Text boxes in Flowchart

[Brainfire]

Hi....

I've got a lot of flowcharts originally made in excel - I copied the
flowcharts to a word (2003) document and populated the flowchart with
text boxes with the appropriate text in them, taking a long time to
format and center the text.

I now need to copy the completed flowcharts to another master word
document containing all of them, as well as other documents. I've tried
insert 'File', which def doesn't work; insert 'object' which def
doesn't work, which left me with the tried and trusted copy and paste,
which NEARLY worked - the problem is that although the tables copy over
perfectly, the text in the text boxes seems to acquire indents which
makes all the text start from the centre of the text boxes and
left-aligned, if you know what I mean?

Is there any way to copy these flowcharts as-is, or a way to move the
indents (not one at a time) back to their original position as there
are about 40 flowcharts in total with approx 20-30 text boxes in each
one!

Many Thanks

 

[Jezebel]

The problem is that the pasted objects are taking on the properties of a
style in the target document. You might be able to fix the problem fairly
quickly by defining a new style that presents the textbox text as you want
it (ie centered and whatever), then apply that to each of the textboxes.

For future reference, a) don't apply formatting manually, and b) don't use
Word for serious graphic tasks like creating flowcharts. If you really must
create flowcharts (and their value as documentation is *extremely* dubious),
use Visio.

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hi bf

I've got a lot of flowcharts originally made in excel - I copied the
flowcharts to a word (2003) document and populated the flowchart with
text boxes with the appropriate text in them, taking a long time to
format and center the text.

I now need to copy the completed flowcharts to another master word
document containing all of them, as well as other documents.

Combining material from different Word documents into one is a tough
thing to try, when formatting needs to be stable. The usual thing that
lets you stumble is styles: if you use the same style in both the source
and the target, but with different settings (i.e., different font size
in one document), then you've got a problem. [It could even be that the
two styles are defined in the same way, but their parent style differs
....] Graphical objects anchored to some paragraph or other (as the Text
boxes in your case) add another layer of possible grief.

I've tried insert 'File', which def doesn't work;

Why not, i.e.: what fails?

insert 'object' which def doesn't work,

Correct, that will not work for anything larger than 1 page.

which left me with the tried and trusted copy and paste,
which NEARLY worked - the problem is that although the tables copy over
perfectly, the text in the text boxes seems to acquire indents which
makes all the text start from the centre of the text boxes and
left-aligned, if you know what I mean?

Position the cursor in one Text box: what style is set there? Any direct
formatting? Use the "Reveal Formatting" Toolbar (in both source and
target document) to spot differences.

Is there any way to copy these flowcharts as-is, or a way to move the
indents (not one at a time) back to their original position as there
are about 40 flowcharts in total with approx 20-30 text boxes in each
one!

If the style has an indent in the new document, and is used uniquely in
the documents (i.e., only is used in the Text boxes), the answer is
simple: adjust the style.

If the style does not have an indent, and no direct formatting, it could
be some Text box margin setting. You'll probably have to visit each Text
box, manually or via VBA, to put things right. Same goes if the it's
direct formatting, of if the style is not unique (and, I'm afraid,
there's a big probability it isn't unique IMHO).

HTH
Robert