Pasting from ChemDraw into Pages/Keynote

This is a huge problem for me. I am going to have to go back to 10.5 (if this is possible). See:

http://forums.cambridgesoft.com/fusetalk/forum/messageview.aspx?catid=12&threadi d=115&enterthread=y

Cambridge Soft do not appear to be doing anything about this very quickly.

A work around for the time being appears to be saving the file as PICT scaled 4x, importing this in to Keynote and then scaling.

Surely this can't be the optimum way to operate?

Same problem here - very annoying. I'm saving as a png and importing from there. This is strange because everything was working fine before the Snow Leopard upgrade. I hope someone, somewhere is working on this.

In our experience, in combination with Mac OS X 10.6, ChemDraw 12 exhibits certain undesirable features.

Firstly, if you double click a ChemDraw document, the application will open, but the document will not.

Secondly, pasting ChemDraw pictures into Pages/Keynote is totally hosed. Paste a ChemDraw 12 picture into Pages and it will be super-sized and clipped. You can avoid this problem by checking the "Add PDF to Clipboard" option in the ChemDraw 12 preferences, but this breaks round-trip editing. The older version of ChemDraw (Version 11) performs, at best, erratically with Pages and Keynote under 10.6 and is, basically, unusable. Version 10 is also hosed.

Finally, ChemDraw 12 and Word 2004 don't get along particularly well either. The problem is more obscure. Basically, if a drawing contains structure and ANY text, it will display and print correctly and be round-trip editable. If it contains only drawing and NO text, it will look and print like crap but still be round-trip editable. I am not sure this is a major issue as most people will have some text in their drawing, but if you don't, here is a way to fix it. Simply place a single character in a text box and colour it white. It is now invisible (if you are printing on a white background !) and all is well in the world of copy and paste. Amusingly, this problem does not exist if you use ChemDraw Pro 10.0.3, so much for progress. Incidentally, some limited testing reveals that this problem does not exist with Word 2008, but round-trip editing is still very much broken.

So here is what I think is the executive summary of what works and does not work:

1. ChemDraw 12 has a problem with Apple Pages and Keynote on Snow Leopard. It may be OK on Leopard, but my life is too short to waste my time trying. You can fix the problem by including a PDF version of the drawing in the pasted image, but this breaks the ability to recover and edit the drawing from Pages/Keynote later.

2. ChemDraw 11 hates Apple Pages and Keynote on Snow Leopard even more than ChemDraw 12.

3. ChemDraw 11 (and 10) and Word 2004 are OK on Snow Leopard.

4. ChemDraw 12 and Word 2004 are OK on Snow Leopard as long as you have text in the picture.

The work arounds described above will work for Word 2004 and for Pages/Keynote, the "Add PDF" work around will help even if it breaks round-trip editing. In my experience, holding your breath for Cambridgesoft to fix any of this will result in asphyxiation.

Hopefully this information is useful to some of you.

This is frustrating to say the least. But I have a workaround. A rather clunky workaround, but it does work. I have tested this with Chemdraw 11 in snow leopard.

Copy the chemdraw to a Powerpoint 2004 document. Save it as a .ppt file. Open the powerpoint file in Keynote. You can then copy the chemdraw to other keynote documents or back to Chemdraw for editing.

Another good reason not to toss out Office 2004. I suspect the same will work with Word 2004/Pages but I have not tested it.

I have another work around for those of you with Adobe Illustrator (still kills round-trip editing).


Copy what you want out of Chemdraw, paste into Illustrator, re-copy and paste into Keynote. This is much like the Powerpoint work-around but you can make a lot of chemdraw edits while in Illustrator, which is nice. You can also use 'stroke' to change the bond width (in my case, I cannot use object settings in CD11 and 10.6.

We are working to fix these issues with Snow Leopard and plan to provide a compatible 12.0 point release. Updates will be announced through our weekly ChemBioNews.com email as well as posted on our Support site. Thank you.

Good to hear a response from CS. But, what about ver 11? I just got it this January. Do I have to spend another a few hundred dollars for this issue?

Yes, the inability to open prior documents is unbelievable! Have not ever seen this issue in innumerable OS and CD upgrades over 20 years!!! Suddenly being unable to access all prior document contents is a nightmare - it is the same as losing all prior files! Any clues how to get to the content - other than spending many days redrawing them all? I have one sort of solution - that is use the new ChemDoodle...Guess what, this $60 app - written by two College students- does what CambridgeSoft's expensive package cannot do with its own files, and gets the content visible AND pastable into Word....! However, if you have lots of large ChemDraw files, then converting them all is a slow process.....

I just found another workaround. I'm writing an NSF grant, and have had several problems with Word; I'm now using Pages. In ChemDraw 12, go to "File->Print", and then "Preview". You should get the standard pdf from Preview. Under "View", make sure "Automatically Resize" is NOT selected. Then, crop as close as you want to the figure. You can copy and paste the image from Preview into Pages. Not the best workaround, but it works for me.

Jason

I contacted a couple of weeks ago Cambridgesoft and here is a copy of their tech suppport reply for 'some' of the issues... very poor indeed...

Hi,

Your message has been forwarded to Tech Support.

When embedding an item into an Office application, the embedded item is an image and cannot be modified.

What is your version of MS Office? Is it MS Office 2008? If so, we aware this issue and you will get more information from the following link.

http://www.cambridgesoft.com/services/DesktopSupport/KnowledgeBase/Compatibility /

Specifically:
MS Office 2008
For technical reasons, Microsoft removed the ability to retrieve the original chemical data in pictures pasted into Microsoft Word when they released Microsoft Office 2008 (if you copy and paste a structure in Word 2008, for example, into ChemDraw, you can't edit it).

CambridgeSoft has been in contact with Microsoft regarding this issue, and they are aware of the problem. Microsoft has an open case with Apple regarding their technical problems in correctly implementing this feature (Apple RADAR case #5815892).

Until Microsoft releases a patched version of Office 2008, we recommend that our users switch to a previous version of Microsoft Office where this problem does not occur otherwise, you will need to save the ChemBioDraw files as separate documents.

2. When clicking on a saved file ChemDraw is not launching

3. Compatibility issues with Keynote and Pages applications

We have released a 12.0.1 update of ChemBioDraw/ChemDraw 12 that addresses several known MacOS 10.6 issues. With this update, users will be able to double-click files to open them. It will also enable users to type text in dialog boxes.
You can download the same from the following link.

http://www.cambridgesoft.com/services/DesktopSupport/Downloads/

There are still problems with the Plugin, which is not included in this update, with justifying text, and issues with pasting into iWorks applications. We are still working on a MacOS 10.6 compatible version to address these other issues and will announce that release on our Compatibility page once it is available.

Unless you have any further technical questions, this case will auto-close in 3 business days.

Best Regards,
Rajanarayanan
CambridgeSoft Technical Support
support@cambridgesoft.com
http://www.cambridgesoft.com/support
http://forums.cambridgesoft.com

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