Scatter‐plot marker edge color turns black when copying to PowerPoint

Hi everyone,

I’m running into a strange issue when I copy my MATLAB figure into PowerPoint and then ungroup the graphic objects. Although I explicitly set both the marker face and edge colors to red, after ungrouping in PowerPoint the marker edges always appear black. Before ungrouping in PowerPoint: markers are solid red circles (face and edge).This happens whether I use scatter or plot. Trying all of the different Copy Figure e options in the MATLAB figure window, none of these preserve the red edge color once ungrouped.

scatter(x, y, 50, 'MarkerFaceColor', 'r', 'MarkerEdgeColor', 'r');
xlabel('X');
ylabel('Y');
title('Scatter Plot with Red Markers');

or 
plot(x, y, 'o', ...
    'MarkerSize', 8, ...
    'MarkerFaceColor', 'r', ...
    'MarkerEdgeColor', 'r', ...
    'LineStyle', 'none');

Thanks in advance for any tips!

[Matt J]

Do you not see the following warning? It seems like a Microsoft thing, not a Matlab thing.

Answer 1

[Matt J]

If you download export_fig,

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/23629-export_fig?s_tid=srchtitle

and if you are on Windows, then you can copy an axes and its children as separate components to an open PowerPoint slide, like in the following.

x=rand(1,10); y=rand(1,10);

scatter(x, y, 50, 'MarkerFaceColor', 'r', 'MarkerEdgeColor', 'r');
xlabel('X');
ylabel('Y');
title('Scatter Plot with Red Markers');

copyComponents()

function copyComponents()

    h=[gca;gca().Children];
    axcol=h(1).Color;
    axlims=axis;
    h(1).Color='none';
    

    for n=1:numel(h)
    
        set(h,'Visible','off');
        h(n).Visible='on';
        axis(axlims);
        drawnow
    
        export_fig(gca,'-transparent','-clipboard','-nocrop')
    
    
        % Attach to running PowerPoint session
        ppt = actxGetRunningServer('PowerPoint.Application');
    
        % Get the active presentation
        presentation = ppt.ActivePresentation;
    
        % Get the current view and current slide index
        view = ppt.ActiveWindow.View;
        currentSlideIndex = view.Slide.SlideIndex;
    
        % Access the current slide object
        slide = presentation.Slides.Item(currentSlideIndex);
    
        % Select it
        slide.Select;
    
        % Paste from clipboard
        ppt.CommandBars.ExecuteMso('Paste');

    end
    
    set(h,'Visible','on');
    h(1).Color=axcol;

end