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.
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Browse All TopicsI'm trying to plot a large diagram comprised mostly of Word documents. The word documents are mostly long tables so they don't fit the standard page sizes. They can be up to 20" long. Now, I'm trying to inser the objects into Visio but they always seem to get cut off. Though when I click on the document I can see the full thing and then close it and update Visio and it cuts off. Is this a Visio limitation or am I doing something wrong?
What other way is there to plot many word tables and visio diagrams on a single sheet?
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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?