[RESOLVED] closing files when error 5981 occrs

I have word vb code which navigates a directory structure and opens all word files in read only mode for text string content checking. Occasionally a word document fails to open and reports error code 5981. I wish to close the file and continue the run but activedocument.close and documents(myfilename).close have no effect and all such files remain open and have to be closed manually at end of run. Immediately after opening the active document is shown as <Cannot open macro storage.> in the Documents collection.

have you tried application.displayalerts = false?

what version of word /windows?

i found this from some other forum

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I found the solution. Right click the docx, select properties then UNBLOCK. It would seem that word puts a block on the file if its downloaded from the internet.

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I assume you have error handling code wrapping your document open routine?

there is methods by code to unblock documents

Thanks for the prompt replies. Yes I do set the error trap. I am using Word 2010. I will try display alerts but as I do not get a display when running under VB I don't understand why this is a fix - but worth a try. Manually unblocking the document is not an option in the middle of a VB controlled run examining several thousand files and finding a handful fail with error 5981. I think that one solution is to open the files in a separate instance of Word but in a thin client environment with 2003 and 2010 versions of word I have a problem on how to code to always obtain a 2010 instance and how to test this code in a variety of different user environments.

i do not know how, by code, to test if the documents are blocked, but it would be possible to unblock all files prior to opening them in word, within the code

whether the time overhead of doing this would make it unviable i can not say, it may, to some degree at least, depend on the size of the files, if the whole process is being run in background it may not matter at all

Out of curiosity is your word document format docx?

Docx - I have recoded to open in a separate instance of word and this has overcome the problem - thanks for you help