Differentiating between versions of applications with identical names

Question

I am in a situation where I have both Microsoft Office 2004 and Microsoft Office 2008 installed (and working OK) on my work computer (1.42GHz eMac, 2GB RAM, OS X 10.5.8). When needing to use Microsoft Excel I use either version, although Excel 2008 is noticeably slower on many tasks. This speed difference is the reason I am trying to achieve what I have described below.
I have written a script which, after processing/editing/cleaning up a .csv file using AppleScript, saves the results to a tab-delimited text file, opens it in Excel 2004 and does some sorting. So far (after much internet-searching and experimentation), everything works according to plan, consistently and reliably.
In the script, I have been able to differentiate between *Microsoft Excel* (in the Microsoft Office 2004 folder) and *Microsoft Excel* (in the Microsoft Office 2008 folder) and the script successfully opens the file using Excel 2004. The following lines accomplish this (I have omitted some extra code which similarly checks for Excel 2008 and does some error-prevention - what is here is the important stuff. I have tried the script with and without the omitted code and it runs the same for the purposes of this post):
+tell application "Finder"+
+set TargetFile to (path to desktop folder as string) & "ResultsFile.txt"+
+if exists (application file "Microsoft Excel" of folder "Microsoft Office 2004" of folder "Applications" of startup disk) then+
+set VersionToUse to (application file "Microsoft Excel" of folder "Microsoft Office 2004" of folder "Applications" of startup disk)+
+end if+
+open TargetFile using VersionToUse+
+end tell+
No problems so far. The document is open in Excel 2004, waiting for AppleScript commands to be issued.
(On a computer with only Office 2004 installed, the following paragraph does not apply because there is only one version of Excel - I have been able to issue commands for selection, sorting, etc. with no worries. The problem is when there are two versions of Excel on the same hard disk.)
However, as soon as I use a tell block starting with *tell application "Microsoft Excel"*, Excel 2008 opens up. Even if Excel 2004 is already open, double-clicking Excel files in Finder will open Excel 2008. I have been looking for ways of uniquely identifying the version which has opened the document so that I can issue commands within that, but to no avail. If both versions of Excel are running at the same time, System Events gives the name of both as "Microsoft Excel". In Finder, I could change the name of one from "Microsoft Excel" to "Microsoft Excel 2004" and the other to "Microsoft Excel 2008", but I am trying to avoid that if possible. I'm not sure of what unwanted side-effects could result.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to issue commands within the running version without the other, identically-named, version activating itself? Possibly, the method I used to identify the wanted version (setting the variable VersionToUse to the pathway) is not the best way, but I am unable to figure out another way without the other version being opened instead. I would prefer to keep away from shell scripts unless there is no other way, as I am nowhere near as comfortable with shell scripts as I am with normal AppleScript. I have not yet tried setting the default application to Excel 2004 using the Get Info command in Finder (don't know if that will work consistently, as the OS seems to want to use the later version of an application if more than one is available), and I'm trying to make the script portable so that it could work on another computer which has both versions of Office installed without changing any of that computer's settings. However, if that change (so that *tell application "Microsoft Excel"* applies to Excel 2004 instead of Excel 2008) could be effected using AppleScript and then reverted to original settings once the script finished, that might be the simplest way to do it.

Answer 1

Thank you both for taking time to reply. I have tried your suggestions, but unfortunately they did not bring me any closer to what I am trying to achieve.
Taylor.henderson - yours did not work as hoped, most likely because AppleScript will only accept just the name of the application when it is being set to a variable. The full pathway, which would solve the confusion about which version of an application to use, seems to be rejected by AppleScript (maybe it is simply not expecting a pathway and does not know what to do with the extra information). The idea is great but unhappily it didn't work.
Hiroto - when run on the Mac at work (G4 eMac, 1.42 GHz, OS X 10.5.8), your script gave the following results:
+tell application "Microsoft Excel"+
+path to current application+
+«event ascrgdut»+
+path to current application+
+alias "MacintoshHD:Applications:Microsoft Office 2008:Microsoft Excel.app:"+
+end tell+
When run on my Mac at home (DP 1.25 GHz G4, OS X 10.4.11), it hung AppleScript with the only way out being to force quit. Again, the idea is good but it unhappily also didn't work.
After a lot more experimenting with both Excel and System Events, I acknowledged that I had come to a dead end. Then I re-read my original post and decided to try what I wanted to avoid - renaming the applications in Finder, although I had to log in as root to do so. After renaming "Microsoft Excel" in the Microsoft Office 2004 folder to "Microsoft Excel 2004", I ran that to see if it still worked. No problems so far. Then I told AppleScript to get the application process names using System Events. I had expected it to return "Microsoft Excel", but to my surprise it actually returned "Microsoft Excel 2004" as the name of the application process. When likewise renaming the 2008 version its application process did actually return just as "Microsoft Excel". I'm not sure why, but as long as they are different it enables me to address/refer to each one without confusion. Possibly because, at least on my home machine Excel 2008, when right-clicked on, gives the option to show package contents. Inside the folder which opens, and then inside Contents > MacOS is the Unix executable file. Excel 2004 does not display "show package contents" (probably PPC only). I tried renaming the Excel 2008 Unix executable file from "Microsoft Excel" to "Microsoft Excel 2008", but that really confused the computer. The name of that file is probably hard-coded and the file does not get recognized if its name is different. So I left the 2008 version completely alone.
The earlier version of my script had actually been able to open the chosen document in the desired version of Excel. The problem which I could not solve was how to prevent the other version of Excel from opening when using "tell application Microsoft Excel" in the script ("tell application Microsoft Excel" was needed before issuing any commands such as selecting, sorting, etc.). It looks like the renaming of the application and the consequent renaming of the application process did the trick. Hopefully changing the name of an application, as it appears in Finder, is not going to cause any problems. So far, it appears that nothing has gone wrong.
Just as an afterthought, to prove to myself that the problem was solved (at least sufficiently for me to do what I wanted) I ran the following script to see if having both versions of Excel running was going to cause any problems. The two larger blocks in the middle do the same thing - switching back and forth between the two versions of Excel - but one uses System Events and the other addresses each application individually. The delays are there to give each action time to finish happening before the next one occurs.
+tell application "Microsoft Excel 2004"+
open
+end tell+
+tell application "Microsoft Excel"+
open
+end tell+
+delay 6+
+tell application "System Events"+
+repeat with Counter1 from 1 to 5+
+delay 1+
+set frontmost of application process "Microsoft Excel 2004" to true+
+delay 1+
+set frontmost of application process "Microsoft Excel" to true+
+end repeat+
+end tell+
+repeat with Counter2 from 1 to 5+
+tell application "Microsoft Excel 2004"+
activate
+end tell+
+delay 1+
+tell application "Microsoft Excel"+
activate
+end tell+
+delay 1+
+end repeat+
+tell application "Microsoft Excel 2004"+
quit
+end tell+
+tell application "Microsoft Excel"+
quit
+end tell+
Thank you both once again for taking the time and effort to contribute. Even though your suggestions did not give the results hoped for (in fact it might not even be possible to do it with AppleScript), I appreciate your efforts as I always try to learn from other people's ideas and ways of doing things.