Edit Picture grayed out

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John G - 16 Dec 2003 14:54 GMT

I was confusion about the edit picture being grayed out
and after reading some of the earlier posts relating to
the subject, I felt I would put my meager two cents in.

As Cindy Meister states "Word's Picture Editor has NEVER
been able to "edit" all kinds of graphics, only it's
native format, .wmf. In a couple of versions of Word, the
Photo Editor was also available for some graphics
formats, but it was never part of Word, itself."

I do NOT want Word to edit my photos, that is why I have
my photo editing software. But I am not sure if she
understands what many people (like myself) are confused
about.

It was posted that the Edit Picture command will become
available when the picture is in its native .wmf file
format.
If the Edit Picture is only available when the picture is
in a .wfm format
AND, you cannot add applications to the
Tools->Options->Edit->Picture Editor.
Then why is the option there at all?

The option to CHOOSE the picture editor is meaningless.
The two applications I can choose from in my copy of
Office XP Pro are MS Photo Editor 3 and Word itself. Yet
neither program will save a .wfm file. Shouldn't other
photo editing applications be available if they were
installed you your system?

Cindy states "Over the 15 years or so since WinWord has
been with us it's accumulated so many features, it's
impossible to make them all available on the menus."

I agree Word has accumulated many features, but I find
many of them fall into the category of useless. The Edit
Picture option is useless because even if you wanted to
use it, what option is there? The only option you have is
to use a wfm file, and rarely would I be inserting a wfm
file.

Thank you for tour time.
I will get off my soap box now ;-)

PS: can anyone tell me how to keep pictures from moving
around a document? I set the picture format to not move
with text, set horizontal and vertical positions to page
coordinates but they continue to move when I move other
pictures. I found the moving pictures so annoying that I
called Words help line, paid them $32 to tell me there
was a glitch in the program and I should upgrade. So I
upgraded to XP. Same problem ;-( Another option that I
would really like to use but turns out to be more hassle
than help.

John Gardner
jpgardner@swbell.net

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Cindy M -WordMVP- - 19 Dec 2003 10:27 GMT

Hi John,

> you cannot add applications to the
> Tools->Options->Edit->Picture Editor.
> Then why is the option there at all?

This has been frustrating users for over a decade... The
interface is there, but the graphics program applications
(companies that develop them) don't bother to use it. From
what I recall, I believe it requires the program to create
a registry entry so that it can be picked up in this list.
IOW, Word doesn't actively go searching your drive for
installed graphics programs; it looks in one place for a
listing, and if nothing's in the list, there's no entry.

> I will get off my soap box now ;-)
>

And how was the weather up there <bg>?

> PS: can anyone tell me how to keep pictures from moving
> around a document? I set the picture format to not move
> with text, set horizontal and vertical positions to page
> coordinates but they continue to move when I move other
> pictures.

Hmmm. As far as I'm concerned, they shouldn't move when
other pictures are moved (unless it's a result of having
the option to not allow overlapping activated, and two
pictures "bump" each other). But I do recognize, roughly,
what you're describing.

1. Be sure you haven't inserted a picture into a TEXTBOX,
and then applied text wrap. This is a sure-fire way to have
graphical objects jumping all around.

2. Documents created in Word 97 (or from a Word97-generated
Normal.dot) will be especially susceptible to problems. The
graphics rendering was changed in that version to use the
Office Drawing tools, and things weren't very... stable.

3. Graphical objects are always anchored to a position in
the text, usually a paragraph. Keep in mind they WILL
always be on the same page as that paragraph. Occasionally,
if you anchor more than one object to the same anchoring
point, they'll interfere with each other (as you describe).

If that happens try using Edit/Cut to take them out of the
document and put them temporarily in another document. Be
sure to press Enter before pasting each graphic, so that
they're anchored separately in this temporary storage.

Edit/Cut the paragraph to which they were anchored, then
Edit/Paste Special as "plain text". With any luck, this
will remove all traces of the "yuckiness" that was causing
the problem. Reapply the formatting. Copy/paste the
pictures back in, one at a time. If you have enough
paragraphs on the page, place the cursor in a different
paragraph before pasting each one.

Cindy Meister

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INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update
Sep 30 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

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John Gardner - 22 Dec 2003 02:55 GMT

Hello Cindy

Thanks for your info.
If there is a registry entry that can be edited so I can
use my photo editing software,
I would be very interested.
It would make editing photos much easier, even though it
is a habit to edit ALL photos before starting a
publication. I recommend this even if the option were
available. However, it would be nice if I could edit the
photo from Word and not have to re-import the photo.
Linking the photos or copy/paste from the photo
application accomplishes this, But it is not the way I
normally import photos using Word.
If you Insert photos then you will have to edit them in
the photo software, then re-import, re-size, re-border..
Etc. ;-(

Getting my soapbox out again.. So I may get light
headed... lol ;-)
I agree with you that Word has never intended to be a
page layout program. While working with Word, I have
found some features to be great, mainly the Word
Processing features. Some top-of-the-line page layout
programs are very limited in this area. Yet they manage
art in the document in a very different way.
I find Words art management not only cumbersome but also
confusing.
From your previous post, I understand that every picture
in the document is "anchored" to a paragraph.
I am also aware that when the picture is INLINE with
text, it is DIFFERENT than when the other text wrap
options are set. It becomes a character in the text flow,
which makes sense. What doesn't make sense, IMHO, is if I
DO NOT want to run the picture INLINE with any text, I do
not have an option. All pictures are anchored to
something, and most times it will be a paragraph when you
choose one of the other wrapping options. Hence, in my
eyes it is INLINE (anchored) with some paragraph.
If the picture is "anchored" to some paragraph using one
of the other text wrapping options and that paragraph
flows to another page, the picture will move with the
paragraph. I am aware that most times, it is an easy fix,
but why did it move at all?
Most users do not pay close attention to WHERE the cursor
is when they insert a picture.
I find the Text Wrapping options misleading because of
this. Your description of Inserting a picture is a lot of
work for something that IMHO should be easy. If I put a
picture on page three of a document, and even LOCK the
object, it will still move with the paragraph that it is
anchored to or disappear completely.
There should be an option that says "DO NOT MOVE" - "EVEN
IF JOHN'S SOAP BOX BLOWS UP" ;-)
IMHO, it would be much easier to not "anchor" graphics at
all, and then allow the user to specify how they wanted
the text to flow around the graphic. If the user wanted
the graphic to flow with the text, then there would be an
option (check box) that would flow with the paragraph
using Words current strategy.
I agree that these options sound more like page layout
options than word processing options, but I have seem
many users get very frustrated by pictures moving
mysteriously. An option that truly LOCKED the item and
allowed text wrapping would at least enable users to
choose EXACTLY where some graphics are in a document
independent of the text that flows around it.

I also have observed one feature in the text wrapping
options that I find useless. It is the THROUGH text wrap
option. I understand how the feature is supposed to work,
but I see no difference between the Through and the Tight
wrapping options.
If you place a graphic in the middle of text and allow
the text to flow left to right through the graphic, it is
very hard to read something like that. Most page layout
programs will only wrap text on one side unless it is
between two columns of text. Then the text flow will be
on both sides and it is easy to read. Using this feature
will (IMHO) produce a difficult to read and
unprofessional looking document. That is why you rarely
see graphics in the middle of text, and why most page
layout programs do not have this feature.

Having Words great word processing features along with an
option that literally locked a graphic in place would be
a very nice program.

Thanks again for your time ;-)

John Gardner

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Cindy M -WordMVP- - 22 Dec 2003 11:25 GMT

Hi John,

> If there is a registry entry that can be edited so I can
> use my photo editing software, I would be very interested.

I've never been able to find out what the exact entry is.
Supposedly, graphics software manufacturers have (or can
get) that information. You might enquire with your favorite
program's developers if they wouldn't include this, or
perhaps develop a little utility that would do the job.

> I find Words art management not only cumbersome but also
> confusing.

No disagreement there :-) It probably hasn't helped that, as
of Word 97, Word has had to incorporate the "Office drawing
tools". That lead to lots of problems, such as fields in
text boxes not being "seen" correctly.

> If the picture is "anchored" to some paragraph using one
> of the other text wrapping options and that paragraph
> flows to another page, the picture will move with the
> paragraph. I am aware that most times, it is an easy fix,
> but why did it move at all?

This has to do with how Word was designed, almost 20 years
ago. Internally, Word has no "page" object; pages are
"virtual" and result from the text flow. Just as a mental
exercise, what would you expect Word to do with something
that's been told it should be on "Page 20", but so much text
has been deleted that there is only enough to fill 18 pages?
Word just wasn't designed to be able to handle this concept.

I discussed this a few years ago with the Word Product
Manager, and he went into all the gory details about how
Word generates pages. And what it came down to was, if they
tried to implement this idea and your document had more than
one or two graphical objects Word would never finish
repaginating, so you couldn't work.

FWIW, a few years ago I worked out a macro system that will
let you associate graphics with particular pages. Using VBA,
you can give graphics with text wrap a name. So the macro
checks the names of the graphics, and if it starts with
certain characters ("Page", for example) followed by a
number) the macro knows on which page it should appear. If
it's not on that page, it is CUT, then pasted into a
paragraph Range on the correct page. The code is not short
and sweet, because there are a lot of factors you need to
consider, such as: Is there even a paragraph mark on the
page in question? Is white space (top/bottom margins) being
suppressed? (You can't place a graphic into such an area.)

If you're interested in it, the very basics were published
in the Dec. 1999 issue of MOD. These articles are no longer
available on the Internet, but the publisher has put them on
CD: https://www.mssmartsolutions.com/Orders/cdorders.asp

A more detailed version of the macro is also in the German
"Microsoft Word Das Profibuch" from Microsoft Press.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep
30 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any
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