Any way to get an MS Word drawing into illustrator?

[davester]

Somebody has sent me an MS Word file with a map created with the MS Word toolbar. Is there any way I can pull this into Adobe Illustrator for editing?

[papercup]

Just a guess, but did you try opening it, then re-saving with Graphic Converter?

[bazookaman]

I've had varying degrees of success copying the file out of word and pasting it into Illustrator. Emphasis on VARYING.

[elmo3]

PDF it, then yank out the graphic.

Or open the PDF with Illy.

[karsen]

If nothing else works (the pdf thing should) you could zoom in as close as you can get and take a screenshot. Then import the screenshot into Illustrator and trace it.

[macbeergeek]

Ditto on the PDF conversion...

I do this frequently to figures for books that are submitted by authors who only know the MS apps. Convert the Word (or Powerpoint or Excel) file to a PDF, then open the PDF in Illustrator. You may need to clean up stray invisible artifacts that come through from Word, but at least all of the line art and text will be editable. Much easier than redrawing from scratch!

[davester]

Thanks, I'll give the pdf conversion a whirl.