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"Round trip" editing ChemDraw figures embedded within Office 2016 documents sometimes does not behave as expected as Office versions change. Here's how to fix some problems |
Why you need this page
On a Mac, sometimes round trip editing with ChemDraw to and from MS Office applications work great, including the release of MS Office 2016 v15.x. However starting at least with MS Office 2016 v16.12, it we discovered it started to fail with just PowerPoint. It still worked fine with MS Word. Such changes might occur in the future at any time so we here document a work-around we hope will still work in the future.
A solution
If pasting into ChemDraw from MS Powerpoint results in a non-editable version of the image:
- First paste into Word
- Copy and paste back into ChemDraw
- The image should now be editable by ChemDraw
As seen in the past, this solution may unfortunately change in the near future. There are many places (Powerpoint, Word, or ChemDraw) where this can change with a newest version release. This solution currently works for MS Office 2016 v16.12
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Supporting Documentation
What we know
After viewing Clipboard information using Apple's ClipboardViewer, we found that image copied from ChemDraw, into Word, and back into ChemDraw contains the exact number of bytes, resulting in no quality loss. This was a concern as many posts on the internet had been reporting fuzziness, however this doesn't seem to be an issue for ChemDraw. Images are identical.
What we don't know
For some reason, when pasting into Powerpoint (either from ChemDraw or Word), the resulting image loses some bytes (in our test it went from 6835 to 4296). However, when pasting back into Word and subsequently ChemDraw, the original number of bytes are displayed. Perhaps MS Word converts the other remaining metadata from Powerpoint and rebuilds the original image? This tells us that even older images that have stopped working with roundtrip editing may be able to be "revived" by this Word conversion.
Blog post that gave some original guidance and introduced ClipboardViewer
Old ChemIT documentation - notes and history
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Summary, for end-users
Even with the release of ChemDraw version 16 from PerkinElmer Informatics, round trip editing using the common drag and drop method still does not work with Office 2016 (although compatibility with Office 2011 continues). With the end of the support lifecycle for Office 2011 on 10/10/2017, it may no longer be possible to install Office 2011 on newer versions of macOS. There is currently a workaround for this problem which is using copy (⌘+C) and Paste as PDF (⌘+Control+V) instead of drag and drop in Office 2016.
Status in Chemistry:
As of 1/17/17:
Researchers and others to reach out to, in person:
| Person | Notes |
|---|---|
| Pete Wolczanski <ptw2> | |
| Geoff Coates <gc39> | |
| Dave Collum <dbc6> | |
| Others? |
Communication plan:
| Method | Dates, aprox | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Documented (wiki) | Fall 2016 | Done, always being added to. |
| Newsletter (and News item) | Do "now", as of Jan 17, 2017 | |
| Talk about and meet with groups and individuals | See above table. | |
| Computing Cmt's role? |
ChemDraw 16:
Came out ~11/1/16:
The issues in the following section all apply to ChemDraw 16 as well as Chemdraw 15 and Chemdraw 15.1 on Apple MacOS computers.
To do:
What and where is the metadata embedded in files which can round-trip?
- For both TIFF and(?) PDF.
What of Apple's applications?
- Keynote. Heavily used by Geoff Coates, for example
Ensure the following compatibility behavior matrix is completed and accurate
- For any more-recent version of MacOS (macOS), Windows, and ChemDraw.
- Pay attention to version of MS Word (MS Office).
- Similar cut-and-paste issue as with MathType, apparently.
- Note: When creating pasting from CD into Windows (Office 16), it is possible to Paste Special from ribbon as a "CS ChemDraw Object" - double click image to round-trip edit
- All with current version of ChemDraw (v16).
From ChemDraw to the following type of Word file: | Tested file on left on a Mac: Open in Word (Office 2011) => ChemDraw | Tested file on left on a Mac: Open in Word (Office 2016) => ChemDraw
| Tested file on left on Windows: Word (Office 2016) => ChemDraw |
|---|---|---|---|
Created/ edit on a Mac: Office 2011 (Word):
| OK | OK | FAIL |
Created/ edit on a Mac: Office 2011 (Word):
| OK | OK | FAIL |
Created/ edit on a Mac: Office 2016 (Word):
| FAIL | FAIL | FAIL |
Created/ edit on a Mac: Office 2016 (Word):
| OK | OK | FAIL |
Created/ edit on a Windows: Any Office version (Word):
| OK? | OK? | OK? |
See also:
http://www.cambridgesoft.com/support/DesktopSupport/KnowledgeBase/SystemRequirements/
- http://disq.us/p/z7dtk1
End of mainstream support (no more security patching) for Microsoft Office 2011 on October 2017
Also, support may end simply by virtue of new Mac OS's. For example, macOS 10.13 "High Sierra" has a new file system (APFS). Although APFS nominally may run any software newer than ~2009, might not for some specifically such as MS Office 2011. Example:
Microsoft changed how pasting works in Office 2016 for the Mac
- http://forums.cambridgesoft.com/messageview.aspx?catid=12&threadid=3415
- http://forums.cambridgesoft.com/messageview.aspx?catid=12&threadid=3187
Issues with Round trip editing on Macs
- For those using Office 2011 on Macs, it was possible to be able to drag and drop from Chemdraw into Word 2011 and drag and drop the image back into Chemdraw for editing. This is no longer the case for Office 2016.
- Dragging and dropping from ChemDraw 15.1 to Word 2016 will paste an image into the Word document but the image will NOT be editable
- Copying(⌘+C) and Pasting (⌘+V) will only paste text into Word(2016)
- IMPORTANT: Opening a old Office 2011 file in Office 2016 and resaving it will not affect the images already in the document (you can drag them into Chemdraw for editing). However, anything dragged into Office 2016 will still not be editable
Workarounds:
- Use paste as PDF instead of dragging and dropping. Copy the image from ChemDraw(⌘+C) and Paste it into Word 2016 using ⌘+Control+V instead of ⌘+V.
Supporting documentation
http://media.cambridgesoft.com/support/manuals/15_1/ChemOffice%20v15.1%20Release%20Notes.pdf
7 Known Issues, Limitations and Workarounds (as of download date 10/31/2016)
The following list describes the known issues, limitations, and workarounds for ChemOffice 15.1:
• When you copy any object from ChemDraw (Mac) and paste (default) in MS Word 2016, it pastes an MOL text version of that object instead of the original object view.
o Workaround: Use the 'Paste Special >> PDF option in MS Word to get the original object view pasted. This PDF object can be copied back to ChemDraw by maintaining all ChemDraw object properties.
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