atw: Re: pdf converted to doc with text boxes containing content.
- From: "Lewington, Warren" <Warren.Lewington@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "'austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'" <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 2 Sep 2011 14:39:36 +1000
The document I had to remove text boxes from had extensive graphics within the
boxes and around them.
There were hundreds of them in the document. So far (I use that to qualify) we
haven't found any problems with the removal of the text boxes and the placement
of the text back into the document.
There were also hundreds of tables in the thing.
It was a seriously ugly piece of project manager graphic design and authorship.
Fingers crossed.
And Howard, most importantly, thanks for working out the limitations of the
macro code - that helps immensely when trying to find out why things aren't
working - which, lets face it, with MS, is most of our lives work...
Warren.
________________________________
From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Howard Silcock
Sent: Friday, 2 September 2011 14:18
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: Re: pdf converted to doc with text boxes containing content.
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 (In Word 97 and later frames have been replaced by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<mailto: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<mailto: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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