Converting textboxes to plain text

[Guest]

Here's an idea for the next version of Word. We have an application that
exports its report to Crystal Reports, Acrobat pdf, Excel, Lotus 123, dBase,
Access, .csv, and .rtf files. One of the reports can't be sent to Excel
because of the row limitation. Inorder to preserve the layout of the report
and be able to work with it, it was sent as an RTF file. Unfortunately,
everything was then in text boxes.
So, how about a "OCR" converter in Word that would take text boxes and
convert them to plain text while preserving all of the formatting.
--
I know enuff to be dangerous.

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[Guest]

HiYa-

I appreciate your point, but don't see why it should be up to Word to
correct another program's flaws. Have you suggested to the developer of the
export program that they revise their software to output real RTFs that don't
package the text in boxes?

Regards |:>)

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Wild guess: For your immediate problem, might exporting the mystery app to
Access, then exporting it from Access to Word, produce less annoying
results?

 

[Guest]

I'd gladly send the suggestion to the other app's company, but I don't know
what the app is. It's part of a custom database we have that occasionally
does what it is supposed to do. I think it's Crystal Reports.

 

[Guest]

Well, I tried that but the export disappeared. I have no idea where the file
went. All I can say for certain is I created a dummy Access database and then
chose ODBC Access as the export format.

 

[Guest]

Maybe if the "text boxes" are really frames, Ctrl+Q will remove them? Else,
you could use a macro to loop the text boxes (shapes?), and extract the text.

Greetings,
Klaus