Three ways to pull in text from Word
From Cadence Magazine, February 1998
By George Head
The first and easiest method is to use the Mtext command. Once you are in the Mtext Editing dialog box, go to Word. Highlight the section that you want and pick Copy from the Edit menu. Go back to AutoCAD. Place your cursor in the text area of the Mtext dialog box and type Ctrl+V for paste. The text will be pasted in the Mtext editor. Now, you can format it, change it's font and treat it as any other Mtext. Once you OK the dialog box, the text is inserted into AutoCAD.
The second method is trickier but easy to do. Begin by highlighting the text in Word that you want to bring into AutoCAD. Pick Copy from the Edit menu. Go back to AutoCAD. Pick Paste from the AutoCAD Edit menu, or type Ctrl+V, this will paste a Microsoft Word OLE object in your drawing. To make it look like regular AutoCAD text, have the background of the object and the background of the AutoCAD screen the same color. In this format, you have the ability to do several things. When you edit the document within AutoCAD, this brings up Word with just the section you pasted as a document in and of itself. You can now use all of the features of Word to make modifications in the document, including fonts, bold, size and so on. Then, from the Word File menu, pick either Update to update the object or simply exit Word and the object in AutoCAD will be updated. You also have the opportunity to relegate the document to an icon embedded in the AutoCAD drawing. In this form, it is not see as text, only as a Word icon. If you double click on the icon, the text comes up in Word.
The third method should be used if you want to bring in the Word document as ordinary Dtext; that is, each line as a separate text object. Begin by highlighting the text in Word that you want to bring into AutoCAD. Pick Copy from the Edit menu. Go back to AutoCAD. Pick Paste Special from the AutoCAD Edit menu. Look at the Paste Special dialog box. Notice that AutoCAD Entities is chosen. You cannot link the text to the Word document if you choose AutoCAD Entities; thus, it is not one of your choices if pick Paste Link. Once you OK the dialog box, then you pick an insertion point. The command line indicates a block insertion, which is exactly what you are doing. Once you insert the block, then you can explode the it and proceed to edit the text with the DDEDIT command. Make sure the current text style doesn't use a fancy font such as Times New Roman, as this makes it very difficult to control the insertion point. It would be better to use a TXT font until the text is positioned, then either change the style or the font within the style for the text.
Also see Andy Roe's "Getting Started on the Automation Path: Using AutoCAD with MS Office," Cadence, December 1997.
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