Importing Omnigraffle EPS files into Word 2004

[Dave Peterson]

Hello!

I just recently bought a new Powerbook which came with Omnigraffle
installed so I'm trying to use it to produce diagrams for my thesis
instead of relying on the Word drawing tools again.

I have no problems importing PNG files into my Word 2004 document, but
of course these are bitmaps and therefore don't scale very well as
well as making the file huge.

I want to try and import the graphic as an EPS instead so that it is
scalable and more compact and have met with some success. At present,
I am drawing an object in Omnigraffle, exporting it to an EPS file and
then importing it with Word.

This results in a box containing a warning about no preview being in
the EPS file being inserted in my document. When I print the document
to a Postscript file (as suggested by folks on this group) it comes
out fine.

However...

I would like to create a preview image which would allow me to get a
rough idea of how the diagram would look on the final page. I'm not
too bothered about it looking amazing when editing in Word as long as
the EPS prints correctly.

There was a previous post from someone on this newsgroup who managed
to create an EPS preview using GraphicConverter which Word could
display. So I thought I'd follow this route and started
GraphicConverter (which also came with my computer).

I try to open the EPS file and get a warning telling me that I need to
download another bit of software to open the EPS. So I download
MacGhostView and try that out. (Note: according to the
GraphicConverter website, if you have OS X 10.3.5 it should be able to
convert an EPS without needing another application. Does anyone know
how to make this work? Do I need to upgrade my version of
GraphicConverter?)

So to create the preview, I choose Open... from the file menu in
GraphicConverter, select my EPS file and click Preview. After a bit
of work the Open dialog now shows a preview of my EPS and the file
changes it's icon to show the preview.

Excellent. Now I import it into Word and... get the warning message
box graphic instead of my preview. Great.

Turns out that deleting the resource fork of the EPS file removes the
preview and custom icon. It seems that GraphicConverter adds a PICT
resource as a preview instead of adding a TIFF preview which is what I
want to be able to preview the EPS in Word.

Has anyone successfully imported an EPS into Word from OmniGraffle
with a preview bitmap using GraphicConverter, and if so... how do you
do this?

Thanks in advance,
Dave Peterson.

 

[Janus]

I gave up on the current version of Omnigraffle to do what Dave is asking.

However, I have had success with EasyDraw. http://www.eazydraw.biz/

 

[Dave Peterson]

Has anyone successfully imported an EPS into Word from OmniGraffle
with a preview bitmap using GraphicConverter, and if so... how do you
do this?

Doh! I found the solution to this question myself last night when I
was trying again. It's a bit of an awkward way to do it, but it
works.

Importing an EPS from OmniGraffle into Word 2004 and actually getting
it to print:

1. Export your graphics from OmniGraffle as a EPS.

2. If you don't already have it, get the latest version of
GraphicConverter. This was my mistake last time as the version that
came with my week-old powerbook was horrendously out of date (4.9.2).
The TIFF EPS Preview feature wasn't added until version 5.

3. Start GraphicConverter and choose the "Convert and Modify" option
from the File menu (note, I don't have GraphicConverter to hand so I'm
probably using the wrong names for the menu options)

4. In the drop down menu at the top of the dialog that appears, choose
Create TIFF Preview for EPS (again, the wording is probably wrong, but
choose the option that sounds something like that)

5. Select the EPS file that OmniGraffle created and click Convert.

6. If all goes well, you should now have an EPS file with a TIFF
preview. Launch Word and open the document you want to stick the
picture in. Insert -> Picture and choose the EPS file. If all goes
well, you should see a crude grayscale preview of your EPS inserted
into your document.

7. Now, you've got a greyscale picture that looks terrible but can be
scaled. To get it to print out properly, you'll need to print as a
PostScript file. I don't have a printer connected to my Mac so I
created a Generic printer on localhost. In the word print dialog you
should be able to select "Output Options". In this dialog, choose
"Save as PS" and save the PostScript file somewhere. Note: this only
works if you have at least one printer driver set up (regardless of
you having a real printer or not).

8. OK, to print you should be able to open the PS file in Preview and
it will convert it to a PDF. From here, you can print it with the EPS
files in full colour glory, or you can save the file as a PDF.

It's not a perfect solution, but at least this method gives you a
picture placeholder to work with instead of a warning message in a
box. Plus you can be confident that your vector art can be resized in
Word without any jaggies.

Note: A lot of the EPS and PS conversion happens automatically with
the latest version of Panther. If you don't have Panther you'll
probably need other tools to do the conversion (such as GhostScript).

Hope someone found that useful and if anyone needs clarification on
any steps, feel free to post a reponse.

Thanks,
Dave.