Embedding a long word document into Visio: visio, embed, embedded, word, size, plotter

by: scottPosted on 2008-02-21 at 07:01:45ID: 20948274

It appears that there is a moderately complex set of interactions at work here, having to do with such things as: the page size of the Word docs from which you're copying; the page size of the Visio drawing to which you're pasting; the paste format you select; and even (believe it or not) the settings for the current printer in Word.

I haven't worked out all of this yet, but it appears that what gets pasted into Visio is essentially the portion of a table that fits on a page in the Word document, give or take a row or two. You can test this theory by making the Word page size bigger before copying and pasting into Visio; the more that fits on a physical page in Word, the larger the window that gets created in Visio.

And this is where your printer driver enters the picture: when my printer is set to an actual printer that supports a maximum of 8.5x11 or 8.5x14 inch paper, I can't set the page size any bigger than that (Word complains, I tell it to ingore the problem, but the effective page area is still limited to what will fit on a physical page). But if I switch to a "virtual" printer, i.e., a PDF writer or the Microsoft Office Document Image Writer, I can set the page size to any dimensions.

My first suggestion, then, is to make sure your virtual page size in Word is big enough to accommodate the entire table you want to copy. This should create a bigger window after you paste into Visio. I wasn't able to force the window to show every row of a long table but this did make it bigger.

Let me know if this helps. BTW, I assuming you're using Paste Special and pasting in word document format?

by: digitalibizPosted on 2008-02-21 at 07:07:53ID: 20948346

Thanks. When you say "Virtual Page Size in Word" do you mean in the page setup > paper?

yes, I'm using the Paste Special. I've also tried the Embed Object.

by: digitalibizPosted on 2008-02-21 at 07:10:43ID: 20948369

If it is the same as the page setup >paper then i have set that up with enough space but still no luck.

by: scottPosted on 2008-02-21 at 07:46:00ID: 20948762

There are two related settings in Word. Page setup is one; the other is for the printer driver. Select File/Print... then pick the MS Office Document Image Writer as your printer and click the Properties button to the right of the printer name. Then set the printer page to be the same size as the page setup dimensions. No guarantees but it may help.

by: scottPosted on 2008-02-21 at 07:49:41ID: 20948808

Here's a potentially better idea -- create a PDF using a PDF print driver, or create a TIF image using the MS Office Document Image Writer. By doing so you can create a page that is exactly the right size for your table. Then in Visio, use Insert/Picture/From file... to place the image on your plotter page. In the case of a TIF image, you can then crop it to eliminate page margins or other white space. The good news is that this is WYSIWYG -- whatever you see on the Word page will be in the image in Visio.

by: digitalibizPosted on 2008-02-21 at 07:54:22ID: 20948861

Good solution, works but not in color! man, i thought it was close. The PDF part didn't work as well.

by: scottPosted on 2008-02-21 at 08:22:06ID: 20949203

PDF works fine for me, and is in color. Somewhat to my surprise you can even crop it after you place it into Visio. What about the PDF didn't work for you?

by: digitalibizPosted on 2008-02-21 at 08:24:03ID: 20949224

The text is pretty blurry. The fonts are about 8px.

by: scottPosted on 2008-02-21 at 09:20:12ID: 20949779

Here's the best alternative yet: insert the Word document as an object in Visio. Eseentially, do the same thing you did to insert the PDF document but select Word as the object type and point to your document. This eliminates the need for any intermediate format.

When I do this there is none of the fuzziness of the inserted PDF -- in fact, it looks excellent even if you zoom in.

by: digitalibizPosted on 2008-02-21 at 09:22:28ID: 20949812

I did that with the original word document but that's the main issue I was having. It gets cut off. The page is about 17" long. Seems to cut off just before that regardless of how I set the page.

by: scottPosted on 2008-02-21 at 11:26:54ID: 20950950

Sorry about that -- I thought your original approach was to cut/paste rather than insert object, so I thought this was something new.

It looks like the approach of "printing" the document to PDF or some other image format is the best bet. You might try setting the dpi output for the pdf driver to a higher number to see whether the resulting image in Visio is better quality.

Here's another thought -- convert the PDF to an image.
http://www.pdf2image.com/
This is a commercial product (with a free trial) but I've also got a freeware utility that purports to do the same thing. I don't have time at the moment but will try it later and let you know if the results are better.

by: digitalibizPosted on 2008-02-21 at 11:30:45ID: 20950990

Thanks. let me give that PDF thing a shot. Then i'll try the commerical product. Thanks for the help. I'll keep you posted.

by: scottPosted on 2008-02-25 at 05:33:08ID: 20974997

I tried the approach in my most recent post above and it worked quite well. I created a PDF, then converted it to a jpg image. When I pasted the jpg into the Visio doc it looked great. I could crop it and resize it however I liked.

I used PDFFill (http://www.pdfill.com/) both to create the PDF and to convert it to an image. It's freeware so there's no cost. I've used it for years to create PDFs, combine or split PDFs and various other of its functions. I don't think I've used the convert to image function before but it appears to work fine.

The good news is that this approach works. It does seem like there ought to be way to accomplish what you want without the extra steps but I can't figure out what any other method that works with sufficient resolution.

Question

Embedding a long word document into Visio

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