Why am I not able to copy and paste a map figure into Word

H
heena_hushen · Feb 11, 2022 · 1.9K views
Question
Why am I not able to copy and paste a map figure into Word from the Mapping Toolbox 1.2 (R12 and R12.1)? If I create a map using the Mapping Toolbox 1.2 and try to paste it into Word, the map is a bunch of black lines. I have chosen the "Word" settings using the "Figure Copy Template" from "File-->Preferences...". The following code produces a sample map that aids to reproduce the problem:   load korea worldmap korea mesh(map, maplegend) demcmap(map)  
Expert Answer
Profile picture of Neeta Dsouza
Neeta Dsouza PhD Expert
Answered Aug 15, 2026
This bug has been fixed in Release 14 Service Pack 2 (R14SP2). For previous releases, read below for any possible workarounds:
 
This is a bug in MATLAB.
 
One way to work around this problem is to export the figure as a bitmap. You can do this by choosing the option in "File-->Preferences...-->Figure Copy Template-->Copy Options-->Clipboard Format-->Bitmap", then selecting Copy Figure from the figure's Edit menu.
 
You could also use the following code to copy the figure to the clipboard.
 
print -dbitmap

Now you can paste the map from the clipboard into your Word document.

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