Office graphics – formats

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Hi,

Would anyone know in which formats charts copy-pasted from Excel are stored in in office?

I’m considering storing chunks of text in an Oracle database as various text elements. But from Word documents, powerpoint slides and infopath templates also comes charts originated in Excel and pasted into the other apps.

– is it possible to store the charts in databases as well?
– if so in which format(s)? (and has this changed from the O2003 file formats to the O2007 file formats?)

All ideas and suggestions are very welcome.

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I don’t know whether the following is representative, but for what it’s worth:
If I save a Word 2003 document with a chart copied/pasted from Excel as an HTML file, the chart is saved as a .GIF file.
If I save it from Word 2003 as a Word 2007 document (.docx), and use WinZip to look at it, the chart is stored as an .EMF file.

Most databases have a field type that can be used to store arbitrary data, usually called a [acronym=”Binary Large OBject”]BLOB[/acronym] field. You can store images, Word documents, Excel workbooks etc. in such a field.

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Thanks Hans,

I’ll be back on this topic in 1 weeks time / ;o)

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I don’t know whether the following is representative, but for what it’s worth:
If I save a Word 2003 document with a chart copied/pasted from Excel as an HTML file, the chart is saved as a .GIF file.
If I save it from Word 2003 as a Word 2007 document (.docx), and use WinZip to look at it, the chart is stored as an .EMF file.

Most databases have a field type that can be used to store arbitrary data, usually called a [acronym=”Binary Large OBject”]BLOB[/acronym] field. You can store images, Word documents, Excel workbooks etc. in such a field.

Hi Hans,

Actually my question has two sides.

We are considering using InfoPath as a supplement to Word and I’m investigating various potential problems that I see.

1. If an Excel chart is pasted on a form how is it then stored in the database?
(given that it is not the entire workbook or document we want to store but only the chart/graphic in question)

2. From what I can find – and what I’ve been able to test so far – InfoPath only works with connections to either Access or MS SQL server – is this correct?? (We are running on an Oracle 10 db…)

Any advice or insights are highly appreciated.

TIA,

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I’m sorry, I can’t help you with these questions.

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Hi Hans,

Actually my question has two sides.

We are considering using InfoPath as a supplement to Word and I’m investigating various potential problems that I see.

1. If an Excel chart is pasted on a form how is it then stored in the database?
(given that it is not the entire workbook or document we want to store but only the chart/graphic in question)

2. From what I can find – and what I’ve been able to test so far – InfoPath only works with connections to either Access or MS SQL server – is this correct?? (We are running on an Oracle 10 db…)

1.) I’m not positive but I’m fairly sure that it is only the “picture” that is stoed in the form data.
2.) You can send data to a web service. So, if the Oracle db can be accessed that way you could do it. You could experiment with defining different types of data connections.

Joe

--Joe

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1.) I’m not positive but I’m fairly sure that it is only the “picture” that is stoed in the form data.
2.) You can send data to a web service. So, if the Oracle db can be accessed that way you could do it. You could experiment with defining different types of data connections.

Joe

Hi Joe,

Read about the Web services after I’d done my last reply and understood from that, that any third party DB’s must be connected through web services and that MS only supports DB’s in the shape of Access or MS SQL (bit odd decision). I appreciate your confirmation of that observation

As goes for the pictures – as everything in the forms are stored in XML, I suppose the picture will be in the SVG format?
– but as far as I know Excel charts are not vector graphics?

So my concern here, is how to get the chart submitted to the database and subsequently extracted – maybe into Word, maybe into a Website and maybe into another media – without distortions.

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As goes for the pictures – as everything in the forms are stored in XML, I suppose the picture will be in the SVG format?
– but as far as I know Excel charts are not vector graphics?

So my concern here, is how to get the chart submitted to the database and subsequently extracted – maybe into Word, maybe into a Website and maybe into another media – without distortions.

If you were using SharePoint you could connect to almost any database fairly easily. If you can do the same with the individual Office products Microsoft have done a good job of hiding it.

Best I can say is try it.

Joe

--Joe

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