Practical question: How you cut and paste music into a Word document?
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    Hey, folks:

    This was stumping me, and I was just going to send some emails, but I thought, I'll bet I am not the only one.

    I make the bulletins for church and so far have not successfully transferred the congregational part of the Responsorial Psalm or the Communion Psalm into a Word document. Coming from a pdf for the Chabanel Psalms, for instance, I get random code, words scattered everywhere, and a general mess.

    So...how DO you do that?

    Kenneth
  • Richard R.
    Posts: 776
    After years of similar angst, I found the best solution is to convert each page of your PDF to a picture format, like gif or jpg. You can do this by downloading one of the print drivers designed for such things, of which there are several available for free on the web. Print your PDF pages using the new "printer", which will save to a picture file. Open, edit, and crop the picture. You can then import it into your Word document like any other graphic. It's a space-intensive solution, but the print quality is better than anything else I've tried.
    Thanked by 1amindthatsuits
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    I'm surprised I know enough that that makes sense. I think that I can do that with the software available at school, and I will try to free online solution for the home PC.

    Many thanks.

    Kenneth
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,220
    Image editing programs such as Photoshop and GIMP (free) can do this conversion. There may also be some web sites for converting a PDF file to an image (JPEG, PNG, etc.)
    Thanked by 2amindthatsuits BruceL
  • FidemInFidebusFidemInFidebus
    Posts: 611
    If you know someone that has a MacBook or otherwise have access to one, upload your Word document to it and use the screen shot function. You take pictures of the music, then open the picture and crop what you need. Copy and paste into the word document and there ya go! This is unbelievably easy and fast, I've been doing this for very large projects and even my thesis and it saves so much time. No converting or other programs necessary!
    Thanked by 1amindthatsuits
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,220
    Meh. Screenshots may have a rather low resolution: typically about 100 dpi, sometimes lower. For some uses, that's OK, but it may produce a slightly grainy image, especially if you perform any editing on it. Better to convert the file at a moderately higher resolution (say, 300 dpi), and get more assurance of the quality of the result.
    Thanked by 2amindthatsuits CHGiffen
  • Bobby Bolin
    Posts: 421
    Ctrl+print screen takes screenshots in windows.
    Thanked by 1amindthatsuits
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    All of which tells me that the guy who passed if off to me and said, "Just cut and paste" did not want to be bothered.

    Kenneth
    Thanked by 1R J Stove
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    This fellow used to always give us our Chant scores, too, taken from the Gregorian Missal Online (yay, CMAA!). For those, I assume he just had the level of Adobe where you can edit other PDFs (we have it at school), created a new document, and cut and pasted it in. I didn't have time to learn that tonight, so just printed and scanned several Sundays ahead.
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    Actually, just tried, and as it is a scanned book and wasn't created in Adobe, you have to...

    export it to another format and I got lost, so gave up and just sent the scans.
  • R J StoveR J Stove
    Posts: 302
    I used the following only the other day with entirely acceptable results (but before I could do so, the person who designed the relevant Sibelius files needed to save them as PDFs):

    http://pdf2jpg.net/

    After which, of course, I inserted the JPGs into Word via the standard "Insert / Pictures" method. While I can't promise that the above site will always work, it is the one I turn to for preference, and I have tried several others over the last 12 months. Some of the rival conversion sites out there are very clumsy and (for a non-tech-head like myself) counter-intuitive; they can take 10 minutes over the actual conversion process.
    Thanked by 2CHGiffen amindthatsuits
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,198
    I downloaded and use PDF converter from SourceForge with excellent results. I like that one can choose resolutions from 100dpi to 600dpi (increments of 100) and also choose the compression ratio.

    The attached JPG file shows my "Adoramus te, Christe/We adore thee, O Christ" at 600dpi and 100%.
    Giffen-Adoramus te, Christe-001.jpg
    5100 x 6600 - 3M
    Thanked by 1amindthatsuits
  • bonniebede
    Posts: 756
    Use Publisher -much better than word for laying out things like bulletins
    Thanked by 4rich_enough amindthatsuits R J Stove Heath
  • Earl_GreyEarl_Grey
    Posts: 904
    Typically the snapshot tool in pdf viewer works fine for everyday printing. If you don't see it on the top of the screen it maybe hidden. Basically it's just a screen shot, but it's just one step to select, crop and copy to the clipboard. Occasionally, I use the auto correct image feature in Word if the image is too faint. For higher resolution or professional quality printing, then a file conversion is necessary.
    Thanked by 2CHGiffen amindthatsuits
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    You know, I am glad to find out everything finds this to be a pain. At our level, we use Word. This has all been very helpful. I am going to spend Thursday evening finding out which works for me, a definite non-tech-head.

    Thanks to one and all.

    Kenneth
  • rogue63
    Posts: 410
    JMO also posts graphic files--JPG---for nearly all of the Chabanel psalm antiphons, I think. Those are editable and resizable; just copy and paste.
    Thanked by 1amindthatsuits
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    The jpg's I see right now at Chabanel are all for the Jogues Missal, which we do not always use, but very helpful to have pointed out.

    Kenneth
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    Many thanks. R J. Stove, I used your website and it was fine for our purposes. The resolution is not as good as it wood be at 300 dpi, but that may be for future adventure. For anyone who has Office (and so Paint), it is easy to go to the website, upload your file, and convert.

    Following the lead of our young DM (who was in a car accident and is not up to full speed yet), I used the "rectangular selection" tool in PAINT, and did these steps.

    1) Dragged the bottom margin down so the page expanded with lots of white space to work with.
    2) selected the copyright/composer notice, cut it, and pasted it towards the bottom. If it appears in the wrong place, just grab it and put it at the bottom until you are done.
    3) selected the second half of the antiphon and CUT it.
    4) moved the cursor under the first half, where I approximately wanted it to go, and pasted.
    5) Of course, it superimposed on the first half. I grabbed it and centered it under the first half.
    6) Then I selected the copyright notice, cut it, then pasted it, and dragged it into position.
    7) Then I grabbed the corner and made it so the frame just contains it all.
    8) I used the ERASE tool to eliminate the harmony. If I had to erase a line in the process, I used the pencil tool and wasn't half bad.
    9) There is an INSERT LINE button I used to close the staffs, and I guess I should have used that to draw in the lines that got erased.

    SAVED the jpg, the used INSERT--PICTURE in WORD. It looks fine. As I said, for a half-page program, the resolution is fine. If it was bigger, or a more persnickety parish, I would recommend some of the other recommendations above. The main people who want a program are the elderly, and their only requirement is LARGE TYPE.

    Happy bulletin preparation.

    Thanks again.

    Kenneth
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    Forogt: FIRST, you have to use the cropping tool and just cut away everything but the antiphon. When you have that smaller picture, THEN you pull the bottom of the page down to give yourself white space to work with.
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,220
    Hi--

    I see a forum user has been trying to upload a very large file into this thread, over 100 MB. Don't do that. If you need to share a file that big with the rest of us, you can store it on Google Drive, or Dropbox, or your own web server.
  • R J StoveR J Stove
    Posts: 302
    I believe, amindthatsuits, that in fact you can get 300dpi resolution on the site I mentioned. Certainly you could when I last used it, though you need to request it specifically (150dpi is the site's default mode).
    Thanked by 1amindthatsuits
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    I used 300 Dpi. It still degraded as I manipulated it. I am sure that there are ways to get it better but thus suits my purposes, and I am very grateful. Kenneth
  • lmassery
    Posts: 424
    I simply open each pdf in Adobe, and under 'edit' choose 'take a snapshot.' You can then paste it into the document. If all else fails, hold cntr + prt sc and past it into microsoft paint. Then use the 'select' tool to cut out the portion you want and paste it in. Chonak is right that the image is slightly grainy, but I still think it works well enough. Zoom in before snapping the shot - the bigger the original, the better the result.
    Thanked by 2amindthatsuits bonniebede
  • Patricia Cecilia
    Posts: 400
    I use the Snipping Tool in Windows 7, which works well if one enlarges the target object as much as possible and then reduces it in size when pasting to OpenOffice (I detest Word and Publisher and will not use them). I clean up the jpg in Paint if necessary.

    The best alternative to Publisher that I have found is Serif Software's PagePlus. It is much less expensive than Publisher and can actually be used with very little training. (I turn off all the toolbars/functions I don't use and it works very well.) It will also export in quality pdfs.

    YMMV
    Thanked by 2bonniebede amindthatsuits
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    Patricia, that actually worked quite well, too. Haven't compared resolutions. Kenneth
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