Problems displaying excel tables in Word for Mac 2008

[Robert Reisley]

I was sent a word document created by a colleague on a PC using Office 2008.
The word document contains tables that were copied from excel and pasted as
"pictures". When I display the document on my new mac (OS 10.6.1) using
Office for Mac 2008 (version 12.2.1), the tables are fussy, not clear. When
I display the same document on a PC, the tables are clear. I called
Microsoft technical support for assistance and I sent them the document.
They were able to see the issue but they were unable to solve the problem.
They referred me to this forum.

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Robert;

They were most likely unable to solve the "problem" because there is no real
"solution" after the fact. Copy/paste on the PC involves the Windows
clipboard which creates an enhanced metafile (EMF) image embedded in the
document. EMF is not native to the Mac OS so Word has to 'translate' the
embedded image which often results in less than optimal display on screen.
When other differences between PC/Mac graphics processing is factored in it
isn't unusual that the result doesn't look its best. You should find that
the content prints much better than it displays, though.

The best approach is to avoid the issue in the first place. Copy/paste on
either OS is at the bottom of the list when it comes to graphics...
Especially those which may have to travel cross-platform. If the Excel
content is inserted as an embedded Excel Worksheet Object it will survive
the trip far better. Other options would include creating a PNG or JPEG from
the Excel content & inserting that into the document.

On your end you can try Control-Clicking the image & using Save As Picture
to create a new image file in PNG or JPEG format. Have a look at the result
in Apple's Preview app & see if it looks better than what's in the document.
If it is, replace the original by inserting the new image.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac