How to convert a MS Office Drawing Object to a vectorial eps ?

[fabrice.baro]

I have a whole bunch of MS Office (XP) drawings (mostly Excel charts)
I'd like to convert to eps for use in a LaTeX document. I've tried
copying & pasting in Paint Shop Pro X, then saving to eps, but when
imported in the LaTeX document, it looks horrible: everything is
pixellized (especially the text), so I assume PSP X has rasterized the
MS Office Drawing Object. How could I keep the vector features in the
final eps ?

 

[Jim Land]

(e-mail address removed) wrote in @e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com:

I have a whole bunch of MS Office (XP) drawings (mostly Excel charts)
I'd like to convert to eps for use in a LaTeX document. I've tried
copying & pasting in Paint Shop Pro X, then saving to eps, but when
imported in the LaTeX document, it looks horrible: everything is
pixellized (especially the text), so I assume PSP X has rasterized the
MS Office Drawing Object. How could I keep the vector features in the
final eps ?

Have you tried opening each drawing in MS Office and printing to a file
as PS?

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HP850507951033.aspx

 

[Wilfried Hennings]

I have a whole bunch of MS Office (XP) drawings (mostly Excel charts)
I'd like to convert to eps for use in a LaTeX document. I've tried
copying & pasting in Paint Shop Pro X, then saving to eps, but when
imported in the LaTeX document, it looks horrible: everything is
pixellized (especially the text), so I assume PSP X has rasterized the
MS Office Drawing Object. How could I keep the vector features in the
final eps ?

Hello,
PSP is primarily a bitmap editing software.
You should use the described copy & paste method with a vector graphics
software (e.g. Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator, Corel (formerly
Micrografx) Designer; all three expensive commercial products, but if
you already have one, it's OK). Use Paste Special - Graphic, not simply
paste, which in some cases creates a Word, Excel or Office Graphics
Object.
You can also try Mayura Draw (http://www.mayura.com) because it produces
very clean EPS files and is an inexpensive shareware; here you need no
paste special because it always pastes as WMF graphic, but sometimes the
pasted graphic gets very thick lines and small text.

As you need them for LaTeX, other possibilities are
Word2Tex (http://www.word2tex.com/; used to work for me but after
upgrade to Word2003 I have problems with the figures) or
Word-To-LaTeX (http://kebrt.webz.cz/programs/word-to-latex/)
which have the advantage that the whole Word document including all
figures is converted in one run.


--
email me: change "nospam" to "w.hennings"
Wilfried Hennings c./o.
Forschungszentrum (Research Center) Juelich GmbH, MUT
<http://www.fz-juelich.de/mut/mut_home>
All opinions mentioned are strictly my own, not my employer's.

 

[pluton]

I have a whole bunch of MS Office (XP) drawings (mostly Excel charts)
what you need is to, in word, go to print, choose a postscript printer
(if you do not have one, look for one on the net but most of the new
physical printers can be used) and check "save to file", then you'll
get myfile.prn that your rename in myfile.ps and here you go, you have
your drawings in vectorial format...

Pluton

 

[Piet van Oostrum]

p> what you need is to, in word, go to print, choose a postscript printer
p> (if you do not have one, look for one on the net but most of the new
p> physical printers can be used) and check "save to file", then you'll
p> get myfile.prn that your rename in myfile.ps and here you go, you have
p> your drawings in vectorial format...

And then you have to convert it to EPS. For example with the epswrite
device of ghostscript.

 

[pluton]

p> what you need is to, in word, go to print, choose a postscript printer

And then you have to convert it to EPS. For example with the epswrite
device of ghostscript.

by the way, you can directly rename it with an eps extension, so that
you do not need to convert it from ps to eps... but it can be usefull
if you want to get the right bounding box...

Pluton

 

[Piet van Oostrum]

p> by the way, you can directly rename it with an eps extension, so that
p> you do not need to convert it from ps to eps... but it can be usefull
p> if you want to get the right bounding box...

Most of the Postscript printer drivers generate Postscript operators that
are illegal in an EPS file, even when you select the EPS option. Therefore
you have to do the additional conversion step to get rid of these
operators. Just renaming and/or adding a bounding box is not sufficient,
although superficially your file may resemble an EPS file. It probably will
bite you sooner or later.