# Pictures and Graphs in MS Word trouble



## aaike (Nov 27, 2003)

I received a Word document from a co-worker (working on Windows) and apparently pictures and graphs don't always show up as they should when I open the document. Some of the pictures show up as a frame with a red cross. Does anyone know what this is/means. If there are workarounds/solutions? I also noticed this with Powerpoint presentations when transferred to another computer... Does it have st. to do with linked and non linked pictures?


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## symphonix (Nov 27, 2003)

Bingo - It means the user didn't actually embed the pictures into the document, but only embedded references to them. In other words, when you open it on your machine, Word isn't finding a picture, it's finding a reference to c:\Documents and Settings\Windows User\My Pictures\pic~1.tif or something of that sort.

Now, I'll have to check out a Windows copy of Word to see how the person who sent you the doc may fix it.


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## karavite (Nov 27, 2003)

aaike - oh I feel your pain. Every day I have something like this happen. I count myself an expert in Office, but that comes from years of frustration. Seemless integration and Office are complete oxymorons, but those who built its usability and feature sets are just plain morons. In addition, so many people have trouble pasting in images into ppt that look good (there are about 8 options under paste special, so who can blame them). Don't even get me started on Word tables or Visio! Any way, if your co-worker starts to rant on you for your "incompatible Mac" he/she is way off base and the same would happen if you were on a PC.

symphonix - I don't have my PC up here, but I'm betting aaike's coworker used an option under the Insert menu and had his/her link to file and/or save with file options checked the wrong way to create a "self contained" Word document. He/she should be able to resetablish these links, but in the future, it is just safer to paste special anything (pics, tables, spreadsheets...) into an Office doc rather than use the insert options.


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## mpbnl8182 (Nov 27, 2003)

Hi all,

I just had this problem with my thesis proposal.  I had a bunch of images in my doc, and when I went to print them out in the lab (PCs), The first image could be seen and the rest didn't show up.  I copied and pasted these charts from excel, the way I have for years (with windows).  I think it's safe to say Office X handles the cut and paste of a graph differently than windows vers of office.  Do I need to use paste special to do this?  If anyone has any clue, it would be great.  It was a chore resurrecting my pictures 20 mins before it was due (and it didn't even look that good!!!) but they still accepted it and that's all that mattered.

MP


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## aaike (Nov 28, 2003)

The strange thing is that e.g. on a page with 2 graphs pasted in exactly the same way, one of them shows up correctly, and the other one doesn't... I also tried to open the document on another PC and everything showed up correctly, so I am not so sure that it really has st. to do with linking. Is there some sort of setting that I could try?

Btw. Another common problem in Word is that greek characters don't show up as they should. I heard that this has st. to do with standard fonts in OS X / Word v. X but is there a way to avoid / overcome this??


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## Zammy-Sam (Nov 28, 2003)

symphonix, this is (unfortunately) not right. The documents show correct graphs and pics when opened with windoze office.
I found out that formulas tend to be cutten out. Also some filetypes for graphs or pics seem not to be supported. But I didn't do any examinations on this one yet to make a compatibility list. 
And this mess was one, if not almost the ONLY, reason for me buying VPC to run my MS Office and open those windoze files.


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## Zammy-Sam (Nov 28, 2003)

Btw, if you are just trying to open those files or presentations, you can simply tell the windoze user to save as pdfs. Not an elegant solution, but it worked here for some urgent cases. I was even able to run a presentation of powerpoint slides over pdfs.  
If you need to change the files, there is AFAIK no other way but using another windoze box or buying VPC.


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## karavite (Nov 28, 2003)

Thanks Zammy-Sam for your leg work and knowledge, still this is just awful.


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## aaike (Nov 29, 2003)

To be honest, I still don't get it...

A document with lots of formulae - so I would expect it's all in the same 'format' right- opens showing 2/3 of the formulae correct and the rest is unfortunately BS...

What's so different with one formula compared to the other? Just out of curiosity I opened an 'affected' document in TextEditor. The formula that showed up correctly in Word v. X does so in TE, but the ones that doesn't show up as "EMBED Equation.3"

Another funny thing... I tried to open a document just to have a look at which things are showing up correctly and wich don't and apparently one of the images that showed up incorrectly the first time showed up nicely right now. Such things get me puzzled...


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## karavite (Nov 29, 2003)

I'm stumped too. Just a guess. Could this be tied to the .doc format not really being 100% compatible between the Mac and Windows versions of Word? What would happen if your PC side saved the file as rtf?


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## aaike (Nov 29, 2003)

I don't know. It would probably help in some cases, but sometimes you simply can't ask to do such things. After all the mac user is the one that is causing trouble... he's not having the same machine as anyone else :-(-:

To cut a long story short, I am afraid this compatibility problem just sucks... If only the guys from MS could do st. about this. Would anyone care to make them aware of this problem (I guess they already do/should but anyway)... ?


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## karavite (Nov 30, 2003)

It's funny but MS often says Office X is the best version of Office they ever made, so you would think they would be interested in fixing this. And yet, I could see them snickering over this sort of thing in private. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I well remember Word 6 for the PPC when it came out - it took 3 minutes to simply start up on the newest Macs of the day and many thought MS did this on purpose to embarrass Apple and its users. I'm not sure if I bought that idea, but I cannot trust MS. Who can? I mean, the history of MS is to destroy anyone in their way.

What about some of the various file import/conversion software for Mac. I never had the need for that sort of thing, but would it work/help? I can't remember the name of the program I am thinking of, but it is/was quite popular. I'm afraid we need some of our Macosx gurus to help us out on this one.


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## karavite (Nov 30, 2003)

Here it is - this is what I was thinking of! MacLinkPlus!
http://www.dataviz.com/products/maclinkplus/

They seem to have a free trial - might want to check it out on your problem files. Nothing to lose!

If it does work, you would have to wonder why Apple doesn't make them a deal and bundle it with OS X!


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## aaike (Dec 1, 2003)

I'd like to try that, but I can't find the trial...


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## karavite (Dec 1, 2003)

Darn it, I'm so sorry - I didn't bother with their download form and just assumed they had a trial version of MacLinkPlus - they don't! Plenty of other weird little apps, but not this one. Well, there is always the Mac newsgroups for the full version!  Gees! Maybe you could send them your Word files and ask them to send it back after using their product - if you like what you see, you will buy it!

My school had it at a reduced price, but no longer does. Perhaps there are other similar products WITH a trial?


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## mpbnl8182 (Dec 5, 2003)

Hi All,

I just came face to face with this problem big time.  I was giving a presentation and I found out all my graphs were missing (I used paste special to paste them as images).  Here's the weird thing - worked on the 4 macs I tried, but when I tried to use an Office XP machine, they just wouldn't show up.  So it's not that they are just putting a reference in.  Saving as .pdf only works for a word file... what about powerpoint?  Microsoft NEEDS to do something about this.... asap.  Has anyone talked to their support?

MP


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## chevy (Dec 5, 2003)

I had similar problems with PPT presentations made on Windows and transfered to another Windows computer.


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## aaike (Dec 6, 2003)

I am still looking for a way to resolve this problem and I am willing to contact MS support, but I am afraid that you don't get e-mail support with an educational licence which I have. Someone else giving it a try?

I also tried to get more information on wether MacLinkPlus would resolve this  issue(s) but they don't offer support to (would-be) customers who have questions... So the question remains anyone owning this product? I'd like to send you a file to try!


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## karavite (Feb 17, 2004)

If it makes anyone feel better we recently noticed that some ppt files with animations made in Office 2000 ON A PC, don't play correctly on Office XP ON A PC!!! There aren't simple title/text animations, but animations to demo some UI designs - flying cursors, adding text, changing screens... seems that Office XP adds what looks like a little "hide after click" to some of the animated graphics when that option was definately not selected when the file was created in Office 2000. Nice huh?


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## Arden (Feb 17, 2004)

One workaround (though not a fix) is to include all image files that you've put into your Office documents along with those documents when you move to a Mac or PC from the other (and to instruct others to do so as well).  It's not the best solution, but it will both increase the chances of pictures showing up (if it's a linked pic, it's just right there) and allow you to re-embed the pic if it gets broken.


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## Natobasso (Feb 19, 2004)

You guys realize designing anything in Word, Powerpoint or Excel is printing suicide? You might as well roll the dice and ask "lady luck" to be kind to you this time. 

Print shops hate Microsoft programs because when their docs print they provide almost no data as to what's actually printing.

Next time you should just use InDesign or Quark. (Can you tell what side of the fence I am on?! He he.)


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## karavite (Feb 19, 2004)

Natobasso - for ourselves this is a good idea, but in the mean time it is simply too much fun to go to meetings or presentations and see a whole bunch of PC based people struggle with screwed up and incompatible files (just between different versions of Office for PC)! Whenever this happens, and a long winded technical discussion on how to use Office begins, I often lean over to whoever I am sitting next too and say something like, "Technology will revolutionize business."


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## Natobasso (Feb 19, 2004)

karavite

He he, good point. I don't ever try to say one type of computer is better than another, but when I hear people are placing images in word I cringe and wince and shudder  

Do you use Suitcase for you fonts? I find it conflicts with Word's "optimizing fonts" function and makes Word take ages to loadjust talking shop here. I assume you are a graphic artist by trade?


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## karavite (Feb 19, 2004)

Hey Natabasso! Sorry, I'm not a graphic artist but an application usability/interaction designer (who knows what to call myself these days!). I'm not a big publishing person in any way and I generally use the same old tried and true fonts the rest of the world uses - nothing fancy at all. Of course, when I need to, I then gladly work with people like you who are experts in graphics and graphic design. We all need to work together! Even developers! 

And all those meetings I talked about and their Office based delays make me think of that old Apple commercial - remember the one where a guy is giving a presentation and the system freezes and all kinds of people start yelling PC based advice and suggestions? That one was brilliant and all too true to this day. I mean 99% of my meetings are about implementing technology to solve some problem and we can't even run a presentation for the meeting with the most widely available presentation technology. Does the irony escape anyone else but us here? 

Sorry for getting off the Word topic, but much of the same applies to Word as well as ppt!


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## Natobasso (Feb 19, 2004)

karavite

I agree with you completely. Many problems at an old, and very small, company I used to work for had to do with people trying to tweak our database to save time and money, only to screw everything up in the future when we needed to format the data in a different way. They'd just say let's use field "X" like "Y" and then they'd wonder when they tried to compile all the X data that they'd end up with all the Y data. Silly people! 

Of course only the sales guys at that job ever used powerpoint; I would just supply them with graphics (and laugh my head off!)  

I never saw that ad, but it rings true in my mind. You speak the truth! I think it IS very important for us IT and designers to share information. I like bridging the gap between our two worlds because really, they are very similar. They are symbiotic.


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## Natobasso (Feb 19, 2004)

I apologize as I keep screwing up your actual job title!


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## karavite (Feb 23, 2004)

Natobasso said:
			
		

> I apologize as I keep screwing up your actual job title!



Hey no problem, especially when it changes every other month! Usability can't seem to decide on a name and/or everyone chooses sublte differences in explaining what is essentially the same thing - user experience design, interaction design, human computer interaction, user centered design...


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## Blaqb0x (Mar 19, 2004)

Hi,

 I have had the same problem with powerpoint.  However, it is unique to certain macs.  My personal mac can see the images but, when I view these images on another person'e mac they can't see them.   I noticed when looking at them from a PC that some of the file types were *.wmf and *.emf.  When I converted them to any other format (jpg,gif,pnf,etc) I could see them fine. However, the image quality was degredated severely when seen on a mac and not PC. 

You guys might want to try to save the images in other formats.  Does anyone know where I can find the 'plugin' for *.wmf and *.emf compatibility in Office?
I tried re-installing office and adding EVERYTHING but, that didn't seem to work.

Anyone know the source of this degradation in image quality when moving from PC to MAC?  Or a fix.

 I wish someone could just create a PowerPoint-like app in Flash.   My experience has shown that Flash is highly platform independent.  A all you need to view is a web browser with a plugin.  99.9999% of desktop computers already have flash installed in it.

Thanks,


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## Zammy-Sam (Mar 20, 2004)

attomica had an idea how to fix this. Read more here


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## karavite (Mar 22, 2004)

Lets just pray they never port Visio over to the Mac!  On a PC the other day I used Acrobat to print a Visio file as a pdf and though I was using nothing but Times and Arial fonts, all the text in the pdf showed up as gibberish. So much for upgrading to the latest version of Visio - the old version never did this. It is unbelievable to me that all these kind of problems (everything on this thread) exist in "productivity software" in 2004. See what happens when competition is taken out of the picture via monopolistic practices?


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## aaike (Mar 22, 2004)

Well, at least we got kind a kind of clue why things go wrong when it comes to pictures. But what about formulae, greek characters and graphs.

I expect that there is at least a workaround for the greek characters since this problem seems to be OS X related (other standard font for greek characters) because I didn't have any trouble with Office 2001 ;-) .


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