Word 2004 (Mac) Fatal Flaw: PowerPoint Thumbnail Import Quality

[Jim MacConnell]

I know others have had problems and found a few workarounds but I
haven't heard any good solutions and am beginning to think there
aren't any... Guess I'm looking one more time.

I routinely copy complex PowerPoint thumbnails into Word documents.
With Word 2004, they come in drastically reduced in resolution. As I'm
looking at the 30 day trial of Word 2004, I can't print to verify that
this is the quality on printing but from other entries, that seems to
be the case. With a problem like this, Word 2004 is definitely
unsuitable for my purposes and an upgrade would be disastrous.

As an added wrinkle. If I save the document, quit Word 2004 and then
reopen the document with Word 2004, it displays fine (Don't know about
printing). So the issue appears to be the image storage on initial
import/paste. This means that I would have to Save, Quit, Reopen
before I print anything I'm working on. A pain but perhaps doable?.

Could someone verify this behavior so I know it's not just my machine.
Anyone heard of a fix? How about a reason.... I have 15 days left
before my trial runs out and I'd like to know what I'm going to do by
then.

Thanks,
Jim
17" Pbbok, 1.5GHz, 1G RAM, OS 10.3.4, Office Test Drive v11.0

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

I know others have had problems and found a few workarounds but I
haven't heard any good solutions and am beginning to think there
aren't any... Guess I'm looking one more time.

I routinely copy complex PowerPoint thumbnails into Word documents.
With Word 2004, they come in drastically reduced in resolution. As I'm
looking at the 30 day trial of Word 2004, I can't print to verify that
this is the quality on printing but from other entries, that seems to
be the case. With a problem like this, Word 2004 is definitely
unsuitable for my purposes and an upgrade would be disastrous.

As an added wrinkle. If I save the document, quit Word 2004 and then
reopen the document with Word 2004, it displays fine (Don't know about
printing). So the issue appears to be the image storage on initial
import/paste. This means that I would have to Save, Quit, Reopen
before I print anything I'm working on. A pain but perhaps doable?.

Could someone verify this behavior so I know it's not just my machine.
Anyone heard of a fix? How about a reason.... I have 15 days left
before my trial runs out and I'd like to know what I'm going to do by
then.

Thanks,
Jim
17" Pbbok, 1.5GHz, 1G RAM, OS 10.3.4, Office Test Drive v11.0

Hi Jim.

Thumbnail usually means a small picture that has a hyperlink to a larger
one in the same application. I could try to duplicate the problem if I
knew what you meant by thumbnail. What is it exactly that you are
copying and pasting? How are you doing it (Edit>Copy, Edit>Paste or
maybe you're using the scrapbook feature)?

Please post back so we can give this a whirl.

-Jim

 

[Jim MacConnell]

Jim,

Thanks for the prompt reply. Here's the scenario.... defintiely
repeatable:
Open existing vX PowerPoint pitch with graphics in it (Pasted Excel
charts & spreadsheets (vX as picture), jpeg, etc.)
Switch to Slide Sorter view (icons of all pages) in PowerPoint
Select 1 slide and Copy.. (any method Edit>Copy or right click>Copy)
Switch to Word 2004.
Open New document.
Paste (any method Edit>Paste or right click>Copy)
Word inserts image in reduced resolution.
*** Hypothesize that printing is degraded also from anecdotal evidence
here and other places. **

To correct:
Save Word 2004 document.
Quit Word 2004
Reopen Word 2004 and saved document
Resolution okay.

Other tests trying to lay this out clearly gave confusing results.
- PPT thumbnails imported from pitches created on PPT for Windows
(v??) seem to work?
- PPT thumbnails imported from pitches created on PPT 2004 seem to
work?
- PPT thumbnails imported from pitch originally created in PPT Vx but
"Saved As..." in PPT 2004 do NOT work?
I haven't had time to run through a strucutured diagnostic set to see
exactly what permutations cause things to screw up.

Question remains...
If I print the doc. with degraded screen display, will it print
degraded?

Others.. If this is a PPT vX and PPT 2004 issue (rather than Word?)
how do I make sure others won't have the same issue if they choose to
use some of what I create for their own use.

Thanks in advance for nay help.

Jim MacConnell

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Jim & Jim,

I'm cross-posting this to the PowerPoint newsgroup in case anyone there has
something to add.

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi Jim,

I followed your step-by-step instructions as closely as possible, but my
result yeilded no visible loss of resolution.

By any chance does the chart you are copying from version X contain any
formatting with transparency?

-Jim

--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP
MVP FAQ
<http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;mvpfaqs>

 

[Jim MacConnell]

Jim,

Thanks for trying.

I think I'm closer to understanding what is happening but... the key
appears to be having a JPEG on the Master. slide but I'm not sure. As
we coould go around forever with me trying to tell you haow I did what
I think I did, I thought I'd try to doument it so.

I built a PPT pitch with screenshots, etc. As I said, before, if I
save the Word docuemnt then quit Word and reopen, the problem goes
away so I can't show this particular issue with a sample doc. There is
however, different strange behavior related to pasting from PPT to
Word. I have a docuemnt that shows that also.

Both are available (for a limited time) at:
http://www.consensustech.com/Word_2004_Issue
The Powerpoint pitch is: Word-PPT Problem.ppt
The Word document is: Test.doc

Take a look and then let me know what you think.
You can respond directly if you choose.

Thanks,
Jim Mac

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi Jim,

Thank you for providing a sample powerpoint and also for making it
convenient to download.

This time I did not have any trouble duplicating the problem. I followed
your directions and I saw the yukky blurry picture you are referring to.

Slide #3 isn't really a graph in the sense of being a Microsoft Graph or
Excel graph. In the example presentation it is a collection of shapes.

The only way I could get slide #3 into Word 2004 from PowerPoint version
X so that it looked OK was to take a screen shot (Shift+Apple+3), then
import that file into Word 2004.

You can take advantage of new feature in Office 2004 to get slide #3
into Word so that it looks good. Open the presentation in PowerPoint
2004 (not v.X). Switch to slide #3 in normal view or slide view. From
the menu choose Edit>Select All. Then control-click on one of the
selected shapes and choose Grouping>Group. That should make a single
large object. Make sure the large object is selected (look for the
"handles" in the corners and sides) and also be careful you don't click
into a text box. Control-click on the object and choose Save As Picture.
Give the picture a name and choose PICT format. I tried them all and
PICT works best with this slide.

Switch to Word 2004. From the menu use Insert>Picture>From File and
choose the picture file you made in PowerPoint. This results in a high
quality picture even at 500%.

-Jim

--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP
MVP FAQ
<http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;mvpfaqs>

 

[Jim MacConnell]

Jim,

Well I guess your being able to duplicate the problem is both good
news and bad. Good that it isn't me.. bad that you don't know of a
work around. I have a couple of comments/quesitons.

If you print a "yucky" looking picture form Word, is the print out
bad? Or does the print job get sent using the "real" data? LIke the
way the file is saved?

Did you duplicate the Save, Quit, Reopen phenomena? If so, does the
Word doc print properly?

I guess your workaround... group, Save as picture, Paste wuould be
okay but do you get any info from the Master when you do that? My
situation is that I need to be able to directly refer to (show) slides
from a presentation in the document including details on teh Master
Slide. If I can group to include Master details (like Proprietary Info
labels!) then that will work. Otherwise, I'll have to do the S-Q-O
trick.

Thanks for your help.... Not sure if there's anymore that can be done.
I now have to decide whether to upgrade to a buggy product or not...
Jeez.

Jim Mac

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi,

As rebellious as it may seem, I don't have a printer to test the
printing with. Different printers and drivers may yield different
results, anyway so you should try it with what you have.

Yes, Word behaved the same for me as it did for you.

My grouping trick will not pick up any elements from the master slide,
so it may be not be a good solution for you.

-Jim

--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP
MVP FAQ
<http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;mvpfaqs>