Change resolution of EMF image files to prevent quality loss in PowerPoint

Question

Exporting .emf (Enhanced Metafile) vector from Illustrator CS5 [and other versions tested] for use in MS office documents such as PowerPoint, can be a right pain.

If you export them at a sensible size, the vectors don't have enough points and you end up losing accuracy on your shapes and strokes - so they look very low quality.

If you make them bigger in Illustrator before exporting, the filesize remains approximately the same, but the vector accuracy is far better. But when you import into PowerPoint you have to shrink them down, which is frustrating.

I searched for a solution for hours, downloaded all the metadata editors I could find, but eventually worked out an easier method to resize / change resolution of the emf file - answered below...

Answer 1

The answer is just use PowerPoint to re-save the emf file:

• Export your emf file 10 times bigger than required
• Drag in into PowerPoint
• Right click image and choose "Size and position"
• Change the scale to 10%**, then on the "Position" tab, set it to be 0cm, 0cm from the Top Left Corner (so you don't lose it off screen). Then press OK.
• Right click this (now correctly sized) image, and choose "Save as picture"
• Save as an emf - it'll be the right size, and still high quality

Note that fonts can really screw up this process. Make sure all your text is outlined otherwise you're likely to run into problems.

** A commenter has found that their emf is about 15% too big when dragged into PowerPoint (so will be 11.5 times bigger instead of 10 times bigger). If you find this, instead of setting the scale to 10%, change the width in PowerPoint to the exact measurement (in cm) that it should be then continue instructions as above. Job done.