how to open embedded MS Office objects

Hi AROAviva,

I may have just figured this out -- try this appraoch and see if it works with OLE objects embedded into MS Word documents. This worked for me on PDF files embedded in an .XLS document, and I'm thrilled!

-r

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Holy Moly, I just figured out a solution!

I'll do some experimenting to figure out if this work with other file combinations, but I found a thread talking about this and it worked!

Problem:

- Colleague sends me a .XLS which has an embedded .PDF on one sheet

- Office: Mac 2011 will not open the .PDF because of lack of OLE support

Solution:

- Copy the .XLS file to a new file

- Rename the file from <filename.xls> to <filename.zip>

- Open the .ZIP with Archive Utility

- Browse into the resulting "decompressed" folder to filename>xl>embeddings

- Find the file of interest, named something like <oleObject2.bin>

- Rename to <oleObject.pdf>

VOILA! The PDF is recovered in its fully glory.

I'm not aware of any way of seeing these embedded documents. If you receive no other response you should take it as meaning there is no way of doing this.

The only solution I can see is to get the documents emailed as individual attachments. You may want to advise them that the current way means it is not always viewable by recipients.

AROAviva wrote:

emailing individual documents will defend the purpose of embeding the objects on the single documents

Trying to view these embedded documents on an iPad defeats the purpose of embedding the objects in a single document.

this is a very highly used feature in the microsoft office.. and i am quite surprised that it is not supported 😟

It's used in my company and our clients too, although we don't usually send them via email, but when it does I have access on my work laptop.

One complexity of it is that requires essentially opening a document while still having another document open, and possibly of a different type.

My suggestion is to search the App Store or apps that allow you to view Microsoft Office documents and contacting the developers to see if this feature is possible in their app. The possibility of finding an app that does will be higher than just asking it here.

r_marshall wrote:

Holy Moly, I just figured out a solution!

I'll do some experimenting to figure out if this work with other file combinations, but I found a thread talking about this and it worked!

Problem:

- Colleague sends me a .XLS which has an embedded .PDF on one sheet

- Office: Mac 2011 will not open the .PDF because of lack of OLE support

Solution:

- Copy the .XLS file to a new file

- Rename the file from <filename.xls> to <filename.zip>

- Open the .ZIP with Archive Utility

- Browse into the resulting "decompressed" folder to filename>xl>embeddings

- Find the file of interest, named something like <oleObject2.bin>

- Rename to <oleObject.pdf>

VOILA! The PDF is recovered in its fully glory.

How do you perform this conversion on an iPad? You seem to be addressing an issue you're having on a Mac. The OP was looking for a solution for the problem on the iPad. And, of course, the thread has been dormant for a year.

Best of luck.

Thanks R_Marshall ! This save my day - Maybe days.. I'd been sent 15 documents each with 12 -15 embedded objects (XLS,Word,PDF etc)..

Thanks!

This methods works like a charm.

I had the issue for quite some time now, and was unable to read any enclosures in Word documents.

I had to request the sender to separately share the file with me that he had embedded.

Changing the docx extension to zip, and the openingen it in Archivings program, shows the embedded structure.

I tried it on several different documents, from different sources, and it works each and every time I checked!

I learned that this also works on machines who have older versions of word, that can't open the object!

Thanks again, this is really helpfull.

Regards

Is this the way to go still today (with Yosemite and latest MS Office for OS X)? Just tried googling this issue before deciding to buy MS software.

Use LibreOffice, it's free and it works pretty well. And when objects are extracted, you still can go back to Office 2011

Brilliant! thanks. I've been looking for a solution for the last 2 years. Have not tested it on a document with embedded files and emails going down about 4-5 layers but then again this will solve 95% of the problems I'm having. 🙂🙂🙂

I downloaded the preview version of Office 2016 and it works perfectly fine. http://products.office.com/fr-fr/mac/mac-preview

🙂🙂

Explain perfectly fine if you could please.

I have word docs with embedded powerpoint objects. Preview 2016 Word opens the doc, scroll to locate the embedded PPoint file, double click to open, launches PPoint then pops a message that PPoint isn't installed and crashes out of PPoint.

This is latest 2016 preview on latest and current to updates Yosemite.

Any hints?

When I try to embed an object in Word I am give a couple of MS object types to choose from; none of which are PPoint. Several Excel options though.

Help?

r_marshall you are my new hero. That just saved me a headache!

r_marshall,

You are a hero!!!