++++Jack++++ said:
I have some print to file files, that I would like to convert to word
documents..
Anyone have any idea's on how I can do this ???
using MS Office 97
TIA Jack
Hi, Jack,
Umm, with great difficulty....
If you have the model of printer that was selected when the .prn files were
created, and access to a scanner and OCR software, then print the files and
scan them into Word. This will be the fastest, least error-prone method, and
a good OCR program will even preserve the formatting.
If you can't do that, you have a nasty job ahead. Depending on what printer
the files were created for, it may be more or less nasty, but it will take a
lot of work in the best case. A .prn file is literally a capture of the data
stream that the computer sends to the printer, so it has the text
interleaved with control characters, font information, line feeds and page
feeds, etc.
If you open it in Word with the Text Only conversion filter, you *may* get a
document in which you can go through deleting the unwanted stuff -- if
you're lucky. OTOH, you can get a document where Word interprets the
printer's control characters as page feeds or end-of-file markers, and you
won't be able to see the text at all. In that case you'll have to use a hex
editor such as UltraEdit to clean up the file enough to retrieve the text.
In either case, you won't get back any of the formatting that was in the
original document, so you'll have to reapply that manually.
