Marvin OLE User's Guide

Contents

 

Introduction

Marvin OLE is the ChemAxon solution for Microsoft's Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technology. It is supported by Windows operating systems. Marvin OLE offers an easy way to embed Marvin Sketch drawings into other applications, like Microsoft Office Family products. Embedded Marvin Documents can be edited in-place with a fully functional Marvin Sketch.

Word Documents, Excel Sheets, and many more other files containing embedded Marvin Documents are easily distributable. Even people who do not have Marvin installed can access the content as an image, however, to edit the Marvin Document itself, they must have a properly installed Marvin with OLE support.

 

Install and Uninstall

To be able to install or uninstall OLE server, you need administrator privileges. Below, you can see how to do it if you have got the required rights. The OLE server is connecting closer to the Marvin Beans resources. When you register a Marvin OLE server it stores a reference in the Windows registry about the location of MarvinSketch application (that will be launched when you edit an embedded Marvin Document).

The OLE server registers only MarvinSketch in the same install package.
If a Marvin Beans package is not available, it is possible to install OLE server (and required Marvin resources) from Marvin Java Web Start (requires to run jnlp with administrator privileges).

Installation is automatically handled by Marvin Installer. In any case you can not use the installer application provided, you can use Marvin (Edit/Preferences/OLEServer menu) to manage OLE Server. For command-line operations, execute marvinOLEserver.exe once at your

X:\YourMarvinDirectory\lib\
folder to access this functionality.

Uninstalling Marvin will remove the Marvin OLE support from your machine as well. You can completely disable this feature while having your installed Marvin untouched at Edit/Preferences/OLEServer menu, or by executing

X:\YourMarvinDirectory\lib\marvinoleserver.exe /unregister
To re-enable the feature, just execute marvinoleserver.exe without any parameters as described in installation section above (or control it via the Edit/Preferences OLEServer menu). It is not necessary to reinstall Marvin, if you had not uninstalled it.

Note: 'X:\YourmarvinDirectory' is 'C:\Program Files\Marvin Beans' if you have chosen installing Marvin into 'C:\Program Files\Marvin Beans'

Administrator privileges

Windows 2000/XP: Most users have got administrator privileges in default (unless the system administrator restricts it). If you have got full control on your machine (install anything freely), you have administrator rights. In this case, you can register/unregister OLE server yourself and Marvin Beans installer/uninstaller will run definitely with admin privileges.

Windows Vista: Vista security policy is more strict than earlier Windows versions. If a user has got administrator rights, it does not mean that he can run everything with these privileges. In default, all programs run without extra rights. To run a program with administrator privileges, you have to select Run As Administrator by launching (right-click on the icon of the application and choose Run As Administrator option). After selecting this option, Vista will ask for confirmation to run the application with high privileges, click Allow. The application will run in admin mode.
Note: Although Marvin Beans installer/uninstaller does not require admin rights, it detects the highest running level and tries to run in administrator mode automatically (if it is possible). If the installer has got the proper rights, it does registration/unregistration of OLE server in the background during the (un)installation process.

 

How to Use

Marvin OLE is accessible via Windows Clipboard. Make sure you have 'OLE Object' enabled in Edit/Preferences/Copy (by default, this feature is enabled). Simply select your drawing, or any part of it and copy it to clipboard (Ctrl+c). The selection can be pasted into any OLE-capable application, like Microsoft Office Family.

This feature also works in a reversed way: select an embedded Marvin OLE document from your Excel Sheet or Word Document, copy to the clipboard (Ctrl+c), then use the paste function (Ctrl+v) at your MarvinSketch to retrieve the structure.

 

Known Issues

Word Pad pops up a dialog indicating that Marvin OLE Server is not responding while inserting a new Marvin Document, or editing an exisiting one with MarvinSketch. This causes no harm or data loss, it is an invalid error message fired by Word Pad. After you complete the drawing process, and close MarvinSketch, press 'Retry' to close the dialog.

Open Office: Although Open Office is not supported, this OLE solution works partially on that platform. The following issues are known: copy from Open Office into Marvin does not work; the image of the embedded structure is not refreshed after editing without saving the whole office document.

 
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