Thank you Microsoft, but please fix the issues

[Michael Grant]

Just wanted to thank the Microsoft Mac BU for doing a great job
overall of keeping the Mac up to date with a nice version of Office. I
recently 'switched' to a Powerbook from Windows and have mostly been
using the new Powerpoint release. Here are just a few key things that
I WISH Microsoft would address, quickly.

1. Screen redraws. Really slow when compared to PC version. The slide
sorter view is almost un-usable. Please fix this. Also, when you use a
MS mouse with scroll wheel, it is also un-usable as the slide redraws
can't catch up. Why not cache this stuff when it hasn't changed? I'm
running on a Dual G4 with 1 gig of RAM. My old Windows Dell laptop -
1g P3 - redraws faster than the Mac in Powerpoint.

2. Ruler problems. When turned on, the ruler makes all the graphic
placements impossible. This is clearly a serious bug.

3. No slide view in multipane mode. When editing slides in the
multipane view, the outline on the left cannot be changed to a
mini-slide view like on Windows (if it can, please tell me how). This
means that you must use slide sorter to see smaller versions. Ouch.

4. Quicktime/Media Handling. This has been written about elsewhere in
this forums in detail, but MS, please fix these issues of performance.
PP should be able to handle media on the Mac in any form and play it
well. I also want movie controls with embedded movies. Also, please
make suggestions to the user when he/she are creating cross platform
presentations about the best way to embedd media. PP could ask me when
I create a new presentation - 'will this need to play on Windows PP?'
- at which point everything it does will make sure that cross-platform
playback and file formats are handled.

5. Expand file formats. I should be able to save a PP as a Flash file
for example since this is built into Quicktime.

There are many other issues which have been documented in this forums.
I really hope MS is working hard on a SP or patch to address these
issues SOON.

-m

 

[Frank Jurden]

i'd like to second the issues listed below. i just want to amplify a couple
things.

*screen redraws. my experience has also been totally unacceptable. i have
a 60 page slide show on a 1ghz pb with 1gb of memory and it takes
forvever to redaw. i also have an older hp laptop with windows xp home.
there's no comparison. same file performs radically differently on the mac
compared to the pc. please fix this.

*image handling. this is a HUGE problem for me because i work in
advertising and am constantly adding images to the presentations. i work
on mac os x with office 2004, and i interact with windows users with the
latest ms office suite. i can't share documents because all the images drop
out. the message is "quicktime and a TIFF decompressor are needed to see
this picture." PLEASE FIX THIS PROBLEM!!! Does anybody know of a
workaround (and please don't suggest save as movie because this doesn't
work for me).

*keyboard shortcuts. with the latest version of mac office, they changed the
keyboard shortcuts for jumping from word to word and to the end of a
sentence compared to earlier versions. its like changing the copy command
from command-c to command-x. might not seem like a big change since
the letterrs are next to eachother, but eveyrbody on the planet learned it the
other way. why in teh world would you mess with something so universal?

ANY SUGGESTIONS FOR FIXING THE IMAGE HANDLING WOULD BE
APPRECIATED.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

*image handling. this is a HUGE problem for me because i work in

advertising and am constantly adding images to the presentations. i work
on mac os x with office 2004, and i interact with windows users with the
latest ms office suite. i can't share documents because all the images drop
out. the message is "quicktime and a TIFF decompressor are needed to see
this picture." PLEASE FIX THIS PROBLEM!!! Does anybody know of a
workaround (and please don't suggest save as movie because this doesn't
work for me).

This is an older problem that PPT2004, but perhaps PPT2004 does something
different internally to compress images.

But where do the images come from in the first place? If you give them to a
Windows PPT user, can they insert them into their copy of PPT?


--
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================
Featured Presenter, PowerPoint Live 2004
October 10-13, San Diego, CA www.PowerPointLive.com
================================================

 

[Michael Grant]

Frank,

I had this image handling problem too but I found a way around it. If
you right click (I use a two buttom mouse on my Mac - I think its
option click otherwise) you should see a 'Convert image...' option or
something like that. I found that if I selected that option, it would
convert the image to an internal office image format and then the
images displayed fine on Windows. Try it. Let me know if you can't get
it to work and I'll recreate what I did and provide more info.

Otherwise, MS should handle doing this automatically or all allow for
a 'convert all' option so you don't have to do it with individual
images. I was told that if you save the images to disk and then
'import them' rather than dragging them into the PPT window, PPT will
convert them for you thus saving you the trouble of doing it later.

Let us know if this works for you.

-Michael

 

[Tarken]

I am having the same problem, but with Word. In my case I copied the
image from Omnigraffle, via the clipboard, and pasted them into Word.
I have even tried a 'paste special', selected 'Microsoft Word Document
Object' and then tried the convert as suggested. When I open the
document in Office 2003, on MS-Windows I still have the issue.

At the same time exporting to a PNG file and then importing that file
into word provides me with an image that can be viewed on both
platforms. So at least there is a work around.

From what I can tell Office works on embedded objects, so has problems
when there is nothing to decode that content. In fact it will even
accept certain data types that it can't display, such as EPS which
will only print out on a Postscript printer. I would like to see
Office being smarter and actually converting certain data types to
cross-platform equivalents. I suppose I am just annoyed that I am
having to go through a steps that I don't find normal, based on my
experience from working with other applications.

Andre

 

[Tarken]

Hi,

After a bit work analysing the situation I think I understand the
issue. MS Office on Windows uses WMF for drawings, while MS Office on
MacOS used Pict, for drawings. Both WMF and Pict are vector image file
formats that are native to their respective platforms. If you create a
Word document on Windows and create a drawing using the drawing tools,
then this image can not be edited on the Mac, but can on the PC. This
would be indicative that there is a bitmap preview image that is
included with the diagram - Windows creates a bitmap representation of
the vector diagram, while quicktime on the Mac generates a notice for
the preview.

Just to test this out I did a few further tests:
- On the Mac, I inserted a pict file from file, and I get the same
'quicktime and tiff' needed on the Windows side
- With Windows, I inserted a pict file from file, and I get the same
'quicktime and tiff', but this time on both sides!?!?

The conclusion is that Office will use whatever it considers the
native format for the given platform, so Office for Mac does not do
WMF and Office for Windows does not do Pict and neither converts
between the two. The oddest issue was on importing the pict file on
Windows, which I am guessing to be a Quicktime issue, since Office
depends on COM objects for conversion and display.

It would be nice if Microsoft could recognise this issue and maybe
include WMF support in the MacOffice implementation. It would also be
nice if Apple provided support for WMF in Quicktime.

Note, that I do have all the Quicktime elements installed on my
Windows system.

Andre

Just my 5c worth.

 

[Tarken]

Looks like I didn't test things as well as I could have,
and probably put the blame in the wrong places - so you can
discount my previous analysis. I am really starting to think
that this is a Cocoa applcation to Carbon aplication to Cocoa
application interaction issue.

First the facts:
- copy image from Firefox (Carbon app) to Word (Carbon app)
result: image appears PC side
- copy image from Appleworks (Carbon app) to Word (Carbon app)
result: image appears PC side
- copy image from Omnigraffle (Cocoa app) to Word
result: 'quicktime needed' PC side
- copy vector image from Word to Omnigraffle
result: image is not editable
- copy vector image from Word to Appleworks
result: image is editable
- copy image from Preview to Word
result: 'quicktime needed' PC side
- copy image from Omnigraffle to AppleWorks to Word
result: image appears PC side

So what we can see here is when we copy between a carbon application
and Word we have no problems. On the other hand if we copy between
a Cacoa application and Word we have issues.

From looking at the clipboard contents during the copies it looks
like Cocoa application copy their images as PDFs and have a bitmap
preview as a compressed PICT. Since word embeds data types no
manipulation is done and the images are embedded as is, since it
will try to find a handler - this is a bit like web pages.

With this in mind either Office could try decompressing the preview
images or Apple could ensure that images from Cocoa applications
don't have their preview images compressed. Even better is if PDF
images were properly converted to PICT and vice vera?

This is my analysis and my conclusions, so there maybe some variation
between this and the reality, but hopefully I have done a good
enouh job to identify the causes.

Andre

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Thanks for the time you've spent on this and for posting your results.
No small effort, obviously.

As far as what Office can do with copy/pasted images, it may be stuck accepting what
the OS hands it. That's the case with OLE embedded objects on the Windows side. PPT
has a picture it can hand off to the OS for display purposes (WMF in this case) and a
bunch of embedded data it can toss off to the app that created it (if it's available)
for editing. Beyond that, it doesn't know much about the object at all, at least
until it's ungrouped and becomes Office drawing objects (to the extent that it can
convert the picture of the data).

I'd imagine it's something like that on Mac as well ... the OS hands it a PDF instead
of a PICT and ... that's what it's got to work with.

Looks like I didn't test things as well as I could have,
and probably put the blame in the wrong places - so you can
discount my previous analysis. I am really starting to think
that this is a Cocoa applcation to Carbon aplication to Cocoa
application interaction issue.

First the facts:
- copy image from Firefox (Carbon app) to Word (Carbon app)
result: image appears PC side
- copy image from Appleworks (Carbon app) to Word (Carbon app)
result: image appears PC side
- copy image from Omnigraffle (Cocoa app) to Word
result: 'quicktime needed' PC side
- copy vector image from Word to Omnigraffle
result: image is not editable
- copy vector image from Word to Appleworks
result: image is editable
- copy image from Preview to Word
result: 'quicktime needed' PC side
- copy image from Omnigraffle to AppleWorks to Word
result: image appears PC side

So what we can see here is when we copy between a carbon application
and Word we have no problems. On the other hand if we copy between
a Cacoa application and Word we have issues.

From looking at the clipboard contents during the copies it looks
like Cocoa application copy their images as PDFs and have a bitmap
preview as a compressed PICT. Since word embeds data types no
manipulation is done and the images are embedded as is, since it
will try to find a handler - this is a bit like web pages.

With this in mind either Office could try decompressing the preview
images or Apple could ensure that images from Cocoa applications
don't have their preview images compressed. Even better is if PDF
images were properly converted to PICT and vice vera?

This is my analysis and my conclusions, so there maybe some variation
between this and the reality, but hopefully I have done a good
enouh job to identify the causes.

Andre



This is an older problem that PPT2004, but perhaps PPT2004 does something
different internally to compress images.

But where do the images come from in the first place? If you give them to a
Windows PPT user, can they insert them into their copy of PPT?

[/QUOTE]

--
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================
Featured Presenter, PowerPoint Live 2004
October 10-13, San Diego, CA www.PowerPointLive.com
================================================

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

I'd imagine it's something like that on Mac as well ... the OS hands it a PDF

instead
of a PICT and ... that's what it's got to work with.

That's the case. That's why I always try to avaoid copying and pasting
objects in PICT ot MOV when I want to make sure they can be read on a PC.
Many applications nowadays use PDF for the clipboard.

OmniGraffle Pro for instance even has the option to simply "copy" or copy as
PDF or TIFF.

THe problem is that PPT doesn't seem to accept PDFs from the clipboard.
You can always export the PDF from OG and import it back in PPT, but the I
couldn't find a way to get the transparency right. I don;t know if it is OG
not exporting the transparency information in the PDF or PPT not displaying
it properly though.

The best way for me remains always the same: export as PNG with transparency
and import back in PPT.

I should try to get in contact with the OmniGroup to try and have a "copy as
PNG with transaprency command in the application though :-\ THey are usually
very responsive to feature requests and suggestions.



Corentin

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

THe problem is that PPT doesn't seem to accept PDFs from the clipboard.

You can always export the PDF from OG and import it back in PPT, but the I
couldn't find a way to get the transparency right. I don;t know if it is OG
not exporting the transparency information in the PDF or PPT not displaying
it properly though.

That's what makes it so much <cough,cough> fun to track this stuff down. It's
hard to tell what's happening on the clipboard; what formats a given app is
putting there, what formats another app grabs by default and whether it handles it
right.



--
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================
Apologies for the delayed response.
Just back from PowerPoint Live 2004
Had a great time, learned a lot
================================================

 

[Tarken]

Hi,

While getting OmniGraffle to use an extra image format for the
clipboard is a solution, I feel that it may end up being a fix
in the wrong place. Let me explain my point of view:

PICT is the former native image transfer format that was used by Classic
applications and also by Carbon applications. For many Cocoa applications
the format seems to be PDF. The proper change can either be done by Apple
or Microsoft, since I would guess there are two approaches:

- have Word accept PDF image content from the clipboard. Since it already
accepts placing a PDF file as an image, this could be a solution.
Precedence would be given over PICT. The only question remains how
significant is compatibility with MacOS 9 is?

- have Apple not compress PICT previews and maybe do on the fly conversion
between PDF and PICT, so that vector information is retained

Both would require a development effort by the respective companies, so
it may be a while before we see a solution.

One idea that sprung to mind was if someone was to write a small application
where you could have it do the conversion suggested in the second approach.
The only catch is that I don't know whether there is anything that will currently
convert vector information in PICT to PDF and vice versa, in the MacOS X API?

BTW Out of curosity are there any applications that place PNG data on the clipboard
that is accepted by Office?

André-John

 

[Tarken]

Looks like I didn't test things as well as I could have,
and probably put the blame in the wrong places - so you can
discount my previous analysis. I am really starting to think
that this is a Cocoa applcation to Carbon aplication to Cocoa
application interaction issue.

First the facts:
- copy image from Firefox (Carbon app) to Word (Carbon app)
result: image appears PC side
- copy image from Appleworks (Carbon app) to Word (Carbon app)
result: image appears PC side
- copy image from Omnigraffle (Cocoa app) to Word
result: 'quicktime needed' PC side
- copy vector image from Word to Omnigraffle
result: image is not editable
- copy vector image from Word to Appleworks
result: image is editable
- copy image from Preview to Word
result: 'quicktime needed' PC side
- copy image from Omnigraffle to AppleWorks to Word
result: image appears PC side

So what we can see here is when we copy between a carbon application
and Word we have no problems. On the other hand if we copy between
a Cacoa application and Word we have issues.

From looking at the clipboard contents during the copies it looks
like Cocoa application copy their images as PDFs and have a bitmap
preview as a compressed PICT. Since word embeds data types no
manipulation is done and the images are embedded as is, since it
will try to find a handler - this is a bit like web pages.

With this in mind either Office could try decompressing the preview
images or Apple could ensure that images from Cocoa applications
don't have their preview images compressed. Even better is if PDF
images were properly converted to PICT and vice vera?

This is my analysis and my conclusions, so there maybe some variation
between this and the reality, but hopefully I have done a good
enouh job to identify the causes.

Quick note. Reading the following article seems to confirm some of
what I was seeing:

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Conceptual/QuickDrawToQuartz2D/Articles/tq_pict.html

See section: Using PDF on the Clipboard

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

One idea that sprung to mind was if someone was to write a small application
where you could have it do the conversion suggested in the second approach.
The only catch is that I don't know whether there is anything that will
currently
convert vector information in PICT to PDF and vice versa, in the MacOS X API?

Try GraphicConverter to see if it does. From v5.0 it now seems to deal with
PDF and EPS, whereas previously it didn't. It is also very AppleScriptable -
one of the best scriptable apps.

BTW Out of curosity are there any applications that place PNG data on the
clipboard
that is accepted by Office?

I just copied a PNG from GraphicConverter and pasted into both Word and PPT.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Hi,

While getting OmniGraffle to use an extra image format for the
clipboard is a solution, I feel that it may end up being a fix
in the wrong place. Let me explain my point of view:

I couldn't agree more, but righ now, what matters to me is to get both apps
to communicate properlya and let me make the slides I need. The suggestions I
had was a "quick and dirty" way to get the communication a bit easier

PICT is the former native image transfer format that was used by Classic
applications and also by Carbon applications.

PICT is not so much of a good option since it's not supported ont he Windows
side. Using pict prevents you from using the slides on a PC.

For many Cocoa applications
the format seems to be PDF. The proper change can either be done by Apple
or Microsoft, since I would guess there are two approaches:

I kind of like this option better )

- have Word accept PDF image content from the clipboard. Since it already
accepts placing a PDF file as an image, this could be a solution.

Yep. providing we can get proper transparency support from PDF.

Precedence would be given over PICT. The only question remains how
significant is compatibility with MacOS 9 is?

To me it sure isn't, but I have no idea how important it could be for other
people.

- have Apple not compress PICT previews and maybe do on the fly conversion
between PDF and PICT, so that vector information is retained

Both would require a development effort by the respective companies, so
it may be a while before we see a solution.

One idea that sprung to mind was if someone was to write a small application
where you could have it do the conversion suggested in the second approach.
The only catch is that I don't know whether there is anything that will
currently
convert vector information in PICT to PDF and vice versa, in the MacOS X API?

BTW Out of curosity are there any applications that place PNG data on the
clipboard
that is accepted by Office?

I never had the opportunity to try :-\ The problem is that few apps actually
tell you what they put in the clipboard and that I never spent the time to
investigate that :-(

Corentin

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

I just copied a PNG from GraphicConverter and pasted into both Word and PPT.

Did the PNG have an alpha channel ?? In my experience, GC had the nasty
habbit (like the Finder) to display transparency in Black (and the
applciation copied and pasted black instead of transparency) :-\

I tried in Preview, which properly display the transparency, but the
application won't let me copy it.
I tried in Photoshop and to my greatest surprise, the PNG looked uglier than
ever. I had a hard time copying the PNG (errors warnings in PS) but I
eventually managed to past it (it was cropped in the bottom) into PPT where
it looked just fine - and with proper transparency support (Feeewwwww, that
was hard).

I would conclude that PPT properly accepts alpha channel from PNG pasted from
the clipboard )


Corentin

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Quick note. Reading the following article seems to confirm some of
what I was seeing:

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Conceptual/QuickDrawToQuartz2D

/Articles/tq_pict.html

See section: Using PDF on the Clipboard

Very nice indeed!!! Thanks a lot for the information.

Corentin

 

[Tarken]

Did the PNG have an alpha channel ?? In my experience, GC had the nasty
habbit (like the Finder) to display transparency in Black (and the
applciation copied and pasted black instead of transparency) :-\

I just did a test and the only data type I see in the clipboard is
image/x-pict, which corresponds to the PICT format. It should be noted
that GraphicConverter is a Carbon application. This is also why you
see the image correctly in Office - remember the problems only happen
when you copy from a Cocoa application.

Andre

 

[Tarken]

Looks like I didn't test things as well as I could have,
and probably put the blame in the wrong places - so you can
discount my previous analysis. I am really starting to think
that this is a Cocoa applcation to Carbon aplication to Cocoa
application interaction issue.

First the facts:
- copy image from Firefox (Carbon app) to Word (Carbon app)
result: image appears PC side
- copy image from Appleworks (Carbon app) to Word (Carbon app)
result: image appears PC side
- copy image from Omnigraffle (Cocoa app) to Word
result: 'quicktime needed' PC side
- copy vector image from Word to Omnigraffle
result: image is not editable
- copy vector image from Word to Appleworks
result: image is editable
- copy image from Preview to Word
result: 'quicktime needed' PC side
- copy image from Omnigraffle to AppleWorks to Word
result: image appears PC side

So what we can see here is when we copy between a carbon application
and Word we have no problems. On the other hand if we copy between
a Cacoa application and Word we have issues.

From looking at the clipboard contents during the copies it looks
like Cocoa application copy their images as PDFs and have a bitmap
preview as a compressed PICT. Since word embeds data types no
manipulation is done and the images are embedded as is, since it
will try to find a handler - this is a bit like web pages.

With this in mind either Office could try decompressing the preview
images or Apple could ensure that images from Cocoa applications
don't have their preview images compressed. Even better is if PDF
images were properly converted to PICT and vice vera?

This is my analysis and my conclusions, so there maybe some variation
between this and the reality, but hopefully I have done a good
enouh job to identify the causes.

Andre

Quick note: The source for the Java program I used to do the tests is
available here: http://www.geocities.com/ajmas/source/ClipboardViewer.java.txt
- maybe a little developer knowledge is required to interpret the
data?