Version 6 of How one discovers the API for a COM-exporting application

One place to start is by Googling "$app_name object model". The (full) help for most Microsoft applications includes this information, often disguised as instructions on use of Visual Basic for Applications or VBScript. These reference guides usually are not installed by default during the typical installation. They can be added later by rerunning the setup program with the custom install option. Also, one can often start the application in question, and select Tools/Macros/Visual Basic Editor, then View/$app Explorer, and the API should be within a click or two more.

You can also record a macro and then examine the code.

To record a macro

On the Tools menu, point to Macro and click Record New Macro.
Type a name for the new macro in the Macro name box and click OK.
Perform the actions you want to learn more about.
When you have completed the actions you want to record, on the Stop Recording toolbar click Stop Recording.

To view a recorded macro

On the Tools menu, point to Macro and click Macros .
Find and click to select your recorded macro in the list of available macros.
Click Edit.

How to Obtain Built-In Constant Values for an Office Application

The article http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q239/9/30.ASP describes how to obtain the constant values for Office applications from type library files. Here's an example of how to do it in Tcl.

Load the tcom extension.

    % package require tcom
    3.8

Read the type library file.

    % ::tcom::import $pathToOfficeDirectory/excel9.olb
    Excel

The ::tcom::import command put the constant values into some arrays. It returns the namespace where it created the arrays.

    % info vars ::Excel::*
    (many array names listed)
    % parray ::Excel::XlRowCol
    ::Excel::XlRowCol(xlColumns) = 2
    ::Excel::XlRowCol(xlRows)    = 1

By using optcl you can browse the interfaces of loaded com objects with:

 package require optcl
 tlview::refview .ref
 tlview::loadedlibs .libs