Extracting .wmf (Microsoft Draw Objects) from .doc (Word Documents)

I had a few thousand .doc files that contained drawings of motherboards in Microsoft Draw format. There isn't a save as... option in Microsoft Word for these drawings. There is however one in Microsoft PowerPoint (Tested in Office XP). You can save the drawings in .WMF format. This is an old format that ClipArt are stored as. This works for a few files but I needed a batch conversion program.

There are a few programs to extract images out of .doc files but none worked for me. I did have some experience with extracting data from windows .hlp (WinHelp) files with a program called HelpDeco. By chance i had extracted some .hlp files that contained .wmfs. Nice thing about this program is that it just dumps all the .wmf files from the .hlp. Problem was I had .doc not .hlp. So the plan was; .doc to .hlp to .wmf. Which lead me into the wonderful world of WinHelp compilation/creation. Today there is just enough info left on the web, to find all that you need. But I was unable to get everything to work under Windows 7, I had to use XP.

First the process:

• .doc has to be converted to .rtf
• .rtf can be compiled to .hlp
• .hlp can be decompiled to .rtf + each .wmf

.doc to .rtf

I tried a few programs but the only one i found to work was a program called 'Batch DOC TO RTF Converter' from Batchwork Software. This is a windows GUI program that claims to work as a command line program. I was unable to get it to work this way, perhaps it requires you to register it. Another problem with the trial version is that it skips some files. This can be solved by just running the batch conversion process twice. (It randomly misses files, but running it twice seemed to work for all files in my case.) It works, but it's not free, and the trial version is imperfect. YMMV.

.rtf to .wmf

The two remaining programs are Microsoft Help Workshop (Download) and HelpDeco (Website).

Microsoft Help Workshop contains a program called hcrtf.exe it can be called as follows:

hcrtf -o temp.hlp /xr filename.rtf

helpdeco temp.hlp

convert.bat:
set fname=%1
..\hcrtf -o temp.hlp /xr "%fname%"
..\helpdeco temp.hlp
del temp.hlp
del temp.hpj
del temp.rtf
rename bm0.WMF "%fname%-1.WMF"

convert filename.rtf