Export for publication

Old forum General discussion
#1

Hi Daniel,

About a year ago, someone posted an issue with “export for publication”, which I quoted below.
"Unable to create a canvas to draw the image. This indicates a problem with the windows GDI graphic sub system. (System message : code & H5, ‘Access denied’)."
I just found this great tool and installed it today. I am getting the same error message on my system (windows 8.1 pro x64 with office 2013). It works fine with black&white tiff but not grayscale or colored ones. It also works for emf format. I wonder whether this issue has been resolved.

Thank you for developing such a useful tool!

Peter

#2

Does anyone know how I can get the charts to export as PNG files (or any web suitable image format), and keep their transparent background? As I am sure that this file format should be able to handle transparency.

#3

Hi Sara,

currently this is not supported. You can of course manually change the white color to transparency using a image software such as Gimp, for example, but this would be just a workaround, I know.

The current development version of the ‘Next Generation’ Toolbox addin (v. 7.0.0) will support transparency. In fact, the way I have currently programmed it the background of exported graphics is always transparent.

I am hoping to release another ‘alpha’ version with working chart export before the end of the year, so stay tuned.

Kind regards

Daniel

#4

You may want to try the new alpha version of the ‘Next Generation’ series which hopefully fixes the export errors once and for all – and provides new transparency option as promised!

More information at xltoolbox.sourceforge.net/blog/2 … he-license

#5

Hi Daniel,

Thank you very much for this great piece of software. I really appreciate all of your hard work.

I’ve been having problems exporting a chart. Attached is a print screen of the error.

I’m using Windows 7 64-bit and Excel 2010.

Any ideas on what is causing this problem?

Thanks

#6

Hi,

this error can occur if the chart is ‘locked’. To see if it is locked, right-click the chart and choose the last command from the context menu (“format chart” or something like that in English). Then, choose the second item from the bottom (properties), and you will find a check box “locked”. If it is checked, uncheck it and try to export again.

If this doesn’t help, try my new developmental (alpha) version of the ‘Next Generation’ Toolbox. Although the graphic export is not flawless yet, it works pretty well on my system. Find it at xltoolbox.sourceforge.net/blog/tags/alpha

Hope this helps!

#7

I found a workaround to the problem that says “windows GDI graphic sub system. (System message : code & H5, ‘Access denied’).”.

Simply Open the Excel.exe (from where you installed MSoffice) in Administrator mode and open the file that contains the charts using the file manu. Now the export for publication should work with every single worksheet without giving the specified error.

bdw thank you very much for the tool.

#8

Hi all,

the ‘access denied’ error may be caused by a temporary file not being writable. I have hopefully solved this problem, please try out version 6.60: https://sourceforge.net/projects/xltoolbox/files/latest/download

#9

regarding this error I think it has something to do with the complexity of the chart for some reason.
when I create a simple dummy 10x2 excel file, the charts are exported just fine
when I try to export the chart (not all - just selected) that I need for publication it gets stuck at 14% and crashes with an H6 error ( the handle is invalid)

:exclamation: **A simple workaround for now: ** :exclamation:
make a new sheet.
copy the graph there as picture
select export all the graphic objects on the current worksheet
and it works :exclamation: :smiley:

#10

looking a little bit further into this.

when you copy the graph as a picture like i mentioned above,
**but **you do paste special and save it in Enhanced metafile format
it once again hangs.

so I am assuming Daniel that one of the inbetween steps in your export process is this enhanced metafile format.
and somehow or other when the graphs are too complicated, something gets screwed up?

Just in case this helps you out,

Thanks

#11

Hi,

yes, you are right, EMF is involved. The add-in copies the charts or graphic objects to the clipboard, then uses the Windows API do save the clipboard data as an EMF to disk, then draws that EMF in memory, then converts the resulting bitmap to the target format using FreeImage.

I have heard from other users as well that some complex charts just won’t export, but unfortunately, when I exported those complex graphs myself, it worked just fine. So it’s probably some (temporary?) resource problem.

That said, I invite you to try the current alpha version, available at sf.net/projects/xltoolbox/files/alpha – it can be installed side-by-side with the old version, and it has an all-new export feature. (The current alpha 7 has a bug that causes an error message to appear when the mouse hovers over a ribbon button, but you can just dismiss that error, or just turn off the option ‘Show add-in user interface errors’ in File -> Options -> General.)

#12

Hi Daniel,
Just wanted to say THANK YOU !! You saved my life right now with this toolbox ! :green_heart:
Nat