Line weight changes when pasting as picture

[Guest]

I have a drawing with a mixture of lines & connectors: some with arrowheads
and some without. All lines are set to the same weight (e.g. 0.5 pts).
When I copy it and Paste Special as Picture into another application (e.g.
Word), all the lines with arrowheads (of whatever style) come across - and
print - much much thicker than those without arrows.
This also happens when I include arrowheaded lines in an Excel chart which I
then paste-special into either PPT or Word. Even pasting into CorelDraw, the
arrowheaded lines still come in thicker.
Has anybody else experienced this and if so is there a fix or workaround?

Thanks in advance,

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

I have a drawing with a mixture of lines & connectors: some with arrowheads
and some without. All lines are set to the same weight (e.g. 0.5 pts).
When I copy it and Paste Special as Picture into another application (e.g.
Word), all the lines with arrowheads (of whatever style) come across - and
print - much much thicker than those without arrows.
This also happens when I include arrowheaded lines in an Excel chart which I
then paste-special into either PPT or Word. Even pasting into CorelDraw, the
arrowheaded lines still come in thicker.
Has anybody else experienced this and if so is there a fix or workaround?

I see the same problem here and can explain what's going on to some extent.

Draw lines both with and without arrowheads. Copy them, then Edit, Paste
Special, as EMF or WMF back into PPT (just to save some back 'n forth).

Ungroup the pasted gadget twice to get to the individual shapes. Now notice
that if the line has no arrowhead, it's a line; it only has end selection
points. You can lengthen or shorten it but that's it. If it has arrowheads,
it's a polygon/shape. You can drag a corner to enlarge it, distort it,
whatever. Assign it a thin line thickness and no fill and you'll see how it's
built.

It may be that the Windows WMF/EMF format that you get when you paste these
things has no way to represent arrowheads, so PPT has to convert lines with
arrowheads to these polygons. Offhand I don't know how to get around it, other
than by leaving the arrowheads off thin lines and applying them once they get to
where they need to be. Or possibly you could draw the original in PPT much
larger, assign thicker lines, then shrink the works once pasted.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Steve. Unfortunately ungrouping and fixing polygons, every time,
before pasting into the destination document, is not going to be a practical
long-term solution.

Pasting the copied PPT graphic into Word as a bitmap does give consistent
line thickness but unfortunately, unacceptable picture quality for a
presentation graphic.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Thanks Steve. Unfortunately ungrouping and fixing polygons, every time,
before pasting into the destination document, is not going to be a practical
long-term solution.

It's not really even a short term solution. Just a way of sorting out why
things have gone wrong. The polygons it creates are apparently an internal
type that it can display but not edit. You can't actually fix 'em in PPT
(though I expect you could in Corel Draw.)

Pasting the copied PPT graphic into Word as a bitmap does give consistent
line thickness but unfortunately, unacceptable picture quality for a
presentation graphic.

If you can draw the things in CorelDraw in the first place it might help. I
tried that just now and found that it constructs things differently ... lines
with arrowheads come through EMF as a line plus arrowhead shapes; the line
thickness doesn't change.