Retrieving the COM class factory for component error while generating word document

Question

I am trying to edit a word document from VB.NET using for the most part this code:

How to automate Word from Visual Basic .NET to create a new document http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316383

It works fine on my machine but when i publish to the server i get the following error.

Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {000209FF-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} failed due to the following error: 80070005.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {000209FF-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} failed due to the following error: 80070005.

The actual error happens when i try to just create a word application object

 Dim oWord As New Word.Application

Using Visual Studio 2008 and VB.NET 3.5. I made a reference to the "Microsoft Word 10.0 Object Library" and i see Interop.Word.dll file in the bin directory.

Using MS Office 2003 on development machine and Windows Server 2003

Still fairly new to .NET and don't have much knowledge about window server, but "UnauthorizedAccessException" sounds like a permission issue. I'm wondering if someone could point me in the right direction on what i might need to do to give my little application access to use word.

Answer 1

It definitely sounds like a permissions problem. Are you running your code in a windows service? The service normally runs as Local System, which may not have permission to access the Word object model. Additionally, if word is already running using the credentials of some other user then your program may not be able to access it via COM using different credentials. The office applications tend to be single instance which seems to exacerbate this problem.

Answer 2

In my case, Word is running through a Windows Service under a service account.

The problem was that the Desktop folder didn't exist in C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile (or in C:\Windows\SysWOW64\config\systemprofile).

Adding it resolved the issue for me.