Tip of the Week: Make That Look Like This

Is it just me, or did you get your "this"s and "that"s confused? If you want to make "that" look like "this", don't you start by selecting "this"???

Yes, they have it backwards. Honest mistake. You have to select the object with the desired format before you click or double-click Format Painter. Excellent tip with Option 2. I've used Format Painter since the concept first came to be. However, I never knew about the keyboard shortcut implementation of the feature. Thanks!

Great catch Kevin. I corrected the steps. -Jonathan

Jonathan - Once again, not trying to start a revolution but I just rammed my head into a wall with Word 2007, and it could merit a post similar to what David Rasmussen has done with OneNote blog. (blogs.gotdotnet.com/david_rasmussen) Although, admittedly, it is less than a satisfactory resolution. The issue concerns OLE objects. The platform is Vista 64 with Word 2007 installed as a part of Office Professional. The charts render fine on screen and SOME printers, while appearing as black rectangles on other printers (including, for example, MS's own XPS writer). A support technician (who appeared to be quite competent in knowing the features of the software, but not as competent in the workings of software, if you get my distinction) explained that it could be because these things are internally stored as images updated on OLE object update, and rendered then using the MODI (MS Office Imaging), unavailable under 64 bit OSes (for reasons that I can only call a combination of sloppy coding, lack of anticipation, and lack of resources, all of which are understandable for a small developer, but not MS). Of course, this behavior does not really explain why the OLE objects are rendered correctly in the document, or why it prints OK on some printers. Also, it seems that the only people who can correctly understand this behavior are the developers who know how the software works, as opposed to the outsourced support people who may know the features but lack deep (or even surface) architectural knowledge. If it is indeed an issue that affects all 64 bit systems, it must be disclaimed explicitly somewhere, as it renders these installations unusable in a business environment, and finding it out after the fact like I am right now is quite disconcerting. Again, apologize for the offtopic post; I understand the purpose of this blog, but please understand that this is the only path of communication to actual developers. Which is why I would advocate a proper developer moderated support forum for technical, as opposed to how-to issues, which, admittedly, are reasonably well addressed by the newsgroups. Thanks in advance for your attention. Understanding that this is offtopic, I can be reached via ibarskiy at comcast.net to avoid thread jacking. Sincerely, Ilya Barskiy

Excellent tip! Thanks! I have a frequently-experienced problem that I'm hoping you'll have a tip for. I oftentimes have to cut/paste between various source docs - could be a web page or email message or Word doc or ... - so I use "paste special" and then select "unformatted text" so the pasted text picks up the format of the current location. I'd love a keyboard shortcut for that since it's a lot of menu clicks ...

Alt+Ctrl+V gives you the Paste Special dialog. You can also go to Word Options->Advanced->Cut, Copy, and Paste to set the default paste format for the most common sources of content. Formatting behavior when coming from PowerPoint or Excel is controled with the Settings options for the Use Smart Cut and Paste.

Hi Ilya - Thank you for your great feedback, and I’m sorry to hear about your head :) I unfortunately cannot provide any specific fixes for the general issue you are seeing. You may be able to get some additional support at: www.microsoft.com/.../default.mspx In addition, the following article may be of some use, and we hear you loud and clear that we need to do some work on our 64bit support. Thanks again for the great feedback. support.microsoft.com/.../en-us

Thanks for the response; I did see the kb, and, of course I checked (and posted to) the community. I appreciate the explanation David Rasmussen offered in his expanded blog post on the issue. I do appreciate what it takes to put out software, the difficulty of porting (or even debugging) assembly (and of course, porting in general), and the difficulty in dealing with 1,000+ lines of code which is probably poorly commented / documented. My biggest concern is that the support professionals (who I believe are outsourced from my interactions) often have little understanding of such issues, they are able to handle user-related errors, and there is little access to guys like you, who know the inner workings of Word. By way of an example, I did since find a couple of printer drivers (imaging and PDF) that can handle the documents in question correctly. This, again, is contrasted to the XPS printer from MS (which I find ironic), and Adobe's own printer, as well as several other PDF printer drivers. I would absolutely pin this on Adobe, if not for reports of this not working in several general printer drivers, and, of course the XPS printer. This makes me think that there is a deeper issue in play here, I don't know what it is. Obviously, it does show on the screen. That's fine, (and here I'm speaking from distant memory, so forgive inaccuracies), because you can do different [draw/paint - I forget] methods for the printer and the display. But for the same procedure to result in such contrasting output is downright strange. Anyway, I appreciate this blog, I am sorry for the disruption, and can understand the question of 64 bit penetration before it makes 64 bit support plausible. I would argue that the time is now, as there are precious few reasons on the vendor support side remaining, and it is becoming mainstream (with systems selling in retail channels left and right, although corporate adoption of Vista has been disappointing, and that’s the bulk of licensing for office). Thanks again, Ilya