Excel 2007 - copying charts to Word problem

[artemis]

By way of background, there are multiple charts on a page, with a
separate header which is a picture. The charts have no borders and
'float' on a grid which is the same colour as the chart area. The grid
has borders round groups of cells and these form the borders for the
charts. (This makes it easy to line up charts - otherwise a very
frustrating business. It also makes it easy to resize all charts at
once by selecting all rows or all columns and adjusting them all
together, eg to fit to a page.) I select the underlying grid, together
with the charts on top and the picture header - that whole thing is
what I want to paste. There are usually about 10 charts to a page -
each row has some text on the left hand side, a pie and a column
chart.

In Excel 2003 I've used copy as picture with no issues at all - all
copies over to Word perfectly. In 2007 most of the charts drop off
when pasted across to Word, usually two sets of charts remain with the
remaining 'picture' just the blank / coloured underlying grid of
cells. The text on the left hand side and the header copy over fine.

I've tried all the combinations of Copy as Picture / Paste Special
with no luck.

At the moment, am getting round this by pasting two sets of charts at
a time into Word. Painful, and results in a gap between the sets of
two which looks odd.

Any advice gratefully received.

Adrienne

 

[artemis]

As a follow up to my post above, I also tried a straight copy and
paste, then used the smart tag in Word to copy as picture and keep the
source formatting. All the charts copied across this time, but were
not positioned correctly on the background grid. So that didn't work
either.

Adrienne

 

[Mike Middleton]

artemis -

Please verify:

In Excel 2003, you select the cells, hold down the Shift key, and choose
Edit | Copy Picture (As shown on screen, Picture). In Word 2003, at an
insertion point, you choose Edit | Paste. Or, in Word 2007, you choose Home
| (Clipboard) Paste.

In Excel 2007, you select the cells, choose Home | (Clipboard) Paste | As
Picture | Copy as Picture (As shown on screen, Picture). In Word 2003, at an
insertion point, you choose Edit | Paste. Or, in Word 2007, you choose Home
| (Clipboard) Paste.

- Mike Middleton
http://www.DecisionToolworks.com
Decision Analysis Add-ins for Excel

 

[artemis]

Mike, Yes to the Excel 2003 commands. In Excel 2007 I have tried every
combination of Copy as Picture and in Word 2007 every combination of
Paste and Paste Special.

Adrienne

 

[Jon Peltier]

If it's any consolation, I have not been satisfied with Copy Picture in
Excel 2007. The Bitmap format seems to be the best format to use, because
the Picture format ends up with lots of misaligned elements within the
chart. Also, elements from a chart copied as a picture which in the past
could be ungrouped to separate into single shapes now remain somehow grouped
together. For example, the gridlines cannot be decomposed further than a set
of lines. Also the antialiasing of the elements as seen on screen in Excel
is reproduced in the target app when pasted as a picture, which means they
look wrong when moved slightly.

- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
Peltier Technical Services, Inc. - http://PeltierTech.com
_______


Mike, Yes to the Excel 2003 commands. In Excel 2007 I have tried every
combination of Copy as Picture and in Word 2007 every combination of
Paste and Paste Special.

Adrienne

 

[Fessonia]

My experience is similar. I have need to export flow charts from Excel 2007
to Word and/or Scientific Word in such a way that the graphic looks crisp and
clean and professional both on screen and in print (e.g., at least 300dpi and
without a lot of conversion artifacts and raster jagginess). Since different
applications don't necessarily display things in the same way it is also
helpful if the graphic can be resized gracefully and is not going to be a
huge file. For these reasons, a vector format is preferred rather than
bitmapped.

These are the methods I have tried and the problems encountered:

1. Home > Paste Menu > As Picture > Copy as Picture > As Show on Screen >
Bitmap
This works best but the resolution is not very good. This method produces a
graphic which is adequate in the sense that it is legible (in some cases
barely so) but it certainly does not look crisp, clean, or professional.

2. Home > Paste Menu > As Picture > Copy as Picture > As Show on Screen >
Picture
This method introduces distortions and makes unusable and/or illegible
graphics. Some elements move with respect to others and are in the wrong
place. The kerning is trashed on text so the letters are randomly too close
together or too far apart. Sometimes it looks like Courier is being used
instead of the original font. There are all kinds of aliasing problems so
that lines are sometimes very thick sometime very thin when they were all the
same thickness in Excel.

3. Home > Paste Menu > As Picture > Copy as Picture > As Show when printing
This method produces a picture which prints entirely black and/or shows up
entirely black on screen. I'm guessing this is some kind of misunderstanding
related to background opacity, but clearly this renders the graphic
completely unuseable.

4. Direct copy/paste from Excel to Word produces the same results as #2 and
to Scientific Word produces the same results as #3.

5. I have not tried the export to html option as that seem to have a limit
of 120 dpi for the resolution setting since it is tailored to on-screen
applications, naturally enough.

I realize this is not an easy problem, but the straight copy/paste option
(#4) worked quite well in Office 2003. Although the resolution may not have
been 300dpi, I was not moved to check the actual resolution because the
graphics looked good. I have not yet found a way to get acceptable quality
for exported graphics in Office 2007.

Hopefully this will improve soon. Best of luck to anyone struggling with
this. Please let us all know if you find a better way....

Melissa

 

[artemis]

Just to let people know that I logged a support call with Microsoft
about this. A very nice tech support person worked with me for close
to an hour trying out different options so he could see the issue. At
one point he got an error mnessage (which I didn't get) that the
picture was too large and would be truncated. It worked better when he
changed the orientaion to landscape. We agreed that was not an
adequate solution though it may be useful in some situations.

Although there is no solution yet, he has told me that he is still
testing and researching, plus is in contact with the Microsoft
Escalation group to further escalate this case if needed.

I also referred him to the comments in ths group.

I will let you all know what happens, if anything. Meantime, it might
not hurt if someone else also logged a support call.

PS Am thinking about logging a call about the dismal changes to the F4
key in 2007. For charting especially that was surely one of the most
useful functions in Excel 2003. I still get cross and frustrated about
the diminution of F4 functionality.

 

[Jon Peltier]

I've been reporting both of these issues as bugs since the beta. Don't hold
your breath.

The poor image quality is a consequence of how the new Office Art shapes
were implemented. everyone knows antialiasing makes images better, right?
Well, no. It seems the antialiasing was done right in the shapes, rather
than by the drivers that render the shape on the screen. When you copy the
shapes, the antialiasing is locked in, so there's no way it will work when
positioned and scaled differently with respect to the screen.

The poor performance of the F4 Repeat Last Action function is related to the
transition to modeless forms. Everyone knows a modeless form is better than
a modal form, too, right? Right.

- Jon

 

[artemis]

I have received from Microsoft Support a solution which has worked for
me.

The original problem was that an Excel page with multiple charts only
partly copied over to a Word document using copy/paste (various
combinations).

This is what worked:

1. Open Word document.

2. Select Insert tab, then Object (in the Text area), then Insert
Object, then Create from File.

3. Select file then OK.

4. When the page appears in Word it is not in the right format. Double
click inside it and wait while it goes through some sort of process.
(MS said wait till you are able to scroll again in the insert.) When
done click back in the document outside the insert.

A couple of additional things I found .... I think the Excel file
needed first to be saved with the page to be copied selected. Also,
possibly with print area set to select the area to be copied.

The above has worked on the specific file (which I sent to MS) but I
have not finished testing the approach on other files yet.

Would definitely be interested in hearing if this workd for others.

OK it is not the simple process we used to have but as long as it
works I am happy ....

Adrienne