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References to an Office interop are specific to the version of Office that you are using.<br />
<br />
If all your users have Office 2013, then simply remove the reference from your project amd recreate one to Word 2013 and recompile. Your application will then be able to work with Word 2013... but not with 2003.<br />
<br />
If you have users on both versions, then you have 2 choices. Either compile 2 different versions of your application, or work with late binding, that is with Object variables instead of Application, Document. and the likes.
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If I look at the properties of the word Interop in References I see<br />
C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MS<wbr />IL\Microso<wbr />ft.Office.<wbr />Interop.Wo<wbr />rd\15.0.0.<wbr />0__71e9bce<wbr />111e9429c\<wbr />Microsoft.<wbr />Office.Int<wbr />erop.Word.<wbr />dll<br />
<br />
Which impresses me as the office 2013 dll (corrrect me if I'm wrong). Programs compiled that way work perfectly on machines with office 2003 and on machines with office 2013.<br />
A machine that has had office 2003 uninstalled and office 2013 installed fails with the error above. <br />
<br />
Does that make any sense?
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Not at first sight, but maybe at second sight :-)<br />
<br />
When you say <i>A machine that has had office 2003 uninstalled and office 2013</i>, do you mean that at some point there was a dual installation (both versions installed in parallel) and then Office 2003 was uninstalled?<br />
<br />
If this is the case, I cannot say for Office 2013, but I know that with Office 2010, that sometimes caused problems that could be solved by repairing or reinstalling the newer version of Office.
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Yeah, I thought so too. Repaired, then completely uninstalled and reinstalled 2013 without effect. My working theory is that Office 2003 left something behind that's causing this problem,<br />
<br />
And yes, at one point there was a dual installation - this is my development machine. My problem is that I had several client machines running Windows XP and Office 2003. Rather than try to install Windows 7 I bought new machines for those people. I have other clients who have Windows 7 with Office 2003 installed. At this point I'm hesitant to try to upgrade them to 2013 for fear that the Word (and Outlook) automation stops working
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Thanks for your time, here's what happened...<br />
You caught me in the act of reinstalling 2003 - which fixed automation for 2013(!)<br />
So I uninstalled 2013<br />
booted<br />
Attempted to use Easy Fix to uninstall 2003 but Easy Fix itself failed to install - Error code 2738<br />
booted<br />
uninstalled 2003 using control panel<br />
hunted for 2003 in registry - couldn't find any reference<br />
booted<br />
reinstalled 2013<br />
&quot;Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {000209FF-0000-0000-C000-0<wbr />0000000004<wbr />6} failed due to the following error: 80080005.&quot;<br />
Arggh.
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Ah! These free tools that play havoc with your system.<br />
<br />
Ah! This COM where installing something breaks something else.<br />
<br />
When will we have a 100% .NET world where these problems are mostly a thing of the past and where installation problems are usually our own fault instead of something that looks like that butterfly in Australia that changes the weather in New York.<br />
<br />
I'm glad to see that you solved it. I'm sure that you will have a better weekend that way.
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Jaques stuck with me through a tedious debugging process and offered several suggestions that led me to the solution.<br />
I still don't understand why PDF Architect was the cause of my problem, but it's gone now so I don't care.
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<div class="content wysiwyg-content">
I have VB.net programs written in VS2005 using Word Interop. Works fine with Office 2003. Works fine on a new machine running Office 2013. If I uninstall 2003 and install 2013 i get an error :<br />
<br />
Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {000209FF-0000-0000-C000-0<wbr />0000000004<wbr />6} failed due to the following error: 80080005.<br />
<br />
when I instantiate the Word Application. <br />
Reinstalling Office 2003 fixes the problem, but reinstalling 2013 does not. <br />
Anyone seen this behavior?<br />
I note when I look at references in the project (this is my development machine) that the Word interop reference is in the GAC - something I think I read somewhere is not recommended. <br />
Any help would be appreciated.
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</div>


I have VB.net programs written in VS2005 using Word Interop. Works fine with Office 2003. Works fine on a new machine running Office 2013. If I uninstall 2003 and install 2013 i get an error :

Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {000209FF-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} failed due to the following error: 80080005.

when I instantiate the Word Application. 
Reinstalling Office 2003 fixes the problem, but reinstalling 2013 does not. 
Anyone seen this behavior?
I note when I look at references in the project (this is my development machine) that the Word interop reference is in the GAC - something I think I read somewhere is not recommended. 
Any help would be appreciated.

Word automation fails when upgrading from Office 2003 to Office 2013

The .NET Framework is not specific to any one programming language; rather, it includes a library of functions that allows developers to rapidly build applications. Several supported languages include C#, VB.NET, C++ or ASP.NET.

.NET Programming

Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET) is an object-oriented programming language implemented on the .NET framework, but also supported on other platforms such as Mono and Silverlight. Microsoft launched VB.NET as the successor to the Visual Basic language. Though it is similar in syntax to  Visual Basic pre-2002, it is not the same technology,

Visual Basic.NET

Microsoft Word is a commercial document editing program that is part of the Microsoft Office suite. It features numerous text-editing tools for creating richly formatted documents, along with tools for the use of macros in Word documents. Word's native file formats are denoted either by a .doc or .docx file extension. Plugins permitting the Windows versions of Word to read and write formats it does not natively support, such as the OpenDocument format (ODF) are available. Word can import and display images in common bitmap formats such as JPG and GIF. It can also be used to create and display simple line-art.

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Office is an integrated suite of applications that includes Outlook, Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Visio and InfoPath, along with a number of tools to assist in making the individual components work together. Coding within and between the projects is done in Visual Basic for Applications, known as VBA.

Microsoft Office

Office Productivity refers both to the act of being productive and efficient in an office or professional environment, as well as the software applications used to "produce" information. This includes the development of professional skills, creating work processes, and almost any program used to create or modify a document, image, audio or video clip. However, business application suites such as Microsoft Office, which include word processing, spreadsheet and presentation programs, are typically called productivity software, as contrasted with a "utility program," such as a file manager, which is used to organize files and folders on the computer. Many office- and business-oriented groups of programs are organized into suites.