Mtext Scope Formatting Is Not Retained When You Open and View a CAD Drawing in Visio 2003

In Microsoft Office Visio 2003, when you open and view a CAD drawing (.dwg file) that contains multiline text (Mtext) scope formatting, the formatting of the text is not retained. As a result, the text does not appear with the correct formatting.

This problem occurs because the "{}" characters (without the quotation marks) that are used to define the scope of Mtext escape sequences are not supported in Visio 2003 when you open and display a CAD drawing.

To work around this problem, convert the CAD drawing to Visio format (.vsd file). When you do so, the "{}" characters that are used to define the scope of Mtext escape sequences are processed correctly and the text appears with the correct formatting. To convert a CAD drawing to Visio format, follow these steps:

1. Start Visio 2003 and open the CAD drawing that you want to convert.
2. Right-click the CAD drawing, point to CAD Drawing Object, and then click Convert.
3. In the Convert CAD Object dialog box, click to select the check boxes next to the layers that contain the CAD objects that you want to convert, and then click OK.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

For additional information about how to troubleshoot other Mtext display issues in Visio 2003, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: For more information about working with CAD drawings in Visio 2003, see Visio Help. To do so, on the Help menu, click Microsoft Office Visio Help, type CAD drawings in the Search for box, and then press ENTER to view the topics returned.

For more information about Visio 2003, visit the following Microsoft Web site: