How can I copy or export a table as a graphical object

[JosypenkoMJ]

Any idea how I can copy or export a table as a graphical object, so I
can paste it into Canvas, eg., and add other objects other than text to
the table ? Being that a table is composed of lines and edit text
boxes, it should be represented somewhere as a a graphical object. If I
select and copy a table, the clipboard only shows the text in the
table.
I don't want to use Word graphics commands because they are limited
and make floating graphics objects, which are almost totally useless
because they don't track with the text.
I could do a screen copy of the table and paste it into Canvas, but
it makes a bitmap picture of the table which results in the text
loosing resolution (gets grainy).

OS = 9._

 

[mmmmark]

Any idea how I can copy or export a table as a graphical object, so I
can paste it into Canvas, eg., and add other objects other than text to
the table ? Being that a table is composed of lines and edit text
boxes, it should be represented somewhere as a a graphical object. If I
select and copy a table, the clipboard only shows the text in the
table.
I don't want to use Word graphics commands because they are limited
and make floating graphics objects, which are almost totally useless
because they don't track with the text.
I could do a screen copy of the table and paste it into Canvas, but
it makes a bitmap picture of the table which results in the text
loosing resolution (gets grainy).

OS = 9._

You can try copying the table and Paste Special as a graphic. This _might_
work to then copy into your drawing package. On the other hand, you can
make all the changes in Word with the floating graphics and all and do the
same thing, pasting back in as a graphic to get a conglomerate. If you do
that, be sure to save your original somewhere in case you need to make
changes.

-Mark

 

[JosypenkoMJ]

Thanks.
Interesting back and forth way of getting something done. I tried it
- copy and paste special as a picture. What I get is a picture of
almost the whole table - the text is there, but some of the table lines
are missing - which lines are missing appears to be almost totally
random.
This is terrible. I posted recently also a problem where the edit
picture function multilates pictures. Does MS know how to write
software ?

 

[Beth Rosengard]

You can try copying the table and Paste Special as a graphic. This _might_
work to then copy into your drawing package. On the other hand, you can
make all the changes in Word with the floating graphics and all and do the
same thing, pasting back in as a graphic to get a conglomerate. If you do
that, be sure to save your original somewhere in case you need to make
changes.

Why not just paste the graphics into the table as "Inline with text" in the
first place? Then you have no floating graphics issues.

--
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Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

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[JosypenkoMJ]

Why not just paste the graphics into the table as "Inline with text" in the
first place? Then you have no floating graphics issues.

--

I guess I'm of the mindset of the text editors of the old text OS's
where only text could be in tables and graphics were done with graphics
programs - I thought only text could be in tables.
Thanks - it worked. Still uncomfortable though with the idea of a graph
object being treated as a character where spaces and carriage returns
can surround it and determine its position. A graphics program gives
one a little more control of placement of the graphics.

 

[JosypenkoMJ]

Thanks.
Interesting back and forth way of getting something done. I tried it
- copy and paste special as a picture. What I get is a picture of
almost the whole table - the text is there, but some of the table lines
are missing - which lines are missing appears to be almost totally
random.
This is terrible. I posted recently also a problem where the edit
picture function multilates pictures. Does MS know how to write
software ?

Some corrections - the picture version of the table lines were not
visible in Word because by default they were 1/2 pixel wide. Increasing
the magnification showed them. Obviously, the lines would not be
visible on the clipboard. In Canvas, they simply weren't there.
Increasing the table lines to 3 pixels wide and copying and pasting
the table into Word made the table lines always available, although now
the table shrunk in width appreciably. Shrunk picture table also
appears OK on clipboard. Pasting into Canvas, the lines now are OK, but
text boxes shrunk forcing text in cells to wrap.

 

[mmmmark]

I guess I'm of the mindset of the text editors of the old text OS's
where only text could be in tables and graphics were done with graphics
programs - I thought only text could be in tables.
Thanks - it worked. Still uncomfortable though with the idea of a graph
object being treated as a character where spaces and carriage returns
can surround it and determine its position. A graphics program gives
one a little more control of placement of the graphics.

Graphics can be floating over the text layer (and table) yet still be linked
to and move with the text in that table. That is still another option. I
didn't mention it because I assumed you might have known this.

-Mark

 

[JosypenkoMJ]

Yes. Do you know how to use it?

Sorry, but Word has limits: if you go below those limits, Word is unable to
render your information. If this happens unpredictably, it's user error

That said, I agree that I would like lighter line weights and more
flexibility in available line weights in Word. I don't think we can do much
about the disappearing ones though: it's a limitation of the operating
system's ability to draw lines.

Your disappearing table lines are due to the line weight you select. There
is a minimum line thickness in QuickDraw (The Apple mechanism that is
actually being used to render the table as a picture).

Lines below a particular weight will disappear on screen, depending on their
precise position. Very narrow lines will also disappear in the printed
image if they are below the printer's rendering capability.

You could select a heavier line weight for your tables. If you did, the
lines would not disappear on you. If they then look too heavy, change the
"colour" of the lines to a shade of grey other than black.

Cheers

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

Maybe the question is do I want to use it (but then what else is
there that everyone uses) ?
The edit picture multilation of vector drawn .pict pictures problem
is a real bug in Word. I've tried it on Mac and PC versions of Word.
But even graphics programs like Canvas can have problems decoding .pict
files.
For disappearing lines, I was forced again to be aware of the pixel
limitation of drawing, but what about the average user ? Does he need
to know the mechanics of computers to know if Word in some manner
allows lines of width less than a pixel wide, if converted to a .pict
picture they may or may not be drawn on a 72 dpi screen due to
truncation error, but may draw on a 300 dpi printer if the pixel width
is >= 1/300 ? To avoid confusion, the lines should somehow be drawn.
Note that with the Apple Toolbox draw line command, lines set at width
0 will draw at 1 pixel width.
I do a lot of graphing elsewhere and am always dealing with the sceen
limitation of wide pixels, drawing line widths in terms of 1 or 2, etc.
pixels. When printed they look fat. Like you said, when the line is
still too fat, I switch to lighter lines.

Thanks
Mike

 

[JosypenkoMJ]

And now I find myself in strong agreement with you!



Indeed. Or the "professional" user. Both of these user groups actually
need the damned thing to work "without encroaching limitations". And
currently, it DOESN'T.

Microsoft appears to be abandoning support for the EPS format. Its flagship
graphics program (which in the industry calls forward a variety of comical
epithets, none of which describe it as a "graphics" program) can no longer
export EPS.

Word can't handle EPS properly on the Mac.

EMF works quite nicely in the Windows world: it ought to, it's Windows'
native drawing language.

EMF had the benefit of being invented specifically for a 32-bit operating
system and 32-bit processors. So it doesn't suffer from the "16-bit"
limitations currently apparent in PICT. But it won't convert cleanly to
PICT on the Mac. PICT on the Mac will convert to EMF on the PC, but PICT
has the limitations you mention.

The salvation of us all is supposed to be SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) and
XML Drawings. But I have yet both see these working well anywhere.
Particularly keep your eye on the XML ones. The idea with XML is that it is
supposed to be "extensible", so if we want stuff drawn with 64-bit
precision, some enterprising manufacturer should be able to add a CODEC for
that. We'll see...

Cheers

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

I was thinking of what you said about the problems of going back and
forth between .pict and Word graphics. I found a baffling situation
with the Edit Picture command. If I edit a graph drawn as a vector
..pict picture, the picture opens up in an editing window. I close the
window to save changes, and now the edited picture is multilated in the
document. If I edit the multilated picture, guess what - it appears
perfect in the editing window. Talk about confusion. It appears Word
converts the .pict picture to Word graphics format in the editing
window and saves the result in this format, but converts it back to
..pict format when it displays it (quite poorly) in the document.
Thus to get a good edited picture, I found I could group all and
copy the picture in the editing window, and in the document delete the
multilated picture and paste in the copied picture. Only minor problems
are :

- the picture is now an annoying floating object, which can't be placed
inline with text.
- the picture can't be edited again.

If you don't group all of the picture pieces of lines and text boxes,
in the document you could have a couple hundred little graph objects
which quickly can spread like sand and cause a mess.
Because of all of this confusing nonsense, I'm doing my graphics
editing in Canvas.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Yeah: Jeff Wiseman is having exactly the same problem in another thread. I
do not understand why you are both suddenly noticing this problem.

Something has changed, and now we have two reports of it.

I am trying to take this up with the developers... Stay tuned.

I was thinking of what you said about the problems of going back and
forth between .pict and Word graphics. I found a baffling situation
with the Edit Picture command. If I edit a graph drawn as a vector
.pict picture, the picture opens up in an editing window. I close the

window to save changes, and now the edited picture is multilated in the
document. If I edit the multilated picture, guess what - it appears
perfect in the editing window. Talk about confusion. It appears Word
converts the .pict picture to Word graphics format in the editing
window and saves the result in this format, but converts it back to
.pict format when it displays it (quite poorly) in the document.

Thus to get a good edited picture, I found I could group all and
copy the picture in the editing window, and in the document delete the
multilated picture and paste in the copied picture. Only minor problems
are :

- the picture is now an annoying floating object, which can't be placed
inline with text.
- the picture can't be edited again.

If you don't group all of the picture pieces of lines and text boxes,
in the document you could have a couple hundred little graph objects
which quickly can spread like sand and cause a mess.
Because of all of this confusing nonsense, I'm doing my graphics
editing in Canvas.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[JosypenkoMJ]

Yeah: Jeff Wiseman is having exactly the same problem in another thread. I
do not understand why you are both suddenly noticing this problem.

Something has changed, and now we have two reports of it.

I am trying to take this up with the developers... Stay tuned.

I noticed the mulitlated edited picture problem 2 or 3 years ago when I
was trying to do some touch up on some graphs drawn as vector drawn
..pict pictures, with Word 95/6, which of course is old. Copied the file
to a PC and saw no change in problem. I only recently decided to do
something about, found this discussion group, posted the problem a
couple weeks ago, with no response. I started to talk about again in
this message because it seemed like a graphics related problem to the
undrawn table lines (in mulitlated edited pictures, lines do
disappear).
I saw the "Fonts fouling up in word pictures" message. Beth Rosengard
says to save a picture from the edit picture window. Mabe this is the
only place in Word one can be assured of good graphics. My solution is
do all graphics elsewhere, and import the results back to Word. If Word
is still messing up any graphics objects in the imported file, save the
results as a high resolution .jpeg file and import to Word. In this
way, Word would never see any graphical objects it can mess up.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Yes, it *was* a bug with a version of Word X. I thought it involved
QuickDraw. But that one got fixed.

Having it suddenly *reappear* in Word 2004 is puzzling. I guess it "might"
have happened if Apple changed something. But I have it too in OS 10.3.9,
where to the best of my knowledge Apple *haven't* changed anything. But I
can readily replicate the problem from Jeff's file.

So I am waiting to see what the developers say. Regrettably, I can't get
through to them at the moment.

Cheers

I noticed the mulitlated edited picture problem 2 or 3 years ago when I
was trying to do some touch up on some graphs drawn as vector drawn
.pict pictures, with Word 95/6, which of course is old. Copied the file

to a PC and saw no change in problem. I only recently decided to do
something about, found this discussion group, posted the problem a
couple weeks ago, with no response. I started to talk about again in
this message because it seemed like a graphics related problem to the
undrawn table lines (in mulitlated edited pictures, lines do
disappear).
I saw the "Fonts fouling up in word pictures" message. Beth Rosengard
says to save a picture from the edit picture window. Mabe this is the
only place in Word one can be assured of good graphics. My solution is
do all graphics elsewhere, and import the results back to Word. If Word
is still messing up any graphics objects in the imported file, save the
results as a high resolution .jpeg file and import to Word. In this
way, Word would never see any graphical objects it can mess up.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[JosypenkoMJ]

Yes, it *was* a bug with a version of Word X. I thought it involved
QuickDraw. But that one got fixed.

Having it suddenly *reappear* in Word 2004 is puzzling. I guess it "might"
have happened if Apple changed something. But I have it too in OS 10.3.9,
where to the best of my knowledge Apple *haven't* changed anything. But I
can readily replicate the problem from Jeff's file.

So I am waiting to see what the developers say. Regrettably, I can't get
through to them at the moment.

Cheers



Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

I finally was able to try the edit picture command in the newer Word
X and there is no problem.
Word continues to baffle me. Starting with a vector .pict picture,
one can end up with 3 different types of pictures :

- original vector .pict picture
- if it's edited and saved, it is now a picture object, which Canvas
can't edit.
- if the picture in the edit picture window is cut and pasted into the
document, it's an object which now Word can't even edit, and it can't
be placed in line with text.