Need vectors exported from Office/Excel Chart

  • Thread starter Thread starter JGBarin
  • Start date Start date
J

JGBarin

I'm needing to export high-resolution graphics from Excel, charts from my
data for professional publication at 600 dpi.

I used to be able to copy-paste Office graphs as vector graphics into
Photoshop or Illustrator (my preferred platforms for final finishing on
graphics).

However, the Chart app in Office 2007 seems to dump low-resolution rasters
into anything that's not Office.

Powerpoint, Word, nor any other Microsoft product I've encountered are
acceptable substitutes.

Any ideas on how to get Office to export charts as high-resolution vectors?
 
You can copy an Excel 2007 chart as a picture, but you have to hunt for the
command. Click on the big ugly Paste button's dropdown, choose As Picture,
then Copy As Picture (well hidden, eh?). Choose the On Screen and Picture
options. This will copy a metafile to the clipboard.

Even as a metafile, I find the visual appearance of these objects in 2007 to
be hugely inferior to the equivalent in 2003 and earlier.

- Jon
 
Greetings, and thanks for the tip.

When I use the Copy As Picture function, I find that the axes titles are
askew, misaligned, and unusably illegible.

It seems to happen if I use either the 'As Shown On Screen'->Picture or
'As Shown in Picture' options.

Ideas?
 
You don't still have a copy of 2003, do you? I've been disappointed in any
exported chart format in 2007.

- Jon
 
Sadly, no. Trickiness with the institutional license, and all.

I'll remember to add this to my already monstrous list of Downgrades in
Office.

And thanks for the help.
 
Print to PDF then export to PNG

The best method I have found so far is to print the chart to PDF, open the PDF in Acrobat and export the image as PNG. The PNG can be cropped in other programs such as Thumbplus, and that image looks about as good as I can get it.

In Excel 2003 you could copy and paste into Thumbs and save the image as razor sharp .wmf vector based image file directly. It was much more convenient.
 
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