HELP! EMF files going wild after upgrade...

[DaveL]

I work in a technical publications group and the standard in our office for
years has been Visio to .emf to Framemaker, so we have thousands of graphics
in emf format, and the emf files import into Framemaker at the same size as
the original Visio file.

I've recently been upgraded to XP Pro (from 2000), Office 2003, and
Framemaker 7.1p116. Now when I create a new graphic or edit an existing
graphic using Visio 2003, save it as an emf and import it by reference into
Frame, it comes in about 120% larger than the original Visio file. The same
is true for emf files exported from Adobe Illustrator. However, if I insert
that same emf from Visio into Word 2003, it comes in at the correct size. I'm
not about to ask the writers I work with to scale every graphic they get from
me, and I'm not about to start changing every graphic I work on to 84%
smaller so it comes in at the right size. And, as emf has been our standard
and thousands of our Frame files reference emf files, it would be very
difficult and inconvenient to switch to a different format. Have you heard of
this similar problem before? Do you know what is going on and is there a
simple fix??...patch, graphics filter...go back to Win2000??

Any help and advise would be appreciated.

 

[Al Edlund]

Based on your description of EMF issues with two different vendors products
(adobe and ms) it would sound as if the problem is neither Visio nor
Illustrator and instead is an XP issue. You might ask the question in one of
the XP forums.
al

 

[DaveL]

Upon further review....

From Microsoft knowledge base:
Text in a graphic is incorrectly spaced or is incorrectly positioned after
you export a Visio 2003 drawing to Enhanced Metafile (EMF) format
View products that this article applies to.

Article ID : 893473
Last Review : April 20, 2005
Revision : 1.1

SYMPTOMS
You export your Microsoft Office Visio 2003 drawing to Enhanced Metafile
(EMF) format. If you insert the EMF graphic into the same Visio 2003 drawing
or into a different Visio 2003 drawing, the EMF graphic is displayed as
expected. However, when you view the EMF graphic in some third-party
programs, text in the graphic may be incorrectly spaced or may be incorrectly
positioned. For example, text may overlap. Or, text may appear to the right
or to the left of its expected position.
CAUSE
The EMF format that is used by Visio 2003 and by other Microsoft Office 2003
programs contains the following two types of image information:

• EMF+ format
• An EMF-only format that is used for backward compatibility

An issue exists where certain text may be incorrectly spaced or incorrectly
positioned when you use Visio 2003 to export a Visio 2003 drawing to EMF
format. These abnormalities are only visible if the third-party program that
you use to view the EMF graphic does not support EMF+ format.
STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products
that are listed in the "Applies to" section

DAVE'S SOLUTION
reinstall Visio 2000 and emf files no longer scale in 3rd party products