Saving as a GIF (VBA Word 2000)

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Is there a way to create a macro that will select a block of text and save as a .gif?

I need to take a list of words or phrases, say in a table or just one word/phrase per paragraph, and save each one as a .gif file. Is there a way to do this with VBA?

Thanks!!
Troy

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Hi Troy,

(I always respond to posts that feature my initials!)
Hate to go against the ‘never say die’ grain here, but this sounds virtually impossible to do via VBA. When you select text in the text layer, what is being selected is basically a text string (with whatever formatting may be linked to it), rather than a picture of something that can be saved to a graphics format.

Neither does any office app allow you save a file as a .gif (that I know of) – so you can’t create a new file containing just the selected text and save as .gif.

You may need to find a different way to get done what you need to do….

Gary

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One way is to select the text and the Print the selection as a PDF file.

You can then open the PDF file in Acrobat and save it as, say, JPG or PNG.

Then use some drawing tool such as Photo Editor to save as GIF.

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What version of Acrobat allows that? I have Acrobat 4.05 and cannot find the capability to save as a jpg.

Also, can it do that as a batch job? If so, I think I’d be home free. I could automate saving the selection as a pdf, batch the pdfs to jpg, and then use Paintshop Pro to batch the jpgs to gifs.

Thanks for your help!!
Troy

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The File | Save As menu in Acrobat 5 allows saving as eps, jpg, png, rtf, tif, txt, ps, eps.

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Howard,
I suppose you mean the full version of Adobe Acrobat.
The reader only don’t have this options.

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Oui!

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PowerPoint (I checked this in 2002) allows you to Save As a .gif.

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Hi Margot,

Thanks very much for straightening me out on this – I’d never bothered to look – but you can save PPTs as .gifs, .jpgs, .wmfs and a bunch of other nice things.

Best of all, this means that Troy’s request actually is doable; I’m happy to contradict my original reply ’cause this is a sweet little macro:

Public Sub SaveWordPhraseAsGIFViaPPT()
'Gary Frieder  Woody's Lounge  March 2002
'Purpose: For each paragraph in a Word document,
'saves the text as a GIF (via PowerPoint)
'Assumes a reference has been set to PPT library
Dim DocParas As Paragraphs
Dim strPhrase As String
Dim n As Long
Dim PPT As PowerPoint.Application
Dim TempPres As PowerPoint.Presentation
Dim TempSlide As PowerPoint.Slide
Set PPT = New PowerPoint.Application

Set DocParas = ActiveDocument.Paragraphs
For n = 1 To DocParas.Count
    strPhrase = DocParas(n).Range.Text
    Set TempPres = PPT.Presentations.Add
    Set TempSlide = TempPres.Slides.Add(1, ppLayoutText)
    TempSlide.Shapes(2).Delete
    TempSlide.Shapes(1).TextFrame.TextRange.Text = strPhrase
    TempPres.Export "C:TempWord Phrase #" & n, "GIF"
    TempPres.Close
Next 'n

PPT.Quit

Set DocParas = Nothing
Set TempPres = Nothing
Set TempSlide = Nothing
Set PPT = Nothing

End Sub

Thanks again,
Gary

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I do like that macro. I may never *need* it, but I made a copy of it just in case!!! Ran just fine. Plus it may come in handy as a “go-by” if I ever want to open PowerPoint from Word.

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>this is a sweet little macro:
I might say that.
It’s sweeter still as a little function that harvests inline shapes from within a document.
THANKS!

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I haven’t quite worked this out, but FWIW:
I’m converting a set of WPD via RTF to DOC, then extracting images from within the DOC.
My code gets to the line

TempPres.Export strNewName, "JPG"

and then baulks with “Presentation (unknown member) failed”, a.k.a. Run-time error -2147467259.
The value of strNewName at this point is

J:20080331EnglishADMADM-PGW153I.WPD.DOC.JPG

If I lop off extraneous extents and use

strNewName="J:20080331EnglishADMADM-PGW153I.JPG"

then the slide/image is saved flawlessly!

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I could imagine, but not code, the following:

(1) Determine the screen coordinates of the selection.
(2) Using something in the Windows API, capture that portion of the screen.
(3) Run some graphical toolkit to change from whatever the native format is to GIF.

While it is tempting to think about a print screen, SendKeys cannot access the PrintScreen button, so the usual shortcuts don’t appear to be available.

Also, all the colors would be backwards if the text was selected. Hmmm…

There probably is some software out there, akin to WordArt, that can save as GIF, but whether it can be automated…

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>Is there a way to create a macro that will select a block of text and save as a .gif?
See also this thread post 706,955 (19 April 2008) for saving an image from the clipboard to a gif/jpg file.

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Hi Chris,

Take a look at the zip file here:http://www.lebans.com/msword.htm%5B/url%5D It seems to me that it would be quite straightfoward to use this in conjunction with the CopyAsPicture and PasteSpecial (DataType)methods to convert a range to an image.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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>to convert a range to an image.
Paul, thanks for adding this to my arsenal. It is a great deal neater than my kludge.
It works well, but saves as BMP/EMF, whereas I need JPG.
I’ll go with my current kudgy solution to “get the immediate job done”

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Here is my (stolen from The Lounge!) code which ran well:

        ' Build the JPG file from the clipboard
        ''' You need a reference to the Microsoft Excel Object library.
        Dim xl As Excel.Application
        Set xl = CreateObject("excel.application")
        xl.Visible = True
        xl.Workbooks.Open ("J:ConversionMakeGIFChrisGreavesMakeGIF.xls")
        xl.DisplayAlerts = False
        xl.Quit
        ' Obtain a valid name
        ' blah blah blah 

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