M$ Clipart in Office 2003

[Captain Gadget]

Good morning ladies 'n gents

I have been asked to produce a decorative banner for a children's Hallowe'en party that is taking place in our local village hall. This sent me scurrying yesterday evening to my trusty PC (XP Home/Office Pro 2003) and I duly found a mountain of hallowe'en-related clipart, both pre-loaded on my PC and on the M$ website.

Using Publisher (which I admit I haven't done for some time) because it has a banner template, I found that - although I could see the clipart (*.wmf) perfectly well on the screen - when I tried to import it all I got was an empty frame! I tried downloading similar clipart from the M$ website and - again although I could see it OK - the downloads failed to go into Clip Organizer every time.

I also tried importing the same clips into Word and got an error script 'not a valid embedded file' or similar, so it would appear that the clipart facility in Office generally is comprehensively bu@@ered.

In the end I downloaded the 60-day free trial version of Publisher 97, but exactly the same thing happened with the *.wmf clipart in this application too...

Anyone know of a fix for this? I have already tried Detect and Repair with no luck.

Incidentally, I managed to complete the Hallowe'en project using non-M$ clipart found at various places on the Interweb, so the immediate crisis has passed; however obviously I would like to get my Office clipart up and running again!

Cheers in advance

Gadget :ok:

[Keef]

Oo-er!

Not had that problem. I just checked, and Word and Publisher on my machine both happily imported and copy/pasted a .wmf.

I have to say, the MS clipart collection, while vast, leaves me totally underwhelmed and I get most of mine from elsewhere (ie Google).

Have you checked the file association your machine has for .wmf? Just a long shot: I can't think what else would do that, other than a damaged app somewhere.

[Captain Gadget]

Thanks for the tip re file association for *.wmf. I checked, and my (fairly)recent installation of the Nero CD/DVD burning suite seems to have poached it - along with a great deal of other image/video apps, most of which I have now changed back to their original associations.

However, the recommended list of apps for *.wmf on my PC now contains these options:

Microsoft Office Picture Manager
Windows Picture and Fax Viewer
Nero Photoshop Viewer (previously the default)
Paint

I would have thought that MS Clip Organizer would be the app of choice, but this does not even appear on the expanded 'Choose Program' list, although it is present on my machine and seems to run OK (until I try to download to it, anyway!)

What do other PPRuNers' PCs use for this?

Cheers all

Gadget :ok:

[Saab Dastard]

*.wmf - Open: rundll32.exe C: \WINDOWS\system32\shimgvw.dll,ImageView_Fullscreen %1

That's Picture & Fax viewer to you and me, btw!

SD