I couldn’t find a free software that would easily do exactly what I want (see the subject). So here’s my ghetto solution, which can be easily automated.
- Change the extension *.docx/.xlsx/.pptx to *.zip
- Unpack *.zip file
- In the unpacked folder go to ‘word/embeddings’ or ‘xl/embeddings’ or ‘ppt/embeddings’
- Rename ‘oleObject1.bin’ to ‘almostThere.rar’
- Unpack ‘almostThere.rar’ (google for the software)
- Go to the folder ‘almostThere/’
- Rename file ‘CONTENTS’ to ‘bingo.cdx’
- Double-click and enjoy
As a free gift from Microsoft you’ll get an .emf image of all embedded ChemDraw schemes in the ‘*/word/media’ folder.
Note 1. Definitely works under Windows 10 with MS Office 2013 documents.
Note 2. Apparently one needs administrator rights on Windows 10 to change file’s extension
Note 3. Doesn’t work with structures added to Excel spreadsheet via ChemBioOffice plugin. Only .emf images are extractable.
Note 4. Backup the data before you mess something up.
Note 5. In fact the last .rar file is not a true RAR archive but decompressing software (e.g. 7zip) would still open it. It can as well be renamed to .tar, .arj, .7z or .cab (but not .zip)
Note 6. Under linux only 7zip could reliably extract files from the oleObject archive, regardless of its extension.
Hey, I’ve used it! I’ve got 42 objects and after step 2 made a script:
for ((i=1; i<=42; i++))
do
mkdir $i
7z x oleObject$i.rar -o$i
cd $i
mv CONTENTS $i.cdx
cd ..
done
Thanks!
Cool! Why do you want all cdx files to be in different folders?
Well, somehow I didn’t think of it at that moment.
And that script was after step 4, not 2, my mistake.