OLE Overview
OLE provides a convenient way of incorporating Xara LX drawings into suitable, OLE-compliant applications such as Microsoft Word. Another advantage of OLE is when you want to edit an embedded drawing. All you need do is double-click on the drawing in the Microsoft Word window. This loads the drawing into Xara LX ready for you to edit it. When you finish, Xara LX copies the drawing back to Microsoft Word keeping any custom values such as scaling. You can embed Xara LX drawings into any OLE-compliant application.
To embed a drawing
into an application
This describes how to embed a drawing into Microsoft Word (other applications will be similar).
In Xara LX copy part or all
of the drawing to the clipboard. Then embed it into Microsoft Word using
Paste Special on Word's Edit menu.
Create the drawing in the
usual way and save it to disk. You can then insert it into Microsoft Word
by choosing Object on Word's Insert
menu. Select the Create from File tab and select the name of the file.
Create a new drawing from
within Microsoft Word. Choose Object
on Microsoft Word's Insert menu. Select the Create New tab. Click Xara
LX Document. This opens a new Xara LX window ready for you to create your
drawing. When you finish the drawing, choose Exit
and Return to Word on the File menu in Xara LX. This inserts the
drawing into the Word document.
Tip
When you embed a Xara LX document
or Xara LX objects in another program, the objects will look best when
displayed at 100%. For example, if you embed some objects in a Microsoft
Word document and then change the magnification in Word to 200%, the document
will not look quite as good.
To edit an embedded
Xara LX drawing
Just double-click on the drawing in the application. This loads the drawing into Xara LX ready for editing. When you finish editing, choose either Close and Return to (application) or Exit and Return to (application) on the File menu in Xara LX.
Xara LX menus and OLE
The File menu changes slightly when you are viewing an embedded drawing:
Save
becomes Update. (The embedded
drawing is automatically updated every 10-20 seconds. Update lets you
update sooner if desired.)
Save
as becomes Save Copy As.
You can use this option to save a copy of the document.
Exit
becomes Exit And Return To (Application).
Choosing this updates the embedded document in the application and closes
Xara LX
Close
is either dimmed (if the embedded document is the only document) or becomes
Close And Return To (Application).
Choosing this updates the embedded document in the application (Xara LX
remains loaded in memory).