Can't drag a photo from iPhoto into Microsoft Word

[Scott Rose]

We just discovered a bug in Microsoft Word 2004 (11.2.3).

This happens on both PowerPC Macs and Intel Macs, running Mac OS X
10.4.7 and iPhoto 6.0.4.

We are trying to drag a photo from iPhoto 6.0.4 into a blank Microsoft
Word 11.2.3 document. This works just fine for JPG photos that are
fairly small.

HOWEVER -- whenever we try to drag a large JPG into Microsoft Word (not
sure what the cut-off point is, maybe JPG's that are larger than 1.3 MB
in size??), it simply doesn't work. Microsoft Word just gives us a
blank box in the document representing where the photo SHOULD have
been.

HOWEVER -- we can always get it to work whenever we drag the photo from
iPhoto onto the desktop first, and then drag it into MS Word from the
desktop.

So there seems to be a bug with Microsoft Word reading photos directly
from iPhoto, when they're over a certain size.

Has anyone else seen this behavior?

Thanks,
Scott

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Problem replicated with a 3MB photo in OS 10.4.7, iPhoto 6.0.4, Word 2004
(11.2.3), PPC Mac. Also had problems with a 985KB (empty box with some
unreadable text in the center), and 656KB (very slow, then half the photo,
with funky lines). Although, if it's a size issue, I would make a wild-ass
guess that the particular size that throws a glitch may be dependent on
various things that affect the memory available.

I get this fun little ghost of a picture sliding around as Word kicks it
back though. That's a fancy trick.

Interestingly, the via desktop method produces a smaller photo than the
failed empty box represents, which maybe suggests that Word does something
different on receipt of the photo, processing it somehow?

Copy and Paste with a 3MB photo likewise failed.

Can anybody replicate or not replicate in other setups?


PS. Pages handled Copy and Paste and Drag and Drop fine with a 3 MB photo,
but D&D produced a smaller picture in the Pages doc than C&P did.

 

[Michel Bintener]

I was able to replicate it with a 924KB JPEG image (I've got the same Mac
configuration as Daiya). Also, the text in that empty box can be read if you
set the zoom to 500% or more; it says: "QuickTime and a TIFF (Uncompressed)
decompressor are needed to see this picture."

However, here's a quick and quite nice workaround for those of you who use
Mac OS X Tiger. (I found this somewhere on the internet, but I can't give
any sources, so a great "thank you" to whoever discovered this).

In Automator, create a new workflow that simply consists of one simple
action, Ask for Photos. Save it as a workflow, then drag it into
~/Library/Scripts (where "~" designates your home folder). Launch the
AppleScript Utility (Applications/AppleScript) and make sure you check the
box which reads "Show Script Menu in menu bar". You should now see a black
scroll in the menu bar (which is your script menu), and if you click on it,
you should see your workflow in it. And there you go, you can now access the
iPhoto media browser (available in other applications as well, such as Pages
or iWeb), regardless of the application that's currently running.

In other words, you can now also use the iPhoto browser in Word, without
even launching iPhoto. And, strangely enough, that same picture that showed
up as a blank box in my previous experiment now shows up just fine. I'm not
sure what the problem is in correlation with iPhoto, but I guess this
workaround will do until there's a fix.

Problem replicated with a 3MB photo in OS 10.4.7, iPhoto 6.0.4, Word 2004
(11.2.3), PPC Mac. Also had problems with a 985KB (empty box with some
unreadable text in the center), and 656KB (very slow, then half the photo,
with funky lines). Although, if it's a size issue, I would make a wild-ass
guess that the particular size that throws a glitch may be dependent on
various things that affect the memory available.

I get this fun little ghost of a picture sliding around as Word kicks it
back though. That's a fancy trick.

Interestingly, the via desktop method produces a smaller photo than the
failed empty box represents, which maybe suggests that Word does something
different on receipt of the photo, processing it somehow?

Copy and Paste with a 3MB photo likewise failed.

Can anybody replicate or not replicate in other setups?


PS. Pages handled Copy and Paste and Drag and Drop fine with a 3 MB photo,
but D&D produced a smaller picture in the Pages doc than C&P did.

--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:Mac (Entourage & Word)

***Always reply to the newsgroup.***

 

[Clive Huggan]

Thanks, Michel ­ great!!

Cheers,
Clive
========

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

At long last! A reason to use Automator. Lovely, wonderful, very snazzy
trick, thanks, Michel.

My 3MB photo dragged and dropped just fine with this method.

(No Ask for Bookmarks action to answer Tom's current wish in the Entourage
ng, though

Daiya