Hello,
I would like to copy diagrams from Excel to Inkscape as vector graphics. The only way I was able to do it, was printing the diagram to pdf and then open the pdf with Inkscape. Is there an easier, more comfortable way?
AFAIK Excel internally handles diagrams as emf. If I mark the diagramm and keep "Shift" pressed while clicking on edit, Excel offers me to copy the diagram as an image, but I can neither save it nor paste it to Inkscape as a vector graphic. Pasting as bitmap is possible.

Any ideas?
Many thanks, Matthis

Office is nasty for getting images out off--it's just stupid how difficult they make it. From memory I think the best bet is to save the document as a web page. I know this works for Word and I assume it'll work for Excel also. Office will create the index.htm file and a folder of images. It will create bitmap versions of the image, but it should also create an EMF version also.

Thanks for answering. I tried saving as webpage, but the diagram is saved as gif.

Meanwhile I found the freeware ChartSaverCA , that allows exporting diagram directly from Excel to a couple of formats:
http://rtsoftwaredevelopment.de/html/freeware/chartsaver.htm
The emf file it creates can be used without problems in word. When opening / importing the same file with Inkscape, there is something there in the document, because I can mark it. But I can't see it, because it is something like white lines and I haven't found out yet how to obtain the original colors.

For anyone interested:
Another way to copy diagrams from Excel 2003 to Inkscape is via OpenOffice Draw:
- Copy the diagram in Excel,
- paste to OO Draw and
- export to pdf.
The pdf can then be opened and edited with Inkscape.

OO Draw can also export to emf or svg, but the lines change color and strength. As soon as Version 3 of OpenOffice is out, I will give it another try.
As soon as I find a computer with MS Office 2007 I will try exporting the diagram directly to pdf.

Gnumeric has a great feature for you: right click the diagram you need to export and choose "save as image". Gnumeric can export svg, pdf, png, jpeg and ps.

Gnumeric opens Excel files just fine, so there shouldn't be any problems.