Importing an EPS vector file to Microsoft Word without losing quality

Question

If I import an .eps picture to Microsoft Word as normal, the quality
of the vector picture comes down (the image gets rasterised.

In this case, the EPS was produced with the pgfplot package and tikzpicture,
But it would be great to have a general way of importing PDFs, PSs or EPSs into Word.

So, how can I import .eps/.pdf/.ps to MS Word without losing quality?

score 25 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 29 '15 at 21:24

Convert the .eps file to .emf (Enhanced MetaFile, a spool file format used in printing by Microsoft software). There are several ways to do this conversion; for example by using the following webservice: https://cloudconvert.com/eps-to-emf

In my experience, .emf files are the only way to reliably embed vector graphics in several Word versions on Mac and Windows.

score 8 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 05 '14 at 12:30

8

If you simply insert the .eps file in word as an image it will look bad in Word, but when you print it to paper it will utilize the vector graphics and it looks fine.

edited Aug 05 '14 at 12:30

Jens Erat

18,485
14
68
80

answered Aug 05 '14 at 12:13

Thomas Kristensen

81

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered May 27 '15 at 21:26

1

Don't open or import directly. If it's Word 2013 (v15), under the tab of "Insert", click "Pictures" icon and browse to your eps file. If the eps files was originally created in vector, it won't be rasterised.

answered May 27 '15 at 21:26

xjlin0

121

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Nov 10 '18 at 00:23

It goes without saying that you should get your image into the state that you want to import before you import it. So, if the image has excessive white space surrounding the picture area, you might want to crop the pdf/eps/whatever — perhaps using a simple command line tool like pdfcrop — but of course that’s optional, and outside of the scope of this question.

Then

Import it into Inkscape, using the poppler library option.
Save as an Enhanced Metafile (EMF).
Import the EMF file into Microsoft Word.

emf is a vector format that Word can handle, so it does not pixelate, and so it does retain quality, unless the original image has qualities that emf cannot reproduce because of its limitations. Keep in mind that emf cannot cope with some shapes, gradients and fonts that eps/pdf/whatever can cope with. Even if this works and you maintain the vector-ness of the image, something may be lost due to the lousy format of emf.

YMMV

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered May 18 '12 at 04:34

0

You can import eps file to open office. Then save open office file as .doc file. Now open .doc file in word. Copy the figure and paste it where ever you want in the another word file.

answered May 18 '12 at 04:34

score -1 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 17 '16 at 21:04

As noted above, when printing everything will be converted to vector form this raster picture is only for fast scrolling. You can try to click on the image and right-click to edit the image and word will convert the image from *.emf the word clip art. (But things can go wrong :( From my experience the only vector format that Word supports is the *.emf. I use Inkscape to convert SVG,Dxf,PDF,PS to EMF

score -1 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 22 '12 at 22:14

I would not depend on Word to manage the quality of the image. Use the right tool for the job. I would export the image from an illustration program in the desired size as a GIF or PNG file and put that into Word. Then you avoid Word extrapolation, scaling, and proportion issues. Much the same with bitmap images like photos. If you size the image inside Word you reduce quality and increase file size.

OpenOffice has a Windows version as well and it'd free. Both it and Word are word processing programs, not image editing tools.

Importing an EPS vector file to Microsoft Word without losing quality

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