How to extract embedded files from word document in a folder

Question

I have a word document with 10 objects embedded – excel/ ppt/ project and word formats. Below are the issues that i am facing

1. I cannot directly copy each file and place in a specified folder. If we can save Outlook email attachments at one go why are we unable to save word attachments at one go!!??
2. Even if i open each file and try to save it does not save by default document name

I have to open each file and save with a new name, which is very tedious and time consuming.

Answer 1

If you are working with Word-2007 format documents, you should be able to pull the embedded files out of the package. For a simple manual process on a single document, rename it aswhatever.zip, and navigate to the word/embeddings folder within it and just copy the files you want. For an automated process for multiple files, it is rather more involved.

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Enjoy,

Tony

www.WordArticles.com

Answer 2

E-mail clients such as Outlook have been designed to be able to save attachments. The goal of the OLE technology is to be able to view embedded objects and to open them in their native application. Extracting the embedded files is not easy - seehttp://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vsto/thread/85ef2249-0344-42f5-8dec-e7c09f98c62b/ for some ideas.

Answer 3

Thanks Tony. Now I am able to get all the documents in one quick go. Any suggestions on how to extract the files by the actual names rather than random numbering of the objects?

Answer 4

That's a little more difficult, as the images don't actually have names inside the document - there may be a residual reference to the original file name, depending on how it was inserted and has been changed, but you cannot guarantee it. If you have a way of finding the images by name within the Word document, it should be possible to do the equivalent in the zip archive.

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Enjoy,

Tony

www.WordArticles.com

Answer 5

Here's something to add to this discussion. I was having an issue even using the "change the .docx to .zip" method.

It would work to the extent that I could open the file via Winzip and see the contents, but when i would extract the OLE object, and change the extension. It would not work.

Now, in my case i was trying to extract a Security Certificate, a ".cer" file. When I would extract it, it would not import the file.

So I hit upon a solution that worked. This is not as fancy as writing some C+ code to do the job, but it worked for me, and hopefully it will work for someone else having the same problem.

All I did was open the .docx file in WORDPAD, instead of Word, and good ol' WordPad would allow me to extract the .cer file where Word does not, and i could save it to any location I wanted.

So why doesn't Microsoft allow the more sophisticated Word program to do something their "free" lowly Wordpad application can do? Go figure, it's Microsoft. :P

Hope this helps someone.

Shane