The Problem
When pasting a Picture (Enhanced Image or Windows Metafile) into Powerpoint, the picture may turn mushy, fuzzy, blurry and even unreadable when being printed. This usually only happens if you put a gif, jpg, or raster image as part of the cells that are pasted into Excel. Typically, the fuzziness is not noticeable on screen, but will be fuzzy when it is being printed on paper.
Even worse, text that are hidden by being white (same as the background) will show with a fuzzy outline.
The Solution
Unfortunately, Microsoft has offered no solution for this bug, even though the results are totally unacceptable. But there are a few workarounds:
- Use an older version of Powerpoint to print your work after you’re done – by far my favourate solution. It’s clean, requires the least amount of work and no training. The only issue is if you do not have an older version of Powerpoint on your computer. I have yet to run into problems with this solution.
- For a non-link image, ungroup the image – If it’s just 1 small pasted image that needs a fix, this would be a fast workaround that requires no minimal work. However, Powerpoint is known to screw up some alignment and text position, and also add bullets to everything that was ungrouped. If you do pursue this path, play it safe and check your work!
- Adobe PDF – Some had success with this, but I am not sure. It’s to use Adobe Acrobat to PDF the (not through print, but directly PDF by dragging the file into Adobe). Could be an easy solution, but I like solution 1 better. It’s just faster that way.
- Get rid of raster images – if the image in what is being pasted is optional, or be pasted separately, then paste it separately and directly into Powerpoint altogether.