PowerPoint 2013: Images in presentation disappear - and are replaced with 'The image part with relationship ID rId2 was not found in the file'

Are you telling us that all current MS Office applications have been built around a core that dates back 24 years, and there has been no complete rewrite? This is horrible....

I don't think this conclusion makes sense. Otherwise why would the problem not exist when saving in Powerpoint 2003 format?

This seems a little strange to me, since I am not aware of problems with ODF, which is saved in a similar manner (zipped markup and binary files). In fact, most files can just be pushed into Dropbox without any issues. So I'm thinking that HOW the files are being saved might be the solution. A temporary workaround for MS might even be to deactivate this restoring function (which should get rid of the necessity of a temporary file or locks on files).

Yes it does seem that how the files are saved is the problem. I suspect that the file saving routing goes through multiple saving steps rather than just one straight Open -> Stream the bytes to the file -> Flush and Close, and there is a race condition somewhere which is conflicting with other programs that might be monitoring file changes. So if powerpoint is going through 2 steps for example, there is a small chance that after step 1, in that split second Dropbox or whichever cloud sync solution one uses notices that there was a change to the file, and opens the file to sync it. In the mean time powerpoint tries to open it again for step 2, maybe to save the images or something, and fails, which ends up corrupting the ppt file due to the missing image data. I don't know, its my interpretation from the behaviour I am observing. The only cloud synching software I have is Dropbox, clicking 'Pause synching' seems to reduce the chances of the problem happening.

What is most disappointing in this is that this bug has been around for a year now, and no fix has been issued. I am so paranoid about this that I am saving a new ppt file every couple of slides, ending up with 40 versions or so, just to make sure that if it gets messed up I can at least go back to a previous version. Nightmare!

Also, I believe that because the problem is partly out of MS's hands, backup utilities created by companies outside of MS, it also makes the solution harder.

This seems a little strange to me, since I am not aware of problems with ODF, which is saved in a similar manner (zipped markup and binary files). In fact, most files can just be pushed into Dropbox without any issues. So I'm thinking that HOW the files are being saved might be the solution. A temporary workaround for MS might even be to deactivate this restoring function (which should get rid of the necessity of a temporary file or locks on files).

Another point to remember is that every Office application is at it's very core a teeny-tiny (it used to be installed from a couple of 180KB(!) "floppy disks!) program written for "DOS" (ie "Single-computer" (NO NETWORKING!) ) back in the 1980's! 

Are you telling us that all current MS Office applications have been built around a core that dates back 24 years, and there has been no complete rewrite? This is horrible....

Do you have any sources for this?

I really wonder the reasons for this decision...

With all the money that Microsoft is worth, why not refund us for making this purchase?  You have sold a defective product.  And, why not allow users of the newer operating systems to install older versions of Microsoft Office since you can't produce and sell to the customer a working program?  We are entitled to some form of compensation for this trouble and money that's been spent.  We are out almost a hundred dollars because of this decision by Microsoft.

I uninstalled Picasa and I have not had the issue since. It was possibly the item that had the file locked. I use Carbonite, DropBox and One Drive. They are all still installed and running, but my files is not locked and showing the empty image container any longer. ...Oh, and I had just installed picasa when this problem occurred. I will probably reinstall it, but limit where it can index and operate.

I hope that aids the search for a solution...