Pictures not showing in Word 2013, no problem with same file in word 2010

Anonymous

I have a large word file with numerous pictures inserted as TIFF files. In Word 2010, the pictures are all visible on screen and when I print them. However, when opening the same file (saved as docx or doc - I've tried both) in Word 2013 not all pictures are visible and they don't convert to pdf or print out either. It varies between which ones are and which aren't so I don't think its a problem with the pictures themselves. The pictures come up as either blank white boxes or with a little red cross and the statement 'error picture cannot be displayed'.

All files are less than half a page and therefore shouldn't be affected by the error involving multipage TIFF files that I've seen mentioned.

I've formatted them as 'tight', however I've tried the other options and this doesn't appear to change anything.

I've also been through the advanced settings options and deselected 'show pictures as placeholders'.

I'm not sure what else to do - I've tried playing around with all sorts including changing privacy options within the trust center. Any advice would be very much appreciated - I wish I'd just stuck with Word 2010!

Many thanks

Hannah

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44 answers

Suzanne S Barnhill 279.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2017-02-06T19:37:02+00:00

Did you actually read the question? OP had already done that.
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Anonymous

2016-08-05T23:52:08+00:00

Hi All:

This is one of those maddening posts that does not contain the answer (just thought I would get this in up-front...)

It would appear that there are two issues:

Hannah has (or had) a flaky file corruption which I suspect was a defect in the .rels file.

The other three seem to have a simple broken file.

If Doug had been able to get a look at Hannah’s “pre-red-X file” we would have had a better chance. I note that Hannah said she was using .TIFF files while her picture folder when Doug got in there displayed .EMZ files. I also remember that early versions of Word could not handle 48-bit TIFF files; you needed to tell the users very explicitly to ensure they did not insert anything higher than RGB (24-bit) TIFFs.

The only thing I could suggest is IF you can get hold of a pre-red-x copy of the document, save it out to .doc or RTF format in the “good” copy of Word, and re-save the RTF as .docx in the latest version of Word. This would re-write all the coding and linking and fix the file. But if you can’t get hold of an unbroken copy of the file, it’s too late to try that.

How did it happen? Who knows: but one thing almost guaranteed to cause this kind of trouble is switching between versions of Word (e.g. Word 2010 to Word 2016 and back...) frequently. Going out to open-source word-processors is another fertile source of this bother.

I'm a Mac Word MVP: The reference to Mac Word should increasingly not matter: there has been a major change to Mac Word in version 2016. The code base for Office 2016 on the Mac is now the 64-bit version of the exact same code as Windows Office 64 is running. On the Mac, various bits are currently turned off so they can present them as {Gasp! Amazement!!} “New Features” in Office 365. But it’s now the same code both sides of the divide. iOS and iPhone are, of course, different…

Sorry I can't be more definitive without a look at the file ...
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Stefan Blom 353.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2016-08-02T17:53:55+00:00

Personally, I haven't encountered any picture display/printout issue in Word that cannot be corrected using either http://wordfaqs.mvps.org/InvisibleGraphics.htm or http://wordfaqs.mvps.org/RedX.htm. Of course, the fact that it works for me doesn't prove anything; there may be a bug that I haven't noticed (because of specific combinations of hardware, software and operating system).

You could try disabling hardware acceleration in Word but you should also post a description of the problem in the Uservoice forum at http://word.uservoice.com. Be sure to include the specifics (operating system, release number for Office etc.).

In the meantime, I'll ask the Office team, via MVP channels, and see what (if anything) I can find out.
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Anonymous

2016-08-02T13:31:24+00:00

Stefan: Apologies for the incorrect conclusion. But I'm still stuck for a solution to the problem - do you have one please?
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