Hello,
I am importing some Word documents, in the process of writing a textbook. If I convert to .rtf the images are fine, but on importing to the Research folder 90%+ of them are lost - becoming large grey smudges, and the same is true with .doc files.
The large smudges are treated as images, but they have extremely large sizes, often over 10k units.
However, if I copy and paste each image directly from the source document everything is fine.
I have not been able to find any discussion on this, and I would appreciate any advice.
ChrisGold
Yeah, that doesn’t ring any bells. Could you send us a sample .doc or .rtf with one of the images in it so we can test it ourselves?
Hello,
Here is part of a paper with some figures in it. When I try and load it Scrivener gets stuck for a long time.
If I try and load the whole paper things are much worse.
I am using version 1.2.5.0 on Windows 7.
Many thanks,
Chris Gold
The Context Test.doc (441 KB)
I’m not sure what the problem is, I got the same result you did. The pictures appear to be importing as massive. If you right click in the blurry grey area the dimensions are big enough to print several posters. So my guess is what we are looking at is the black border stretched obscenely huge, so big the rest of the image can’t be seen. What I did was right-click on each illustration in Word, saved it as a picture, and then stripped them out of the .doc, imported that, and dropped them back in using Scrivener. They look okay there, so it must be something odd with how they were set up in the original Word file.
Hello,
Thanks for looking at this!
I tested the issue by trying to load various academic papers in Word, both from other people/countries and of my own over many years, and I have the same problem. Many of these have been sent to publishers for printing in books or journals with no difficulty.
It seems to be a sizing issue, as you agreed, because in a few cases I get a visible figure but with the size all messed up.
Chris Gold
Do you not get the images at all, or are they just there in addition to the smudgy image? For an RTF import you should be getting the images regardless, but for instance importing a .docx file, without the MS Word converters turned on in the options, will result in only the placeholder icon getting imported, rather than the image. (The converter options are in the Import/Export tab of Tools > Options…; you’ll need to restart Scrivener to apply this if you switch it.)
After you’ve imported, try going into the file and editing it to force a save–just type a character and then backspace it. When you switch documents and reload after the auto-save has run (the asterisk has disappeared from the window title bar), the extra grey smudgy bits should be gone, leaving just your images. Does that help with the problems you’re seeing, or do you still get weird sizing issues?
EDIT: Bah, nevermind, I realised you gave the sample document. So scratch that–yes, the smudges go away, but those couple images aren’t importing, I see. Hmm.
Hello!
Will someone be looking at this? It appears (to me) to be a clear bug - at least in the latest version.
In addition, can anyone suggest any kind of work-around? As I mentioned, I am writing a textbook and if I put in all my source documents I must have at least 500 diagrams - too many to cut and paste back in. I may have to abandon Scrivener, which would be a shame.
Thanks again,
Chris
Sorry for not getting back in the thread earlier. Yes, this is an issue we’re investigating. As far as I can tell through testing, the problem with some of the images not importing at all has to do with the images being resized in Word. In the sample you posted, the two images that don’t import have had their size significantly reduced in Word–50% for the one, 44% for the other. This rescaling changes the display, but not the actual image size. Thus when Scrivener tries to import the document, it’s still dealing with the full image size, which is quite large–one of them has an original size of about 10.5"x8".
Saving the images at the scaled-down size and embedding that smaller version into Word allows Scrivener to import the images–still with the smudge, but that is easily cleaned up by simply making a quick edit to the page and allowing autosave to run, then reloading the document. (This is still a bug, but it’s one that’s easy to get around, at least.) Using a dedicated graphics program to handle the resizing and then importing that correctly sized image into Word is typically the best approach anyway, as it will usually improve the quality of your images and reduce the size of your files.
You may be able to find a good batch conversion tool or macro to quickly resize the images in your Word documents, since you have quite a few of them by the sound of it. Another option, if you just need the documents in your Scrivener project for reference, is to save as PDFs in Word and then import the PDFs.
Hello MM, thanks for your reply: it is reassuring that the problem is being looked at.
I would like to note in passing that the strategy you are suggesting does not seem to be a good idea - at least for me - for the following reasons:
1: I have checked various documents from various people (I am often a journal reviewer) and they have the same problem as my own, so it is not simply my own procedure that is poor.
2: We (scientific academic writers, at least those that don’t work in LaTex) cut, paste, write and import in gay abandon to get the result we want - often adjusted to fit the 10 page limit for many conference proceedings. Diagrams will be adjusted at the end (after page formatting) to achieve our goals.
3: It would be very bad practice to reduce the image size in kB, or crop it, before the final product, as the size on paper may vary. (In addition, parts of it may well be used elsewhere, with different requirements. (Ssh… that is our guilty secret.)
4: Many textbooks in my and similar fields (computer graphics, GIS etc.) have many diagrams - two per page seems typical, but sometimes many more. In fact, the text is often written to describe the diagrams, explaining how the method works. I have only once been asked by a publisher to re-do diagrams - and that was a request to increase the resolution.
5: The whole point of Scrivener is to allow cutting, pasting, rearranging etc. as the ideas develop. This is what we have previously done, somewhat awkwardly, in Word. Formatting comes later - sometimes in another program. To require diagrams to be sized in advance would be like requiring all text to be given a final font/size as it is entered. For us diagrams are an integral part of the writing - and a sequence of figures may well precede any writing at all, and ideally would be juggled inside Scrivener - I was an early requester of a free-form Cork Board. A paper is in some ways a catalogue of available figures.
Thanks for listening!
Chris Gold
I am getting the same problem and I’m trying to import over a hundred .docx files into Scrivener because I want to create an ebook of them (for personal use on my Kindle only: instead of having 20+ PDF files I’d like them all compiles into a single ebook). Is there any way to tell Scrivener not to compile the images on import?
Fixed on 1.5.0.9, YEAH! :mrgreen:
Excellent, thanks for letting us know this is working for you now!