Illustrator as an inserted object

[RedRegulus]

I would like to insert an Illustrator file as an object into a Word 2003
document. I do not see "Adobe Illustrator" on the list of available object
types; however, I do see "Adobe Photoshop" on that list.

I see no entries on this topic in any Adobe forums or any Microsoft forums.
According to Microsoft, the Illustrator object should appear on the list if
it were properly installed on my machine; although, I begin to understand
that there may be problems with MS graphics filters and Illustrator. Does MS
Word simply ignore Illustrator?

I installed Creative Suite CS2 onto my windows xp machine several months
ago; and I have been using Illustrator 12 with no troubles.

I would appreciate any comments or references to technical docs.

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hello Red

I would like to insert an Illustrator file as an object into a Word 2003
document. I do not see "Adobe Illustrator" on the list of available object
types; however, I do see "Adobe Photoshop" on that list.

I see no entries on this topic in any Adobe forums or any Microsoft forums.
According to Microsoft, the Illustrator object should appear on the list if
it were properly installed on my machine; although, I begin to understand
that there may be problems with MS graphics filters and Illustrator. Does MS
Word simply ignore Illustrator?

I installed Creative Suite CS2 onto my windows xp machine several months
ago; and I have been using Illustrator 12 with no troubles.

I would appreciate any comments or references to technical docs.

Sorry, I don't have any references.

Before digging further, I would ask myself why you really wanted to do
that in the first place? The benefit of being able to "doubleclick and
edit in Illu" must be weighed against increase in filesize (compared to,
say, exporting from Illu in a sensible format and that directly, or even
link to it). And to the fact that the document will most probably not
work at all on a system w/o Illu installed; and whether it works on a
system with different OS/Office/Illu installed, well, remains to be
seen, too ...

Also, you would be best off to save the Illu file externally anyway.
Word has (historically) never been a good container for "original"
graphic files.

0.2cents
Robert

 

[RedRegulus]

Robert,

I have driven myself to drink while contemplating those issues about size
and portability!

I like to embed certain drawings, and other foreign documents like Excel
worksheets, in small MS Word documents because I want the computer to handle
as many housekeeping chores as possible.

It is much easier to manage the workflow, ie, keep track of related ideas,
if I let MS Word contain the foreign document.

Of course, I could create a hyperlink to an illustrator file that I keep in
the same directory as the Word doc. But that creates the problem of seeing
the illustration when I am viewing the Word doc. I want to imitate the
age-old process of viewing paper on my screen.

In fact, to allow a short digression, last year I started using two
screens. I wish I could easily attach a third and fourth screen to the laptop
and docking station I use at work. That is the way to create a desktop truly
analogous to a real desktop on which I can spread-out several documents,
books, notepads, etc.

So, I am trying to simplify my interaction with a complex document written
with Word. By truly embedding files, I imitate the way I naturally interact
with documents. The trade-off are those computer science issues, but
computers were made to simplify work for the human operator at their own
expense.

Also, I don't want to repaste an image of a foreign document every time I
make a change. After all, I could create that independent file and then
export to BMP or WMF. But that is transferring responsibility to me rather
than leaving it to the computer.

After saying all this, I must say that yesterday I opened an old Word
document that I created in Word 2000. I found an embedded Illustrator file!
It was so nice to read that document as if it were published on paper.

That means that something changed from Word 2000 to Word 2003. Now that I
have opened the old file in the new application, I can no longer double-click
to launch the embedded diagram in Illustrator.

Somewhere, there must be a way to register Illustrator with Word 2003!!

RedRegulus