MS Word saving a document to a specific directory

Question

I have a very simple example:
tell application "Microsoft Word"
activate
open ":mypath:myfile.doc"
save as active document file name "test.pdf" file format format PDF
close active document
end tell
This saves the contents of myfile.doc in pdf format in a file called test.pdf. But it places this in ~/Documents.
I dont seem to be able to specify an alternative path in the file name argument. Either it ignores the path if I use something like:
"foo:test.doc"
or it explodes with an error for something like:
":foo:test.doc" where :foo is /foo.
I assume there is perhaps some kind of property.
Is there a more efficient way to learn MS Word and applescript? I know its not an apple product (dohhh). If this was windows and vbscript they allow you to record a macro and effectively it gives you the code.
error "Microsoft Word got an error: active document doesn’t understand the save as message." number -1708 from active document

Answer 1

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
To save in a different location to the default you need to provide a full path to the new location:
You could say ((path to desktop) as string) & "test.xxx" OR
"Macintosh HD:Users:yourusername:Desktop:text.xxx"
Note that if the file already exists, it will be overwritten without alerting you.
I am using Office 2004, which does not allow save as PDF. You might need to verify that this format is available in the version you are using. So, using RTF as the format, this works:
<pre style="
font-family: Monaco, 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;
font-size: 10px;
margin: 0px;
padding: 5px;
border: 1px solid #000000;
width: 720px;
color: #000000;
background-color: #FFDDFF;
overflow: auto;">
tell application "Microsoft Word"
open (((path to documents folder) as string) & "Original Document.doc") as alias
save as active document file name (((path to desktop) as string) & "New Document.rtf") file format format rtf
close active document
end tell </pre>
To address your question about learning AS for Word, I assume you know that you can open the application's dictionary in Script Editor? (Descriptions can be somewhat obtuse, however.)