Users who have recently installed Microsoft Office 2004 on their Macintosh computers were hit with a nasty surprise – the difficulty of working with large graphics files between applications.

Oftentimes, large graphics cut from one application, say Microsoft Word, and then pasted into another, say Microsoft Excel, end up incomplete. “The pasted graphic may be truncated at the right or may be missing some charts or chart components,” says James McMillan in a recent post on Mac FixIt.

When users select “copy picture,” from the Office menu within an application, they are given a choice: “As shown on screen,” or “As shown when printed.” A potential, Microsoft-supplied workaround for this issue is to use the “As shown on screen” option and then to open Apple's Preview application. Then choose "New from Clipboard" from the File menu. Once the graphic is shown in Preview, again copy it and then use the "Paste Special > Picture" option in the desired Office application.