In PowerPoint Mac: "The image part with relationship ID rid2 was not found in the file"

Several people have told us that after copy-pasting a graph or layout from Prism Mac into Powerpoint, the graph (or layout) disappears from PowerPoint and is replaced by an object border with the text "the image part with relationship ID rld2 was not found in the file'". Sometimes it says "rid1" or "rid3" or "rid4" or "rid8" or "rid25: instead of rid2.  Sometimes it says, “This image cannot currently be displayed.” 

This message appears due to a bug in Microsoft PowerPoint. If you search for that message you'll find lots of "hits" but not much clarity. One person suggested it was due to  Dropbox somehow changing the file. But at least one person has seen this message with Prism files that were never saved on a drive synched with Dropbox.  The problem seems to happen with multiple versions of Mac OS X (now Max OSX), and PowerPoint. The message also occurs with PowerPoint windows according to a Google search, but we have no had complaints about this error message on Windows. 

The problem has to do with how PowerPoint interprets or renders pdf images. If you copy/paste on a mac, you are transferring a pdf image. If you use the Send button in Prism, you are actually transferring a pdf image. 

Here are two ways to bypass the problem:

• This bug seems to happen only with bar graphs with bar fills. You can turn fil patterns off in the format graph dialog by unchecking the "fill pattern" option for all data sets.  Note that Prism 7.0a by default includes fill patterns even when bars appear to have a solid color. It superimposes a solid fill and fill pattern of the same color. Prism 7.0b is smarter, and won't superimpose same-colored fill patterns on a solid bar, so update if you use 7.0a.  
• Export the graph or layout in Prism in another format, such as TIFF or JPEG, then import I"Insert Picture") into PowerPoint.  EPS files encode fonts and vectors so are better than bitmap formats. EPS is very similar to PDF, so the same error might occur. But maybe worth a try. 

Here is a link to Microsoft's page on this issue. Right now (Nov 4, 2016) it says only that they are aware and researching, but maybe there will be more information in the future. The new MS Office for Mac "insider preview build" released on Nov. 18, 2016 fixes this problem, so presumably the fix will be in a released update before too long.