anti-aliased Excel Charts in Powerpoint Printouts

[Guest]

If you print a chart from Excel 2003, it is anti-aliased and look fine in
print. But no matter how you paste in into Powerpoint, printed Excel charts
from Powerpoint are not anti-aliased.

Has anyone come across this before (it is easy to replicate) and is there a
fix? Has Powerpoint not been updated for anti-aliasing like Excel has?

Thank you for your assistance.

Chris

 

[TAJ Simmons]

Chris

Since powerpoint 2002 powerpoint will anti-alias vector graphics. But, only
if the graphics are ungrouped in powerpoint (you can re-group them again) to
make them powerpoint objects.

cheers
TAJ Simmons
microsoft powerpoint mvp

awesome - powerpoint backgrounds,
http://www.awesomebackgrounds.com
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[Steve Rindsberg]

If you print a chart from Excel 2003, it is anti-aliased and look fine in
print. But no matter how you paste in into Powerpoint, printed Excel charts
from Powerpoint are not anti-aliased.

Has anyone come across this before (it is easy to replicate) and is there a
fix? Has Powerpoint not been updated for anti-aliasing like Excel has?

What type of charts are these? There are a few known problems with 3d pies,
especially ones that have slices "expanded". Most others seem ok.

 

[Guest]

Thank you both.

These are pie charts, yes, as per the old "jaggies" thread. Normal, not
expanded. But I will see if they can be ungrouped. I doubt it: straight out
of Excel.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Thank you both.

These are pie charts, yes, as per the old "jaggies" thread. Normal, not
expanded.

To ... er ... expand on that a bit ...

They used to go jaggy if you pulled a slice out of even a flat pie chart.
That seems no longer to be the case.

But 3D pie charts look like the puppy's been teething on them, either way; as is
or sliced, diced, pulled and expanded.

But I will see if they can be ungrouped. I doubt it: straight out
of Excel.

As long as they're not copied as a picture, they can be ungrouped. Of course, by
that time, the damage may already be done; you may get loads of line segments
which, taken together, strongly resemble a very jaggy Excel pie chart.

Try copying from Excel then in PPT do Edit, Paste Special and choose EMF (Enhanced
Metafile). I tried most of the options and that gives me the best results here.

 

[Guest]

Hey Steve,

That is strange. The EMF seems to work but I had definitely tried it before.
I had laid all 3 paste options side by side on one PPT slide and all looked
lame. I am not sure what combination of other options helped (print at
printer resolution and not scaling graphics) but this seems to look much
better. Thanks a lot.

I would still be interested in hearing about why the native Excel format
cannot be carried forward automatically to PPT in anti-aliased print, but I
seem to have a fix here!

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Hey Steve,

That is strange. The EMF seems to work but I had definitely tried it before.
I had laid all 3 paste options side by side on one PPT slide and all looked
lame. I am not sure what combination of other options helped (print at
printer resolution and not scaling graphics) but this seems to look much
better. Thanks a lot.

I would still be interested in hearing about why the native Excel format
cannot be carried forward automatically to PPT in anti-aliased print, but I
seem to have a fix here!

I haven't a clue why it works as it does. Or in this case, doesn't. <g>

One interesting bit I noticed long long ago is that the jaggies you see on the printout
are a *dead* lineup match for the jaggies you see on screen. Weird, eh?

 

[Guest]

well, not so weird really. Basically, PPT prints wysiwig. I'll tell you what
else I have notices. Earlier, I told you that having used the emf and tweaked
a couple of options, I finally got to9 print out without jaggies. But then, I
tried the same printout with a simple copy/paste and a wmf paste and you know
what? They all printed out fine from the same page!

So now, instead of all printing out badly, they all print out great. I am
mystified.

For reference, although I thought I had tried all combinations yesterday and
I couldn;t get a decent result, what seems to work today is simply not
scaling to fit and printing at the printer's resolution in the options. I
could have sworn I tried all of those yesterday so I am not sure what made
the difference.

Nice week end everyone.

c

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

well, not so weird really. Basically, PPT prints wysiwig.

As a rule, no. Not in any version I've used, and I've used nearly all of them, Mac or PC
going back to version 2 or 3. Except for these fool 3D Pie charts.

In any case, if you come across the magic incantation that makes these work correctly, do
let us know!