MS Office documents as container formats

We get that all the time. It's very annoying.

From what I have heard, some people got used to this practice in order to get data through overzealous corporate email filters. Some filters would randomly block certain image format extensions, but doc files always went through. More recently, I have observed a similar trend with PDF. Especially Mac-based shops tend to send you all kind of random stuff pasted into a PDF.

main reason is, people know how to use word (create a document, save a document. send the document per email. add something you copied somewhere else). these 4 tasks are all nontrivial for ordinary users (yes, still today). but those tasks are trivial for them in word (i know others doing it in excel.. yes) so they use it for sending printscreens.

they don't even know how to save a printscreen directly as an image file and send that over. they really don't. and even if you show them, they fall back to the ordinary word-solution. why? because they use word so much (office workers do), they can't get rid of it.

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Original post by Yann L More recently, I have observed a similar trend with PDF. Especially Mac-based shops tend to send you all kind of random stuff pasted into a PDF.

I believe this is because Mac OS X comes with a PDF printer driver and makes use of this (screenshots used to default to being saved into a PDF rather than the clipboard, at least).

When I do get screenshots of things in a PDF or PowerPoint presentation (rarely a Word document) it's because the person sending it to me has used that tool to add annotations. I guess some people may just get into the habit of always doing that.

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Original post by benryves (screenshots used to default to being saved into a PDF rather than the clipboard, at least)

I don't know what it used to be like, but recent versions of Mac OS X (last 5 years or so) save screenshots as PNG files. Cmd+Shift+3 takes a full display screenshot while Cmd+Shift+4 will present you with a cursor to select a rectangular region. The images are saved to the desktop.

I think even overuse of PDF is due to the same habit as overuse of Word as a container format.

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Original post by Oluseyi I don't know what it used to be like, but recent versions of Mac OS X (last 5 years or so) save screenshots as PNG files.

It apparently used to be JPEG too. Marvellous. [grin]

The important question is: does it involve a table?

ARGH! I just got one that was a PowerPoint slide!

I actually can see why you would do this.

Some e-mail clients don't handle pasted images very well. Rather than pasting to paint, saving an image, and attaching for every SS, it's easier to go into word and paste one after another.

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Original post by Antheus The important question is: does it involve a table?

Haha! Great, and that article also links to this.

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Original post by capn_midnight ARGH! I just got one that was a PowerPoint slide!

I once saw a PowerPoint presentation with a single slide containing a .zip file.

Just yesterday I tried sending a small batch file to some QA guys at our publisher. Due to their overzealous e-mail firewall, I first tried sending it rarred, then zipped, and then finally renamed it to a txt file and told them to just rename it to a bat file. Sometimes technology is pretty aggravating.