Word 2013 the SaveAs2 method seems to ignore the parameters and instead always pops up the File SaveAs dialog. Irrespective of save or cancel the method then
always returns the error 4198.
The SaveAs2 method works fine in Word 2010 as well as SaveAs in earlier versions. According to the documentation for 2013 it should work the same way for the new
version, but so far I’m stuck with this problem.
I’m using Microsoft Office Home and Business 2013 on a Windows 8 system.
I’ve also tried the SaveAs2 directly in Microsoft Word VBA. The macro below gives exactly the same sad result.
Public Sub MySave()
Dim MyName As String
MyName = "TestDocument.doc"
ActiveDocument.SaveAs FileName:=MyName, FileFormat:=wdFormatDocument
End Sub
I seem to be completely stuck. Does anyone know what the trick is here?

Answer 1

Hello Dennis,
Thanks for your effort in trying to reproduce the prompt problem. Since my little macro example is supposed to work
 I’m not surprised that it works at your site. For whatever reason it does not work at mine. What’s causing this is beyond me, but from experience Microsoft products works in mysterious ways. At least it is persistent and fails every time
exactly as earlier described no matter what I do.
Here is the history behind this problematic system:
An Acer laptop with Windows 8 64 bit (Norwegian)  was bought in November 2012. This was intended as a reference system for any potential Win8 issues and also to double as a demo laptop when required.
The laptop had no Office preinstalled so an Office Home and business 2010 product key (32 bit Norwegian) was bought at the same time. This included a free upgrade to Office 2013 when released.
Office 2010 (32 bit) was downloaded and installed from
www.office.com/productkeycard and everything worked as supposed to including office automation.
A couple of weeks ago I then tried the promised Office 2013 upgrade from My Office/My Account and installed pressing the green Install button found on that page.
That’s when the problem started. After investigating I found this to be caused by the SaveAs2 problem and reproducible also by a simple Macro in a Word document.
The installation of Office 2013 had also left the Office 2010 on the system. By opening my new Word test document in 2010 the macro then failed exactly as on 2013 also on 2010.
I then went to Program and Features and uninstalled Office 2010. Still the same problem in Office 2013.
Program and features again, clicking change on Office 2013 and was presented by two choices offline or online repair. Tried offline first - same result,
 then online repair, when concluded I was asked to reactivate Office, but same result as before.
Since your answer I’ve also tried the following:
Went to Program and features and completely uninstalled my Office 2013.
Returned to  My Office/My Account and installed Office 2013 again. This did nothing to remedy the problem which remains exactly the same.
I've also done some further tests as an attempt to figure out what’s going on. I’ve made a new test document 
WEventTest.doc which in addition to my original macro also is catching the DocumentBeforeSave event. The WEventTest project consists of the following:
Added the following macros in Microsoft Word Objects/ThisDocument
Private X As New Class1
Public Sub Register_Event_Handler()
 Set X.appWord = Word.Application
End Sub
Public Sub MySave()
  Dim MyName As String
  On Error GoTo Skip
  MyName = "TestDocument.doc"
  ActiveDocument.SaveAs2 FileName:=MyName, FileFormat:=wdFormatDocument
  Exit Sub
Skip:   MsgBox Err.Number & " " & Err.Description
End Sub
Added Class1 to Class Modules containing the following macro
Public WithEvents appWord As Word.Application
Private Sub appWord_DocumentBeforeSave(ByVal  sDoc As Document, _
SaveAsUI As Boolean, Cancel As Boolean)
  Dim intResponse As Integer
  intResponse = MsgBox("Document: " & sDoc.Name & _
  " UI=" & SaveAsUI & " Save the document?", vbYesNo)
  If intResponse = vbNo Then Cancel = True
End Sub
I’ve then tried this on both my working Office 2010 system and failing Office 2013 system by first running the macro Register_Event_Handler and then MySave. There is a distinct difference between these system as follows:
On my working Office 2010 system, everything behaves as expected:
When calling MySave the DocumentBeforeSave event is fired as expected displaying the messagebox “Document: WEventTest.doc UI=True Save the document?
Selecting Yes saves the document as TestDocument.doc in the documents folder
Selecting No cancels the save and the SaveAs2 returns the error
 "4198 Command failed" as expected.
On my problematic Office 2013 system there is a marked difference in behavior:
When calling MySave, the first thing that happens is that the Save As prompt is displayed exactly as before with the document name WEventTest and filetype docx.
The document may then be saved by selecting in the prompt, but whether saving
 or canceling the same thing always happens.
After closing the prompt, THEN the DocumentBeforeSave event is fired. This is just too late. The message box shows the same content as for Office 2010, but the damage is already done.
Selecting Yes or No does not make the slightest difference now. The SaveAs2 method always returns the error 4198 Command failed
I'm not saying this is the first Microsoft problem I’ve encountered, but previously I’ve always been able to find answers by browsing forums and knowledge bases. This is actually the first time I’ve posted a question in any forum.
I also tried the direct support link you suggested, but that link seems to be broken.
Please advice.