Exporting drawings to MS-Word 2003 from CorelDRAW X3

[Jose Valdes]

I often use CorelDraw X3 to edit drawings (created in PTC Pro/ENGINEER) and
import them into MS Word 2003. By the way, I have cross-posted this message
to "corel.CorelDRAWX3".

Typically, these drawings look great in CoreDraw, but ugly in MS Word. So
far, I've had the best results by using WordPerfect Graphic (WPG) format for
the export/import from Draw to Word. Is there a better format for the
Draw/Word conversion? WPG seems to work okay, but sometimes I get weird
conversion problems like curved edges get jagged or straight lines become
dotted lines.

Here's a fuller description of the steps I follow:

1. Export drawing from Pro/ENGINEER as DXF

2. Import DXF into CorelDraw X3 (Typically, have pretty good results at this
stage)

3. Edit drawing in Draw X3

4. Export from Draw as WPG

5. Import WPG as referenced graphic in MS Word

The last step above is where the conversion problems appear. Online help for
CorelDRAW says to use PNG format instead of WPG, but the result isn't as
nice because WPG is a vector format. If no one has any suggestions, I can
trudge along using WPG.

Thanks! José

 

[Mary Sauer]

Why not save the drawing as a .wmf or .emf? I use CorelDraw 12 a lot, never had
to resort to .png. Corel will convert to .eps, might be another alternative.

 

[Jose Valdes]

Often text boxes convert as black rectangles when I export as WMF or EMF. I
just tried it now to be able to describe the problem in more detail to you,
and, of course, the conversion worked well. I exported another drawing as
EMF and the mysterious problem reappeared. I'm all ears if you have any
advice as to how to get EMF to work reliably.


EPS is a pretty good option for me, but not as good as WPG. Both options
suffer from the fact that curves convert as jagged lines. Someone who
responded to my post on "corel.CorelDRAWX3" had this to say, "WMF and EMF
will have the same problem as WPG - these formats do not support curves.
They "translate" all curves into a bunch of tiny straight lines to simulate
a curve."


I'm sure this guy knows what he is talking about, but my experience is that
WMF and EMF handle curves better than WPG and EPS. I just can't expect it to
convert text reliably.


By the way, I noticed that the export dialogue for EPS in CorelDRAW gives a
lot of options, which I don't quite understand. I plan to explore these
options to see if they mitigate my issues. If you have any advice on this
front, I'd love to hear it. Thanks!

 

[Mary Sauer]

Hello Jose,
I read your thread in the Corel group. I have quite a few DXF images on my
computer. I have exported them as various vector formats from Corel. I used the
..svg extension as well as all the standard vector extensions, makes a bigger
file but it looks okay.
There was a hot fix that addressed .emf images.
Description of the Office 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hot fix package: October 11,
2006
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926259/en-us

 

[Jose Valdes]

Thanks, I'll look into the hot fix.

Hello Jose,
I read your thread in the Corel group. I have quite a few DXF images on my
computer. I have exported them as various vector formats from Corel. I
used the .svg extension as well as all the standard vector extensions,
makes a bigger file but it looks okay.
There was a hot fix that addressed .emf images.
Description of the Office 2003 post-Service Pack 2 hot fix package:
October 11, 2006
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926259/en-us

--
Mary Sauer MSFT MVP
http://office.microsoft.com/
http://msauer.mvps.org/
news://msnews.microsoft.com

 

[Cliff]

My copy of Word 2007 has trouble with WMF/EMF images, and the way I get
around it is by doing as follows: export to SVG or EMF from your drawing
application and import the resulting files in Visio. Then copy and paste the
files to Word (or try saving them as a new EMF.) Of course, this presumes
you have Visio.

 

[Jose Valdes]

Thanks! I've noticed that EMZ is a nice format for exporting drawings from
Viso to Word 2003. It is essentially just a compressed EMF file, which gets
too big even for government work. ;-)