Hi,
Yes Jackk. You are right. This is the only way to do something with this kind of problems.
Sorry for you Mike, but is necessary to use another software to recreate your text as lines, curves a.s.o.
You can use Autocad (or other software) to do that, save your work as dwg file (an earlier version in order to be supported by CATIA), import again in CATIA, transfer in 3D space. Regards
Fernando