Visio not liking SC's screenshots !?

[xerces8]

OK this is bizzare, so read carefully.

I made some screenshots with Screenshot Captor v2.42.01 on Win2000Pro-SP4. All default options, files are saved as PNG.

Then I transferred (over an USB stick) the files to a WinXPproSP3 PC.

There I created a new document with Visio Pro 2003 SP3 (selected the "Block diagram" template).

I've put some boxes and lines, but the important pieces were pictures, which I added like this :

 - open the screenshot PNG in MS Paint (the well known Windows program)
 - using the select tool , select a rectangle in the image
 - press ctrl-c to copy the selection to clipboard

 - in Visio press ctrl-v to Paste the selection from clipboard

I repeated the above for several pictures (each originating from a different screenshot file).

Then I saved the Visio document and closed Visio.

After that, when reopening the Visio document (the file size was already suspicious), the images were all missing !
The boxes and lines were there, but no images.
Actually, clicking on the spot where an image should have been reveals a selection box (the green thing) that I cat rotate, move or resize. As if the picture were there. Only it isn't, it's just empty/transparent space.

Then I tried to paste a direct screenshot:
 - open the Visio document
 - press the PrintScreen key
 - press ctrl-v
 - save & close

This works fine, the image is saved.

Then I also tried this:
 - open the screenshot PNG in MS Paint
 - press PrintScreen
 - open another instance of Paint
 - ctrl-V : paste the screenshot into it
 - using the select tool , select a rectangle in the image (more or less the same as in first try)
 - press ctrl-c to copy the selection to clipboard
 - in Visio press ctrl-v to Paste the selection from clipboard

Again, this image works fine. It is saved. I see it when reopening the document.


This made an hour of work go down the drain 

Is this a known issue ?
Any idea ?

Regards,
David

[mouser]

That is really strange..
The fact that you are going through the clipboard each time is somewhat of a clue that suggests to me it's not to do with the file formats, since i think it should always be copying image data to the clipboard as bitmaps.

You are doing a lot of extra steps through MS Paint that you shouldnt have to be doing.

Can you try this:
Open the screenshot in SC.  Make sure you click in the main window area of SC or select a region of your image in SC, and hit Ctrl+C.  Now paste it into visio and save.  Exit and restart visio and see if it works.

You could also try the same thing you were doing above that failed using MS Paint EXCEPT do not use MS Paint, but use something like irfanview.

[xerces8]

Well, SC was not available on that PC at that moment.

I also noticed, that the "working" clips are smaller. Different DPI ?

I also do not have irfanview.

I will try some programs. But I have work to do first.

[mouser]

Just a couple of tips:

• You can drag and drop images from the thumbnail view to any other program like Visio -- no need to copy and paste.
• You can set the DPI of your screenshots from within Screenshot Captor -- this won't effect screen display but it does affect printing size and size when pasted into some programs like Microsoft Word, etc.

[amitman45]

Just a couple of tips:

• You can drag and drop images from the thumbnail view to any other program like Visio -- no need to copy and paste.
• You can set the DPI of your screenshots from within Screenshot Captor -- this won't effect screen display but it does affect printing size and size when pasted into some programs like Microsoft Word, etc.

-mouser (September 19, 2008, 12:28 PM)

How do I drag and drop from Windows file explorer directly into Visio?  That would be a huge time saver.  Right now I have to open each image in Paint > select all > copy > then paste into Visio (like the OP said).

I'm using Visio 2007 on WinXP.  When I try drag and drop it just posts a little shape with the filename (e.g. IMG_0113.png)