Excel graph conversation doesn't work on a Mac anymore
When pasting an Excel graph into Illustrator, text is converted to rubbish on a Mac running OS High Sierra and the newest version of Illustrator.
Also, when converting the Excel file to a PDF and opening it in Illustrator, the same thing happens. BUT, when opening the PDF in Acrobat, everything looks just fine.
To make sure it wasn't an Excel bug I saved the file in an older version of Excel – that didn't solve the problem.
I used the same Excel file on a PC and copied it into the Windows-version Illustrator, also converted the file to PDF and opened it in the Windows-version of Illustrator – and everything worked perfectly.
The Excel file uses the Cambria font which I have installed on my Mac, I even tried changing the font to Arial just in case, but with no better result.
What gives?
Sten Olsen
shared this idea
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Will Suckow
commented
Please fix Illustrator to properly import the text on charts copied from Excel and pasted into Illustrator. InDesign has no trouble with the text, please fix Illustrator to do the same.
I regularly have to clean up and standardize charts in Illustrator for use in our research journal and production manuals. The ability to copy charts from our author's Excel spreadsheets and paste them directly into Illustrator with the text intact is essential to my work and would help speed production.
As Sten mentioned, this used to work long ago, but it has been many years since the text has imported cleanly. There is a work around I've documented below that requires a couple extra steps.
Currently, this is what happens:
Cut a chart from Excel and paste into Illustrator = clean vector art, garbled text
My workaround:
Step 1: Cut a chart from Excel and paste into InDesign.
Step 2: Cut the chart from InDesign and paste into Illustrator.
Results: In addition to clean vector art, the text remains readable and editable.Attached is a screen shot from Illustrator that shows the results from a standard cut-and-paste and from the workaround.
Thanks for your help!
