atw: Re: pdf converted to doc with text boxes containing content.
- From: Howard Silcock <howard.silcock@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 2 Sep 2011 14:17:30 +1000
Hi again, Neil
I've had a further look at the macro you posted and realise that it has a
whole lot of other problems.
1. It works by converting shapes to frames, then removing the frames,
leaving just the text. However, you can only convert a shape to a frame if
it supports attached text. The macro doesn't include any test to see whether
the shape it's currently working on supports attached text or not, so if
your document contains graphics, for example, the macro will just fail when
it tries to process the corresponding shape. So, as I suggested earlier,
the macro will almost certainly fail when some types of graphic are present,
or inline text boxes.
2. If it succeeds in converting all the textbox shapes to frames, it then
proceeds to delete ALL the frames in the document. This will include any
other frames that may have already been there initially and not arisen from
converting the textbox shapes. So in this case the macro may not fail, but
could delete stuff it wasn't meant to. In other words, running the macro can
have serious side effects! (In Word 97 and later frames have been replaced
by text boxes, so it's less likely that there would be other frames around,
but it's still a very dodgy approach.)
3. The macro falls into a basic trap that anyone who's tried to used a macro
to delete elements of a collection, or convert them to something else, is
likely to have encountered. As you loop through the collection deleting or
converting items, you're changing the collection and the code may lose track
of what's left to be deleted or converted. So the loop can stop before it's
meant to. That's what happens with this code. In my sample document, I had
three text boxes, carefully set up to be floating, and the code converted
the first two to frames and then stopped converting. I realised it had lost
count of where it was, because after the conversions the collection of
shapes it was processing had got smaller. There are tricks to avoid this,
but the author didn't use them (I used one in the macro I posted here -
looping backwards from the last shape to the first).
In summary, if you plan to use this macro, check that all your text boxes
are floating, be careful of problems from graphics in the document or
anything in frames, and, when the macro seems to have run
successfully,check to see that all text boxes actually were processed.
Howard
On 2 September 2011 12:34, Neil Maloney <maloneyn@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Howard,
>
> Thanks, very useful and necessary feedback for anyone that wants to use the
> macro.
>
> I did a quick test after finding the macro on the net, and used a
> temporary document that had two text boxes (that were not inline) with a
> few text paragraphs around the boxes. I have my clients "trained" not to use
> text boxes (or other "float on text" objects) and rarely have to remove text
> boxes, etc. from draft documents received for formatting.
>
> Neil.
>
>
> On 2/09/2011 12:11 PM, Howard Silcock wrote:
>
> Neil
>
> I have some concerns about the macro you posted. If it works for Warren,
> well, that fixes the immediate need. But it didn't work on the test document
> I created. A problem arises if a text box is set inline, rather than
> floating. My test document had some text boxes of each type and the floating
> ones worked, but the others caused errors. (Actually, I mean the floating
> ones worked once the others had been removed - the presence of an inline one
> caused the whole macro to fail.)
>
> Also the macro loops through every shape in the document, regardless of
> whether they are textboxes or not, and attempts to carry out its steps. I
> guess in most cases if you had, say, graphics (which are also shapes), the
> macro would just fail when it attempted to process them too - I haven't yet
> tested that.
>
> Another point that I wasn't clear about is where the macro is supposed to
> put the text it retrieves from the text boxes. The only place that made much
> sense was to add it to the end of the document. This macro is designed to do
> that and seems to work, but may need more testing (use at your own risk):
>
> Sub GetTextFromTextboxes()
> Dim tb As Shape
> Dim s As String
> Dim i As Integer
>
> s = ""
> With ActiveDocument
> For i = .Shapes.Count To 1 Step -1
> If .Shapes(i).Type = msoTextBox Then
> s = s & .Shapes(i).TextFrame.TextRange.Text
> .Shapes(i).Delete
> End If
> Next
> .Range.InsertAfter Text:=s
> End With
> End Sub
>
> Howard
>
> On 2 September 2011 09:41, Neil Maloney <maloneyn@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Warren,
>>
>> This does the trick, I have tested it:
>>
>>
>> Sub RemoveTextbox()
>>
>> Dim MyBox As Shape
>> For Each MyBox In ActiveDocument.Shapes
>> With MyBox
>> .Select
>> .Line.Visible = msoFalse
>> .ConvertToFrame
>> End With
>> Next MyBox
>>
>> Dim MyFrame As Frame
>> For Each MyFrame In ActiveDocument.Frames
>> MyFrame.Select
>> MyFrame.Delete
>> Next MyFrame
>>
>> End Sub
>>
>>
>> Sourced from:
>>
>>
>> http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.word.docmanagement/browse_thread/thread/c74f8d7dca0cc56a/c0d953b51959621c?lnk=st&q=word+convert+text+boxes+to+frames#c0d953b51959621c
>>
>> And I got that link from:
>>
>>
>> http://www.techtalkz.com/microsoft-office-word/189766-remove-text-boxes.html
>>
>> Neil.
>>
>>
>>
>> On 2/09/2011 9:29 AM, Lewington, Warren wrote:
>>
>> Hi all.
>> Anyone have a macro that will remove content from text boxes in Word and
>> paste it into the document or can point me to a macro repository where one
>> exists?
>>
>> Warren Lewington
>> *Technical Writer | Control Systems Delivery | Communications & Control
>> Systems | Asset Operations Group | RailCorp
>> *
>>
>>
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