I had some problems with a third-party Word-controlling code that is somewhat similar to Richard's example. (Word 2007 SP1, XP SP2.) Rewrote some parts according to that example, no luck. Error messages from Word were crazy:

"Bad parameter" -- it didn't like wdGoToBookmark but was ok with its numeric equivalent -1;

"Call to undefined method variant::SaveAs()" -- the same with Save() that was suitable in my case, so no options were remaining.

But then I ran the example via php.exe in the command line, and it worked! Eventually it turned out that Apache service must be run as some real user instead of SYSTEM.

Some libraries load other libraries as part of their functionality. For example Crystal Reports Object Factory uses the CreateObject() method to create an instance of a Crystal Design RunTime Application. If you want to use constants defined in the newly loaded library, you will need to manually register the library - even with com.autoregister_typelib set to true.

<?php
echo 'com.autoregister_typelib = ', ini_get('com.autoregister_typelib'), PHP_EOL;

$o_CrObjectFactory = New COM('CrystalReports11.ObjectFactory.1');

$o_CrApplication = $o_CrObjectFactory->CreateObject("CrystalDesignRunTime.Application");

echo 'Will not be defined : ', crOpenReportByDefault, PHP_EOL;

com_load_typelib('CrystalDesignRunTime.Application');

echo 'Will now be defined : ', crOpenReportByDefault, PHP_EOL;
?>

outputs ...

com.autoregister_typelib = 1
Will not be defined :
Notice: Use of undefined constant crOpenReportByDefault - assumed 'crOpenReportByDefault' in C:\refl.php on line 8
crOpenReportByDefault
Will now be defined : 0

In case any of you were wondering what com_load_typelib actually DOES, I have found that it loads constants\enums that the COM obeject has defined.  The example below is using the Nero COM object (from Nero Burning rom, version 6+).  The Nero object defines a bunch of constants, but they can not be used as PHP constants unless you use the mentioned function.  So the example below will work just fine:

<?php
$aNero = new COM("Nero.Nero") or die ("Nero didn't load, too bad");
com_load_typelib("Nero.Nero");
$aNero->GetDrives(NERO_MEDIA_CD);
?>

But this one will not, since PHP will return a message saying that the constant is undefined:

<?php
$aNero = new COM("Nero.Nero") or die ("Nero didn't load, too bad");
$aNero->GetDrives(NERO_MEDIA_CD);
?>

This one took me a while to figure out, hope it helps.  

Also, check out http://www.php.net/manual/en/faq.com.php to find out how to get COM events working in PHP.

Hello PHP community, I want to help in a problem I found in this COM built-in function: com_load_typelib(), when I executed it in order to open a COM Server process (for example: Word, Excel, etc.) I was in trouble to release the object from memory, I figured it out, this is the solution:

Change a configuration in the php.ini:

; autoregister constants of a components typlib on com_load()
com.autoregister_typelib = true

When com.autoregister_typelib directive is true, PHP parser manage the COM server type library, I hope it helps.

<?php
// Some servers may have an auto timeout, so take as long as you want.
set_time_limit(0);

// Show all errors, warnings and notices whilst developing.
error_reporting(E_ALL);

// Used as a placeholder in certain COM functions where no parameter is required.
$empty = new VARIANT();

// Load the appropriate type library.
com_load_typelib('Word.Application');

// Create an object to use.
$word = new COM('word.application') or die('Unable to load Word');
print "Loaded Word, version {$word->Version}\n";

// Open a new document with bookmarks of YourName and YourAge.
$word->Documents->Open('C:/Unfilled.DOC');

// Fill in the information from the form.
$word->Selection->GoTo(wdGoToBookmark,$empty,$empty,'YourName'); // Note use of wdGoToBookmark, from the typelibrary and the use of $empty.
$word->Selection->TypeText($_GET['YourName']);

$word->Selection->GoTo(wdGoToBookmark,$empty,$empty,'YourAge');
$word->Selection->TypeText($_GET['YourAge']);

// Save it, close word and finish.
$word->Documents[1]->SaveAs("C:/{$_GET['YourName']}.doc");
$word->Quit();
$word->Release();
$word = null;
print "Word closed.\n";
?>

The example document is ...

Hello [Bookmark of YourName], you are [Bookmark of YourAge] years old.

and it would be called ...

word.php?YourName=Richard%20Quadling&YourAge=35

Regards,

Richard.