WTF is wrong with cut and pasting figures?

[Joshua]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

I'm trying to do a simple cut and past of 3 figures from and excel file to a word document. The first one copied over fine, although excel freaked out a little (the spreadsheet window appeared and disappeared 2 or 3 times before the past appeared in the word document, and the excel document stayed hidden. I was forced to select Window > Unhide from the menu bar). Any attempt to copy the 2nd figure causes the same excel freak out, except that: the figure either:
a. doesn't paste,
b. the first one pastes again,
c. the second one pasts, but appears only as a weird icon indicating that the figure is all condensed down onto itself (which would be ok if I could resize the thing at all),
d. I get an error asking me if I want to reopen the excel file (which is already open BTW) with OKAY as the only option. Clicking ok doesn't do anything except sometimes crash excel,
e. Excel crashes during the freak out,
or,
f. Word crashes during the freak out.

I need to paste these excel figures into word, and I need to do it today. What is this software worth if it doesn't even do what I'm trying to do. I've tried pasting as an image, as a figure, as an office object, etc. NOTHING WORKS.

I've restarted both apps (outside of the auto restarts that happen when one of the two crashes) and that has not made either one of them more stable, or helped me in any way.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I'm trying to do a simple cut and past of 3 figures from and excel file to a
word document. The first one copied over fine, although excel freaked out a
little (the spreadsheet window appeared and disappeared 2 or 3 times before
the past appeared in the word document, and the excel document stayed hidden.
I was forced to select Window > Unhide from the menu bar). Any attempt to
copy the 2nd figure causes the same excel freak out, except that: the figure
either:
a. doesn't paste,
b. the first one pastes again,
c. the second one pasts, but appears only as a weird icon indicating that the
figure is all condensed down onto itself (which would be ok if I could resize
the thing at all),
d. I get an error asking me if I want to reopen the excel file (which is
already open BTW) with OKAY as the only option. Clicking ok doesn't do
anything except sometimes crash excel,
e. Excel crashes during the freak out,
or,
f. Word crashes during the freak out.

I need to paste these excel figures into word, and I need to do it today.
What is this software worth if it doesn't even do what I'm trying to do. I've
tried pasting as an image, as a figure, as an office object, etc. NOTHING
WORKS.

I've restarted both apps (outside of the auto restarts that happen when one
of the two crashes) and that has not made either one of them more stable, or
helped me in any way.

You're justifiably frustrated, but it's hard to tell from your message
what's going on...

First, what type of 'figures' are you trying to cut and paste (e.g.,
numeric figures - i.e.,cells, shapes, pictures, charts, etc.)

How are you trying to copy - your having to use Window/Unhide suggests
you're not just doing a CMD-c/CMD-v.

How are you trying to paste - and are you trying Paste Link (if so, what
type of link are you pasting?)

Have you tried just dragging the figures from XL to Word?

You obviously shouldn't be getting frequent crashes. Can you try this in
a new Mac OS user account? If so, it's something to do with your setup
(perhaps Office preferences) in your current account.

 

[Joshua]

I'm trying to paste a scatter plots created in Excel

I've tried using:
Drag and Drop,
CMD-c/CMD-v,
R-click "copy"/R-click "Paste",
R-click "copy"/R-click "Paste as..." and tried all of the options presented, one at a time.

Ultimately I was able to get the graphs over by opening the excel fill in office 2004, exporting the graphs as images and then adding the images to word. Not ideal, since I cannot manipulate the graphs in word, and I needed to spend half an hour adjusting the formatting since the X and Y axis numbers ended up on top of the X and Y axis labels when opened in 2004. I was planning on trying this all again tonight when I got home, b/c these two programs are useless if I need to keep launching 2004 to get any work done.

now that I'm home, i've tried printing the page of charts and run into a new problem. The charts don't appear on the print out. All the text is there, and there are spaces for the figure, but the figures are not there. I tried saving the figures as image files and then pasting them back in, but the images got blurrier in word, and still didn't show up when I tried to print the page. Saving as a pdf doesn't get any better results, nor does opening the document in TextEdit.

I'm going to try and open the document in another user account to see if that helps.

 

[Joshua]

I just tried my backup user account, and word opened the file but was still unable to print the images made from the charts.

Excel on the other hand, froze on startup every time. The first attempt it got to the splash screen and said it was loading com.chart.Something, Don't remember what the something was. After restarting it, I never got past checking the fonts.

I'm going to try rebooting my entire machine, which SHOULDN'T help because the OS isn't unstable, but I've notice that office apps often crash and leave threads hanging that require a complete restart of the OS (would be GREAT if they'd fix that, even if they can't make the apps more stable to begin with)

 

[Joshua]

Success! After restarting I was able to copy and paste any which way I wanted.

However, it was too good to be true. I still cannot print the charts that are on the pages, no matter whether they are pasted as Excel objects, Pictures, PDFs, or Office Graphic Objects.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Excel on the other hand, froze on startup every time. The first attempt it
got to the splash screen and said it was loading com.chart.Something, Don't
remember what the something was. After restarting it, I never got past
checking the fonts.

Sounds like possibly corrupt fonts (or at least a corrupt font cache).
Try rebooting. If that doesn't help, try troubleshooting the fonts.

 

[Carl Witthoft]

Try this:

Hold down the Shift key before selecting the Edit menu. Pick the option
which says CopyPicture.
(at least, this is available thru Office04. I can't vouch for
fancy-schmancy newer versions)

But as others have said, sure looks like your Excel prefs are messed up.