No copy-paste between Word 2008 and ChemDraw

[cepi]

Word 2008 does not retain the structural information when a chemical structure copied from ChemDraw (cambridgesoft) is pasted in a doc. If you recopy de structure in the word document, it is pasted as a image (no editable) in the ChemDraw file.
There is no such problem in Word 2004 or X.

 

[John McGhie]

Try Edit>Paste>Special...

What options do you get?

Word 2008 does not retain the structural information when a chemical structure
copied from ChemDraw (cambridgesoft) is pasted in a doc. If you recopy de
structure in the word document, it is pasted as a image (no editable) in the
ChemDraw file.
There is no such problem in Word 2004 or X.

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John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[K]

The only option is to paste as a picture, which still converts it into a picture.

 

[John McGhie]

Yes. That was what I was looking for.

It means that of the formats ChemDraw is putting on the clipboard, Word can
read only the picture.

Sorry about that: It's an issue for ChemDraw to solve.

Cheers

The only option is to paste as a picture, which still converts it into a
picture.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[MSfive]

Actually it looks like it is microsofts problem not chemdraws!

If you are planning to buy the latest version of Microsoft Office you
might want to think again. From the Cambridgesoft website

"Microsoft removed the ability to retrieve the original chemical data
in pictures pasted into Microsoft Word when they released Microsoft
Office 2008 (if you copy and paste a structure in Word 2008, for
example, into ChemDraw, you can't edit it). We clearly do not support
this decision, but we have little influence over Microsoft's
development activities. If you preferred the old behavior in Microsoft
Word, we strongly recommend that you contact Microsoft and tell them
that. Until/unless they restore this feature in a future version of
Microsoft Word, you will need to save the ChemDraw files as separate
documents. Of course, if you continue to use an older version of
Microsoft Word that has this feature, you can continue to use it as
you always have."

 

[anton]

Yes, the above user is correct. This is definitely a Office 2008 problem.
When a chemdraw file is pasted into an Office document, Office pastes it only
as a picture and does not maintain the structural data. Thus,
cutting/pasting back into chemdraw to edit the structure is impossible.
Office 2004 handled this just fine, and now it is broken in Office 2008.
That fact alone puts the blame on Office 2008 and not Chemdraw, it's
unfortunate that someone who works for Microsoft would try to avoid
responsibility and shift blame. This issue has caused many users like me who
spent a fair amount of cash to upgrade to Office 2008 to have to downgrade
back to Office 2004. I was hoping that the recent SP1 update would resolve
this issue, but it does not. It's unfortunate that Microsoft has decided to
ignore users that depend on the compatibility between chemdraw and office for
scientific writing.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

John McGhie doesn't work for Microsoft.
https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/gp/mvpfaqs

If you want MS to hear your voice, use Help | Send Feedback in any
Office app. You won't reach them by posting here.

 

[anton]

well, then I guess I'm wrong about where I'm complaining. But, using the
help feature in office is useless. I've already gone that route, but you
don't get any response that way from anyone either. This particular thread
is the first that addresses this issue when doing a google search, so that is
why I am posting here. I don't expect a real response from microsoft, but
I'm hopeful that either someone here has knowledge about this issue that I
don't or knows of a workaround.

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

well, then I guess I'm wrong about where I'm complaining. But, using the
help feature in office is useless. I've already gone that route, but you
don't get any response that way from anyone either. This particular thread
is the first that addresses this issue when doing a google search, so that is
why I am posting here. I don't expect a real response from microsoft, but
I'm hopeful that either someone here has knowledge about this issue that I
don't or knows of a workaround.

"Daiya Mitchell" wrote:

Using Help-Send Feedback, is most definitely NOT useless. It is closely
monitored by Microsoft and the information helps them decide on features and
priorities for future releases. So, by all means, send feedback. It,
however, will not be directly acknowledged, but it will be used.

Secondly, yes, there has is a problem with Chem Draw structures in Office
2008. As I understand the problem, Cambridgesoft incorrectly relied on some
Office/OS features which were vestiges from older versions. Recent releases
of Office and the OS have corrected this and caused Chem Draw to "break".
Your feedback will help get this rectified.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Oh sorry. Didn't realize from your post that you were hoping for a
workaround, sounded like you just wanted to complain. I haven't seen
anyone post one, and I would expect ChemDraw to have posted that
information.

As I understand it, the issue is that the default picture format for
Word changed with Office 2008. ChemDraw depended on some peculiarities
of the PICT picture format to maintain the structure information, but
PICT is a format left over from OS 9 and earlier, and Apple has moved
away from it and so has Word.

I don't know enough about ChemDraw to say, but if you are copying and
pasting between CD and Word to edit anyhow, would it be possible to
store all pictures in an interim CD document? E.g., you have
ChemArticle.doc and ChemArticleGraphics.chemdraw. Then you always have
the unfrozen pictures that can be edited in
ChemArticleGraphics.chemdraw--copy them into Word. When it turns out
they are wrong, delete it from Word, edit it in CD, and copy it again in
Word.

 

[completelyoutofcontrol]

@Bob Greenblatt , if you want to believe that using the help-send
feature in microsoft word is not useless, then go right ahead. But, I
did use that to share my concerns as I'm sure many others have. But,
as there have been multiple updates for office 2008 thus far and this
has not been rectified, I will continue to believe that the help-send
feature is in fact useless. I find it interesting that you say that
Chemdraw "incorrectly" relied upon some features of office. I think
the fact that chemdraw has been working in perfect harmony with office
for the last decade would seem to disagree with your argument.

@Daiya Mitchell, yes that "work around" will get the job done, but if
you don't use Chemdraw for scientific writing often yourself, you
can't get a grasp of what a pain that is to maintain backups of all of
your chemdraw structures. In effect, if you are writing a journal
article or even worse, your thesis, this simply is not possible.
Hence, this is why all scientists that I intereact with grumble about
this and have reluctantly downgraded back to office 2004. As for
Chemdraw posting a work around.....again, this is not something
chemdraw broke, so how they are supposed to create a way out of this
mess doesn't make sense to me. Their posted "work around" is to
downgrade to office 2004.

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

@Bob Greenblatt , if you want to believe that using the help-send
feature in microsoft word is not useless, then go right ahead. But, I
did use that to share my concerns as I'm sure many others have. But,
as there have been multiple updates for office 2008 thus far and this
has not been rectified, I will continue to believe that the help-send
feature is in fact useless. I find it interesting that you say that
Chemdraw "incorrectly" relied upon some features of office. I think
the fact that chemdraw has been working in perfect harmony with office
for the last decade would seem to disagree with your argument.

@Daiya Mitchell, yes that "work around" will get the job done, but if
you don't use Chemdraw for scientific writing often yourself, you
can't get a grasp of what a pain that is to maintain backups of all of
your chemdraw structures. In effect, if you are writing a journal
article or even worse, your thesis, this simply is not possible.
Hence, this is why all scientists that I intereact with grumble about
this and have reluctantly downgraded back to office 2004. As for
Chemdraw posting a work around.....again, this is not something
chemdraw broke, so how they are supposed to create a way out of this
mess doesn't make sense to me. Their posted "work around" is to
downgrade to office 2004.

Well, as I understand it, CambridgeSoft took some liberties and shortcuts
and did not completely follow Apple's guidelines. Although it worked with
Office 2004, Office 2008 did not use older code and thus the CambridgeSoft's
shortcuts no longer work.

As far a believing that help-send feedback works or doesn't work, is a
matter of faith. I can assure you it DOES work. The fact that Microsoft, or
anyone else is going to drop what they are doing and immediately attend to
and fix the issues you raise is a bit unreasonable. They have much on their
plate. You need to understand that fixing problems as well as adding
features is always a cost/benefit tradeoff in how to best utilize scarce
resources to gain the most benefit. Your feedback is important. The fact
that it hasn't bee fixed yes does NOT mean that it hasn't been heard, or
that it is not on the to do list.