EA to Word OLE or similar

[kierien.gillen]

I work for VocaLink in the UK.  We have just begun using EA, very good it is too.  

I currently copy diagrams from EA and manually paste into Word documents.  When I change a diagram I have to manually amend the various documents where the diagram appears.

Does anyone know if EA supports some form of OLE or similar link between it and Word so that when I amend a digram in EA, then open a word document with that diagram, the diagram is automatically updated?

Any help appreciated

[«Midnight»]

Thanks Kierien,

Now to your question...

This is a good news - bad news sort of thing. The bad news is that AFAIK you cannot do exactly what you want. EA does not expose drawings as OLE-accessible objects, since it does a lot of the drawing at the time you open a diagram.

However, the good news is that you should be able to do something similar. The function you want - linking to external graphics at read time - is a feature of Word. All you need is a predictable graphic file for the link to work. You can save a diagram to a file as an image. Make sure you have the correct diagram open in EA, then from the main menu choose Diagram | Save as image, or use the control-T keyboard shortcut. [You can also do this from the API.]

Now you have a saved file with a known file name. You can link one or more Word documents to this file. If you change the EA diagram, you can save it to the same file. Word will update as normal, according to your document settings.

HTH, David

[kierien.gillen]

Hi David,

thanks for your response.

I must be doing something wrong as Word doesn't pick up the changes when the doc. is reopened after I've amended and resaved the diagram.  I've tried saving the diagram from EA as .png, .bmp and .emf.  

In Word I've tried inserting the digram as a file, an object from a file, with and without the Link to file option set.  With it set it places a link to the file in the document which does let me open the file which picks up the changes.  Without it set I see the diagram but it doesn't change on reopening.

If possible I would like to be able to see the diagram in the document, and for it to change each time it is opened (assuming the diagram has been resaved).

Is that possible?

Thanks, Kierien.

[Jan Pacovsky]

Another way how to do this is quite similar to the above-mentioned approach with only one difference - you don't have to choose the name of image manually.
Just export your model using funcion called "Diagrams Only Report" and don't forget to uncheck "Embed Diagram in Document". This will create RTF document (which will be useless in this case) and it also creates new folder with all diagram images where image name is automatically generated as GUID.
This approach could be useful in case you want to use more diagrams in your word document.

[kierien.gillen]

Thanks I'll try both approaches again.  I think there must be something with my Word settings as we've just tried David's method on a colleagues machine and it works fine.

Thanks for both,and your help

Kierien.

[«Midnight»]

Thanks Jan,

That's a good approach. You might also want to make sure that you've set the clipboard format to Metafile in the Tools | Options main dialog. This used to have an effect, though I don't know if it is still the case.

For the 'fast and dirty' method I first mentioned, make sure you don't break the link - that's what Microsoft used to call the action - to the graphic file in your Word document. Doing so embeds the graphic, resulting in the behavior you are getting. This is the default for Word.

You have to link the picture in the document to the file, rather than embed it. I've not worried about this for some time, to you'll need to look it up in older Word documentation yourself. In Word 2007 click the arrow on the Insert button and select Link to File.

HTH, David

[kierien.gillen]

Cheers, David, Jan.