Copy operation of Chemistry cells

Hi,

I was looking at JChem for Excel and I noticed that if I perfrom a Copy operation of a range of cells with chemistry the image put on the Windows clipboard does not contain the chemical structure.

Other Excel chemistry addons like the Accelrys Accord for Excel will give you the chemistry image when copying.

Is this something that you plan on providing? Or is there something I am doing wrong?

TIA,
Erik

Hi,

possibly Accelrys put the image itself to the Sheet, so the copy itself can be done automatically by

Excel?

In the next version 1.1.2 (next week release - demonstrated on UGM this week in US) a new context sensitive menu is provided containing the following functionalities:

- Copy chemical structure to the clipboard from a cell (MRV, MOL, and SMILES format is supported)

- Copy chemical structure to the clipboard as Marvin OLE document from a cell. (Marvin OLE is an interactive editable component of Marvin in Microsoft Office) In the 5.3 version (1st week of October) Marvin OLE will get much better image rendering (antialiasing).

- Paste chemical structure from the clipbaord int a cell (MRV, MOL, and SMILES format is supported).

In this way you can freely convert, copy structures chemical objects from Jchem for Excel to other applications and vice-versa even Accelrys or other Office products.

We are planning to enhance/extend Excel built-in copy/paste functionalities soon, possibly in 1.1.3 to support Excel - Excel instance copy via clipboard.

We are planning to convert all Jchem for Excel structures to floating image or Marvin OLE embedded object on the sheet over the cells to select and copy them to other Office applications.

If you have further requirements regarding this topic please let us know to get it registerred on our prioritization list for the next release in November (1.1.3).

Viktor

Hi Viktor,

Thank you for your quick reply to my question.

Looking forward to the 1.1.2 release.

The usecase of copying a range of cells and pasting them as an image into a report or an email is a pretty common one with the chemist's I know who use the Accelrys tools. Would be a good thing to support.

Now the workaround is to do an Alt-Prnt Scrn and crop the screendump image.

So the ability to actually WYSIWYG from the Excel addin to the clipboard is a feature I would put quiet high on the list.

The softare I am working with is all managed .NET code so unfourtunately we cannot make use of OLE. However we do integrate with marvin and store the chemistry as a WMF, MRV and a molfile to have all options. Looking forward to your .NET versions further on.

Regards,
Erik

 

 

Understood. So the usecase is copying more than ONE structure as an image and paste them into somewhere else.
We are not using "image based" display of chemical structures (it was only used in the first versions of Jchem4XL) because we are requested to keep Undo-Redo features of Excel, which took the same high priority with drawing. Unfortunatelly Excel does not support both together.

And unfortunatelly Excel contains a memory leak in EMF image handling, too many images eat up the memory, this bug is confessed by Excel programmers and is in the Excel releases.

Thus I could recommend the following feature combined with a copy functionality:

"We are planning to convert all Jchem for Excel structures to floating image ..."

I think this is the closest solution what you need:

- select the cells containing chemical structure
- convert them to Excel image exactly with the same size as they were in the cells

- select images
- copy them to clipboard together

- convert images to Jchem 4 XL chemical structures back

As the two conversions will be provided,
we can combine the copy between the two conversions back and forth programmatically.

This will cover the workflow you use, I think. For the time being you can use one-by-one copy from right-mouse context menu in the 1.1.2.

 

Viktor

 

 

Yes, it is selecting and copying a range of cells, as one image, that I request.

We are manipulating Excel through the Office PIA (Primary Interop Assemblies) and can though them call functions published in addins and macros (like Accord4XL). I'll spend some time with the coming releases of Jchem4XL and see what we can do.

I was thinking, in the Copy operation you will publish for chemistry, will you be able to mark a range of cells and trigger your "Copy chemistry" for them? Placing multiple chemistry entites on the clipboard? If so, then you might be able to place an image of the range there too as you have control of the rendering of the chemistry.

We will consider all your suggestions.

The JchemExcel API will be extended with new methods  based on your request very easily,

whatever functionality Jchem4XL contains sooner or later can be published in Jchem4XL API interface,
obviously it is COM IFace basically, but with an interop assembly the .NET can automatically generate so it is not an issue for you to include .NET applciations (as you do with Excel itself it is also a COM exe).

We need to keep in touch re API and step-by-step can imporve the product ans its API interface on demand.

 

Image convert in batch and copy-paste from Excel to other apps like PPT is available from the 1.1.3 version. Excel-Excel copy can be working using XML spradsheet as a paste target.

 

Viktor