How can Word 2013 be automated from a C# Interop/COM program using Task Scheduler with a user logged on and the desktop locked?

Question

I have inherited a C# program that used to automate the creation of a daily report on Windows XP Pro SP3 using PDFCreator 1.2.3, MapInfo Professional 11, Word 2003, and Excel 2003. This Win XP machine was in an Active Directory domain and the C# program ran as a domain user (with Administrative permissions) with the user logged in and the desktop locked. Word 2003 was automated to open a template, create a document from the template, and save the document--all from/on a network share. Excel 2003 was used to open a spreadsheet with a table linked to an ODBC datasource and refresh the table, pulling the new data into the spreadsheet. MapInfo was used to generate map images from an ODBC datasource. PDFCreator was used to take the spreadsheet, word document, and images and put them all together into a daily report.

As XP has reached its end-of-life I have moved this program to a Win 8.1 EE virtual machine (in the same domain) and have installed Office 365 products (Word 2013 and Excel 2013) along with PDFCreator 1.7.1 and MapInfo Professional 12 to use in automating the creation of this daily report. This program works normally when run manually on the new VM, but fails when run as the same user as a Scheduled Task. This scheduled task is set to run with the highest permissions and run if the user is not logged in.

I realize there are many variables at play here; the O/S had to change and we don't use the old version of Office anymore, I also couldn't get older versions of PDFCreator or MapInfo. Therefore, I will focus the question on the things I can control. I am aware of the problems I face in doing this but am not clear on whether or not this is actually possible to do now given the new O/S and applications (namely Word 2013 and Excel 2013) that I have been asked to try to make it work with.

So, the question is: How can Word 2013 be automated from a C# Interop/COM program using Task Scheduler to run the program with a user logged on and the desktop locked?

Answer 1

The answer, I have found, is that a task such as this one when run on Windows XP Pro SP3 with the options selected to run as Administrator and to run whether logged on or not were not able to be used with the same task/user/permissions under Windows 8.1 EE.

The task ran successfully with the options to run as Administrator and run if not logged on being not selected.

For anyone else migrating legacy programs/tasks from Win XP as they decommission due to end-of-life, you may want to try removing the run as Administrator and run if not logged on options on the task in the new version of Windows Task Scheduler.

Answer 2

From Microsoft Docs - Considerations for server-side Automation of Office:

All current versions of Microsoft Office were designed, tested, and configured to run as end-user products on a client workstation. They assume an interactive desktop and user profile. They do not provide the level of reentrancy or security that is necessary to meet the needs of server-side components that are designed to run unattended.

Microsoft does not currently recommend, and does not support, Automation of Microsoft Office applications from any unattended, non-interactive client application or component (including ASP, ASP.NET, DCOM, and NT Services), because Office may exhibit unstable behavior and/or deadlock when Office is run in this environment.

I know it doesn't answer the question about Office 365, but I think this is as close as you are going to get. Also I found this article: HOWTO: Configure Office Applications to Run Under the Interactive User Account.