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Black box shows in place of embedded or linked files when converting from word 2007

nebtnarg
Registered: Nov 16 2007
Posts: 7

This is getting crazy, tons of people are having problems with word 2007 converting embedded or linked items and everyone keeps giving the same canned answers. The following answers are NOT correct:
Have you tried loading the Microsoft Office 2003 Hotfix? Here is the URL for more information:
[link=http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;837256]http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;837256[/link].
 
Also, there is a Hotfix for Vista to resolve some printing issues at:
[link=http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930627]http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930627[/link]
 
Try downloading another converter,
 
Wrong!
 
Someone has to step up on this one.
Try it for yourself, to recreate the problem, open excel and highlight a few cells, and select copy, go to word 2007 and choose paste special, select paste as a link and select bitmap. now try to convert to a pdf, using acrobat or any other converter, you get a big black box in place of the embedded file. Can someone be a hero here?

My Product Information:
Acrobat Standard 8.0999999999999996447286321199499070644378662109375, Windows
pddesigner
Registered: Jul 9 2006
Posts: 858
It is assumed all users have installed the PDFMaker addon in MS Office 2007. To confirm, everyone should see a tab titled "Acrobat" displayed on this bar.

Note: When copying and pasting cells, Acrobat PDFMaker can not create Tags from Worksheets with print areas set. By selecting the cells as you have and converting them to bitmap you are violating this function.

As I understand it, you are copying cells in excel, pasting them into MS Word, and trying to convert the Word paste to PDF.

Why not just convert the Excel file to PDF from the Excel Acrobat tab?

If you want to link a PDF to Excel there are several ways to do that (package, hyperlink, and etc).

This solution is merely a suggestion that may or may not work. Also understand we experts are supporting Acrobat and suggestions for correcting issues with MS Office are limited to our knowledge of this application.

If this is not what you're trying to achieve, please re-post this question.

Hope this helps.

My favorite quote - "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.

nebtnarg
Registered: Nov 16 2007
Posts: 7
No, this is not it, this is a business application for creating quotes, the quotes are worked up on an excel spreadsheet, then the important parts are sent to a readymade word template, as a link to the original spreadsheet. The PDF tab does not work either, nor does using any number of other converters available online, there is just nothing that will work, i have messed with settings on word 2007 and acrobat until my fingers went numb. this only affects word 2007 and linked items into the document. Please look into deeper, or try it for yourself as i noted in my first post.
Thanks,
Ben
pddesigner
Registered: Jul 9 2006
Posts: 858
You need to restore MS Office to its original installation configuration. Ignore those hot fix links you were directed to.

Go to this URL

[url=http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4D951911-3E7E-4AE6-B059-A2E79ED87041&displaylang=en]http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4D951911-3E7E-4AE6-B059-A2E79ED87041&displaylang=en[/url]Description of the PDF Converter for MS Office:

2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS

Brief Description
This download allows you to export and save to the PDF and XPS formats in eight 2007 Microsoft Office programs. It also allows you to send as e-mail attachment in the PDF and XPS formats in a subset of these programs.

System Requirements:

Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2003; Windows Vista; Windows XP Service Pack 2
This download works with the following Office programs:

Microsoft Office Access 2007
Microsoft Office Excel 2007
Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007
Microsoft Office OneNote 2007
Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007
Microsoft Office Publisher 2007
Microsoft Office Visio 2007
Microsoft Office Word 2007

Install this Add-in and the Acrobat tab will show up in every MS Office applications menu bar. The reason why the current Acrobat tab does not work is because this add-in is not installed.

My favorite quote - "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.

nebtnarg
Registered: Nov 16 2007
Posts: 7
You Sir are a man among men. Thank you, your truly are an expert!
pddesigner
Registered: Jul 9 2006
Posts: 858
I'm running MS Office 2007 in a Windows Vista OS and duplicated what you have done.

(1.) Opened Excel and a small spreadsheet table that fits within a 1 inch page margin.
(2.) Selected the columns and rows in the table and clicked copy to clipboard.
(3.) Opened MS Word and paste the clipboard content into the page.
(4.) Clicked the MS Office button, selected Save As, and chose PDF or XPS

The Word doc was converted to PDF sucessfully and did not display a black box.

As far as I know, Microsoft does not consider their PDF converter a "Hot Fix". It is considered an add in for the Office 2007 Menu bar. Any "Hot Fix" you've installed could be causing this problem. Also, in the process of solving the problem, you may have changed the Distiller settings for MS Office applications.
If you don't see an option from the MS Office 2007 button to SaveAs, PDF or XPS, then you don't have the converter properly installed. If you do see this option, check the Adobe Distiller settings.

Here are two Adobe Knowledge base articles that may offer additional help.


When the excel tables are pasted into the word docCombining files into a PDF file.

[url=http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/html/vid0102.php]http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/html/vid0102.php[/url]

One-click workflow from Office to PDF

[url=http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/acrobat/articles/acr7sdofficepdf.php]http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/acrobat/articles/acr7sdofficepdf.php[/url]

My favorite quote - "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.

seasonandbag
Registered: Nov 12 2007
Posts: 5
This does not work. Specifically I downloaded Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS hot fix and it made no difference. All the Excel tables that were pasted in the Word document are now black solid boxes when the Word document is converted to a PDF document. I am using Vista Ultimate and Office 2007.
gjasadm
Registered: Dec 17 2007
Posts: 2
We are having this same issue by a client of ours and all the above stated information does not solve any problems. The MS PDF creator is very limited in functionality. We were actually having this problem with normal printers, not just PDF creators. After some testing, we noticed that is actually has to do with PS Drivers, and not Acrobat. As soon as we switched the drivers for the printers to PCL, the printouts were good. As with most PDF creators (we are not using Adobe by this client), I believe Abode creates pdf files via a PS driver, hence creating the black box. So, I guess what I am saying is, it is a MS problem, not a Adobe or any other pdf creator's problem, however if anyone does find a working solution, please post.
pickinbass
Registered: Sep 15 2008
Posts: 1
Perhaps it's slightly off topic, but I'm having a similar issue to gjasadm. Here are the specifics:

Here we run Adobe Acrobat Professional 8.1.2, and Office 2007 with the latest hotfixes and updates.

When you take a block of text, graphics, anything from a .pdf document, copy it and paste it into a Microsoft Word document and print to a particular printer, it prints a large solid black box where the pasted pdf info is supposed to be. Now mind you, it looks great on the monitor, but completely different in print.

However, I have another printer, an older HP that prints these documents out without a problem.

If you take this same document with pasted .pdf info in it, and convert it to a .pdf using the Acrobat tools, it also makes black boxes over those portions of the document. The boxes don't appear if I use Microsoft's "save as pdf or xps" option.

What can I do differently? I have several users who are required to print to the printer in question, and it does have the latest drivers on it. (Canon ColorPass, C5180)

Thanks in advance.
Mootoch
Registered: Dec 12 2008
Posts: 2
I think you are misunderstanding the process to duplicate the problem. I have the same thing. Here is the scenario. A document in 2007 Word contains embedded excel cells. This requires, not simply, a copy and paste but a copy and paste special as an embedded object. When we pull up the doc on a system running Office 2003 (instead of 2007) and convert it to a PDF some of the embedded excel stuff displays as a black box.......and some doesn't. The only thing I can surmise is that the embedded cells that are viewable were created on Office 2003 and the black boxes were created on Office 2007 (there has been alot of modifications to the document over time). Perhaps it is a compatibility issue with Our Office 2007 and Adobe 7.0 when converted on a machine loaded with Office 2003? Or maybe it is an Adobe 7.0 vs .xlsx issue?
reizu
Registered: Jan 16 2009
Posts: 1
Hi there. Not sure if the black box issue has been resolved yet.

When opening third quarter documents created in Word 2003 into Word 2007 and updating the Excel Links, we get a black box in place of the linked Excel object when printing to a printer or generating a PDF (via all PDF actions, i.e., print to Adobe PDF, Adobe PDF writer, Acorbat tab and save as PDF). If we do not update the links, the documents print fine.

We also notice that if we open the same documents for second quarter and update the links, the linked Excel objects print fine. Now the third quarter documents are created from the second quarter documents. Could it be, that and update in between quarters could have impacted this?

At this point, I don't think this is an issue with postscript drivers, I think it is a Microsoft Issue, because I print 100% postscript all the time. I will try the PCL driver, but I really need to use postscript.

Also looking the Microsoft Help & Support site, it really did not address the issue in particular. It just refers you to service packs that do not address this issue.Any suggestions? Please advise. Thanks.
abhigyan
Expert
Registered: Nov 29 2007
Posts: 223
One thing to try would be to use this patch from Microsoft:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948954