Running Word 2013 from the command line

Question

Some of our clients have a problem that we cannot reproduce here: Out uses MS-Word to create a letter form. Since some of our customers use Office 2013, this feature will no longer work.
We tried to reproduce this and find that on the affected systems Word does not start from the command line. Starting through a link in startmenu works. It also works to start Excel from the command line.

Does anyone have an idea what the problem is and how to solve it?

Answer 1

We found a solution: Our software still uses the old 8.3 file names - also long file names are replaced by short ones. And it looks like they don't like Office 2013 anymore.

Answer 2

You can try using start.exe from the command line:

c:> start winword 

I am not familiar with it, but I tried it, and it worked for me in Windows 7 with Office 2007. I found this site (windows-commandline. Com). They claim that it works for all versions of Word.

Answer 3

This is the executable location and file in Office 2013, as indicated in the shortcut. You cannot start it using winword , or in Win 8 32 bit.

 "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\root\office15\winword.exe" 

Answer 4

Just FYI is similar to Word for Excel in the command line and options

 c:\> start excel "file path and location" c:\> start excel "c:\somepath\myfile.xlsx" 

worked for us to open the file created in VB 6.0 for Excel 2013

 c:\excel does not work on command line for us either 

I think WinWord will also work with the file parameter.

 c:\> start winword "c:\somepath\myfile.doc" 

Answer 5

Try using the launch prompt by pressing the Windows + R button. A launch prompt will open, and then enter winword to open MS Word and excel to open MS Excel.