Pasting graphic from Visio to Word causes bad rendering in pdf since software upgrade

Teresa_Lynchburg · #1 10-08-2013, 08:57 AM

I have searched the internet and forums for hours, and have found no solution to this problem. With a software upgrade to Office 2010 (thus Microsoft Word 2010) from Office 2003 on a Windows XP system, the Visio files that I had embedded in the Word document no longer reproduce correctly in a pdf file. I have Adobe Acrobat XI Pro and Microsoft Visio Professional 2002 SR-1.

Specifically in detail: For 10 years I have been able to create a graphic in Visio (for example, a photo or screen capture with text and line callouts), select it in Visio, and do a paste special as a Picture (Metafile) into Word. Then when I created a pdf from the Word file using an earlier version of Acrobat, the graphic would look identical in the pdf as it did in Word. I used the Adobe create pdf function (i.e., did not print as a pdf) because I needed the bookmarks that are made automatically from the Word heading styles.

Now with my software upgrades, when I copy from Visio to Word, and try to insert the graphic by using Paste Special, there is no plain metafile selection -- the only metafile choice is the enhanced one, Picture (Enhanced Metafile), which was never able to be reproduced correctly in the pdf (i.e., didn't work in earlier versions of my software). With upgraded software, it still does not work. As always, the image looks great in Word, but is now reproduced as a stretched-out mess by Acrobat in the PDF.

When I create the pdf by printing the pdf (i.e., using File/Print/Adobe PDF from Word), the image that was pasted as an enhanced metafile looks great in the pdf. However, when I use the Adobe menu that was an add-on to Word and select Create PDF, the graphic in the resulting pdf has the words (callouts) in both giant and tiny sizes in odd locations on just a piece of the original image (which is an imported picture or screen capture). This is the way it has always been when using the enhanced metafile instead of plain metafile, and thus the reason I always used the plain metafile.

The other Paste Special options in Word are Microsoft Visio, which produces the same result as the enhanced metafile, and Bitmap, which produces fuzzy, poorly rendered text in the pdf file. I have even tried to paste from Visio as an enhanced metafile into Word, then doing a Ctrl-X on that graphic in the Word document, followed by a Paste Special as another type of graphics file, such as .jpg, .png, and .gif. Unfortunately, the callout quality in all of those was very poor, like it was in a.bmp.

I create professional technical documentation, which consists of large manuals of about 200 pages with lots of graphics and lots of headings. The graphics include text callouts that were made in Visio and imported as part of the graphic. So I must have both bookmarks and graphics with clear, crisp callouts. I also combine multiple Word documents into a single manual using the Combine Files as Acrobat feature of Acrobat -- that worked great with the older versions of Word and Adobe Acrobat.

There are a lot of graphics in each chapter of the manuals. Therefore, the Visio files have multiple pages to match the Word pages, and sometimes several graphics on each Visio page (again, to match the Word page). To make a separate Visio file for each graphic (i.e., so they could be saved as individual graphical files) would be a logistics nightmare producing thousands of graphics that have to be logically named and stored, plus it would take a lot of time that I do not have.

I have tried so many ways to make this new software work, but haven't found a solution. I could go back to what I did 20 years ago when pdfs were first coming on the scene. I.e., print the Word documents as individual pdfs (as I said earlier, the graphics are correctly reproduced in the pdf this way), manually combine the multiple pdf files into one larger document, and then manually create the bookmarks for all the headings in that combined file. However, I really don't want to regress to working like I had to in the early 1990s.

I have not updated Visio, but I read in other forums that the problem is not solved by that because the problem is with how Microsoft and Adobe are no longer compatible. I hope that is not true... I need a solution that works with this updated Microsoft and Adobe Acrobat software.

Does anybody know what I can do? All I need is for a graphic cut from a Visio file to paste into the Word document in a way that it will be reproduced correctly when the Word file is made into a pdf by using Adobe Acrobat.

Thanks.

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
Good Word-based Document Assembly Software?	Grahamers	Word	1	05-13-2013 04:42 PM
Problem with exporting into Word from OCR software	martinn4	Word	5	02-05-2013 01:56 PM
Help! Powerpoint stops rendering stuff!	Quenty	PowerPoint	2	01-29-2012 11:42 PM
How to cut and paste a graphic to a different page in word.?	soooty	Drawing and Graphics	1	08-12-2010 11:17 AM
Is there a graphic tutorial available on how the Word 2007 ruler works?	Jenjen80	Word	0	07-13-2010 07:41 PM