Freelance Freedom #159

This is soooooo funny.

Dear Freelancer,
you should realize by now that some people can’t think outside .doc files. Yes, they state in their CV’s that they are proficient computer users.

MS Word is “slightly” better the Excel that we get many times.

this is pretty much happens to me once a week haha!

Ah, yes. XD The pain.

classic!

It took me a while to realize how bad MS Word is as a medium for sending image files. Never making that mistake again.

Word is still good option and absolutelly better option than excel. I personally hate excel after one of my client send me design of new website….in excel…..in 80 sheets

So much true ….

haha good one.

I deal with this every week.

Just to note, if you have reason to fear they’ll send a word document, it’s coming as a Word document!

lol it never fails!

So close! But back in my day, when we wore an onion on our belt because it was the fashion, we used to cross our fingers and pray,

“Don’t send CorelDraw, don’t send CorelDraw, don’t send CorelDraw.”

And there IS worse than Word. My typical day:

“Don’t send a Publisher document, don’t send a Publisher document, don’t send a Publisher document.”

At least you can get text out of a Word file (and in a workflow environment when we used Quark, Word text that would auto-format when you flowed it into the document), but Publisher? Nice proprietary format, Microsoft. Thanks for making it impossible to view AT ALL.

Oh I *love* this one! SO TRUE!

The bad stuff is when they send .docx and my open office “converter” doesn’t open the file. I got used to them sending .doc so it doesn’t even bother me anymore. it does annoy me when I get a .pdf that I cannot take the info from or a .jpg, so that I have to type all the stuff again

@Freelance Forums, use the free Zamzar.com converter for .docx files. It changes ‘em back to the .doc format we all know and love.

Bwahahahahahahaha! Goodness that’s so true.

Ha ha. Another good one! I’ve been there so many times!

Funny that’s already happen with me and late using google docs services

AHH! I’ve gotten this so many times! I can tolerate it when they do it to add descriptions for images galleries, but when they’re just sending images, I want to grit my teeth.

I would rather get 100 2mb images in a zip folder than 10 6k images in a word doc.

Me “Can you send me your company’s logo?”

Client “Yeah sure – Its in a Word Doc somewhere…”

Me “!” GAH!

Am I really the only one who notices that the shading is more detailed?

How do you know my daily life?

I always wonder why people do this!

Got the high resolution logo I asked my client for last night.

Yup, in a word doc. Yup, 9.1k. Ah well…

Once I caught someone doing it on purpose… “Send them a Word, designers freak out with it”
It was someone I know, just can’t remember who…

hahahha …. yeah (sigh)

Haha…so true man. I encountered a PDF file the other time.

@George
Me too, it was even protected …

@Birgit LOL!!!

His face while he’s waiting, oh, I know this face.

Classic one! They will never stop doing that

hahaha: they sent a word document.

Lol, but it happens way to often

Word and PowerPoint!!! Same frustrating thing…

me: “no, no, send me the file you used to place INTO this document.”

them: “huh?”

Happens all the time!

I previously did a lot of Freelance web design work and found this to be a big issue. It’s funny how people send images in word documents. I can imagine this to be extremely frustrating especially for graphic designers.

“If i had a dime every time they send a word document…”
… I am sure a lot of us would be rich

Bane. Of. My. Life.

Saying that, older versions of Office, 2003 and before, weren’t too bad as you could successfully copy and paste the images to Photoshop and they’d retain all the original file information.

Newer versions of Office, since they switched to the XML based file formats, wrap the images in paragraph tags when you copy and paste. Photoshop just ignores what’s on the clipboard as it doesn’t know what to do with it.

But one of my friends did say that she’d sent images in a Word file because she thought it might “protect” the image?

Head. Desk.

all the freaking time!!!

I still struggle when I extract contents from Ms Word …
Lot’s of clean up for the html

Sad Story: After much discussion post-word doc being sent by client… my client admitted that they had placed ALL their image files, including personal photos, into word documents… and deleted the originals… as it was “easier to organize”. *sigh*

Can we all just agree that most clients are idiots?

@Zippy,

no, they just don’t know better.

However, I wonder who had this silly idea in the first place …

If there was EVER a message that I could share with the entire adult population (other than the obvious world peace, take care of your environment, eat REAL good stuff) it would be the difference between a vector image, and a bitmap image – and that by taking said bitmap image and saving as a .eps file (as they grumble about the fact that it’s EASY to change a file to an .eps) doesn’t not a vector file make. The 2nd message would be “the time it takes you to place a file in a word doc so that you can email it to me… you could have just emailed me the original file.

I LOVE this Comic!

Perhaps I should have proofed that before posting! BAH!

That happened to me so many times I just gave up trying to ask for the images as images. I did find this tip somewhere on the net to extract images from Word Docs:

Save the file as a .html file, and Word will automatically create a folder full of the extracted images. Saved me the hassle of extracting them all one by one (and there were tone of images!)

Not sure if that works for Ms Office 2007 and newer though.

If they send you a .docx file, just rename the extension to .zip and open it with your favorite extractor. Browsing through the file structure will reveal a “Media” folder where you will find the embedded images.

If it is a .doc file save as .docx then apply above steps.

It’s not ideal, but gets the job done if the client is too stupid to do anything else.

My client sent me an excel file once, to demonstrate that he want to use a specific font for his accounting business, and it was Comic sans

A couple of years ago a salesman asked me if we could accept a MacWrite document….

End of story…

hehe funny stuff.
but on a side note, not sure if you know, as I didn’t for quite a while…
but if you select portions of that word.doc you can save it out as html, and magically you will get the original un-word-molested images downloaded into a folder of your choosing… just thought I’d share in case anyone didn’t know, as this has saved me many a hassling conversation with a client or boss.

I love this, too funny!

I have found that the “save to html method” does not always work. Sometimes Word seems to reduce the image quality, sometime not – has anybody found out yet what is happening there?

NOT FUNNY! Stupid f-in clients..grumble….

If you receive a Word document from your customer, just export it as a webpage. Word will export the ‘high-res’ pictures in a seperate folder. In most cases this will do for web / 72dpi pics!

It is true through, when you ask for images they send you the huge Word Document they made which contains the images used. It is pain in the ass to export them back and all…

I hope all layers will be sorted and named…
I hope all layers will be sorted and named…
I hope all layers will be sorted and named…
I hope all layers will be sorted and named…

Bah.

Guess, what happened a minute ago…
Yep. Exactly this…. grrrrr.

Oh it’s so sad, the dreaded Microsoft Word file for images. Even better is when they want that printed on an 8 foot banner!

I’d make the client said it again, using the correct format!. .AI or even just JPEG!

Ahahaha i’ve been that situation when my client send me power point files for their original image.

haha, funny caus its true.

Lol. This really does happen. Quality