How to remove, or change an attached template via OleAutomation

My company has a large selection of templates which are used to generate customer correspondence. I need to modify the existing processes so that copies of generated files (template + data) are saved for later editing.

My problem is that when I open one of these saved MSWord documents, edit, then close, MSWord is insisting that changes have been made to the template (the one selected in the generation process).

I am not really sure why this is happening, but it may be that the generated document contains a reference to the template upon which it was based, but that because the template is in a remote location, MSWord is attempting to generate a new local file.

If that diagnosis is correct, then I need a method to remove the template reference from the document.

If the diagnosis is incorrect then what is the likely explanation/solution?

I have found that BOTH resultant files contain a reference to the template.

Note: Manual editing in Word has no issue. If I let the letter generate and save to disk from Winword, I can open it and manipulate it quite happily. Somewhere in the automation steps the problem is being created.

Interestingly - I have changed the save format to '.rtf' and the problem remains.

Further - it doesn't matter if I say 'Yes' to saving changes to the template, it continues to prompt me each time I open and close the document (whether I edit or not)

I have discovered that by saving the document as wdFormatXML I can see the reference to the letter template and edit it. If I do that the problem goes away.

I am now attempting to achieve the same result via automation, but with no success;

  WordApp.ActiveDocument.Set_AttachedTemplate(tmplt);

Does not work for values of tmplt 'Normal.dot', varNull, 'c:\progra~1\etc\Simple.dotx' and so on. The function call tells me it cannot find the template for the first 2 of those values, or merely hangs.

I am back to my original question - how does one clear the attached template ?

Solution

I eventually figured it. My problem was down to late-binding in some way. I found that the following code worked

var
  docpath : OleVariant;
  fmt     : OleVariant;
  tmplt   : OleVariant;
  WordApp : WordApplication;
  WordDoc : WordDocument;
begin
  docpath := SaveLoggedDocToDisk(GetCurrentFileName());

  WordApp := CoWordApplication.Create;
  try
    fmt     := EDITABLE_FORMAT;
    tmplt   := '';

    WordDoc := WordApp.Documents.Open(docpath, EmptyParam, EmptyParam,  EmptyParam, EmptyParam, EmptyParam, EmptyParam, EmptyParam, EmptyParam, fmt, EmptyParam, EmptyParam );
    WordDoc.Set_AttachedTemplate(tmplt);

The problem I had with earlier versions of this code was that

WordApp.ActiveDocument.SetAttachedTemplate(tmplt);

although it appears equivalent, was not behaving. By creating a variable of type WordDocument the routine sprang into life.