Author: Jonas Bilinkevicius 

Using D6 I need to extract the Word version on the client computer. The options are 
Word97, Word2000 and WordXP.

Answer:

1   function GetCurrentWordMajorVersion: Integer;
2   var
3     vRegistry: TRegistry;
4     vVersionStr: string;
5     vVersion: string;
6   begin
7     Result := -1;
8     vRegistry := TRegistry.Create(KEY_READ);
9     try
10      vRegistry.RootKey := HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT;
11      if vRegistry.OpenKeyReadOnly('Word.Application\CurVer') then
12      begin
13        {Get the default value: 'Word.Application.10'}
14        vVersionStr := vRegistry.ReadString('');
15        {Extract the major version from the string}
16        vVersion := System.Copy(vVersionStr, Succ(LastDelimiter('.', vVersionStr)),
17          MAXINT);
18        {8=Word97, 9=Word2000, 10=Word2002, etc.}
19        Result := StrToIntDef(vVersion, -1);
20      end;
21    finally
22      vRegistry.Free;
23    end;
24  end;