How to fix images not displaying in Microsoft Word 2007
Recently I’ve been hit by a bug (or what I thought was a bug) in Microsoft Word 2007: images embedded in the document did not display in any mode other than “Full Screen Reading”. And since the editing ribbons are not available in that mode, it’s hard to get work done. This all started when Word crashed on me one time; ever since then, images simply haven’t been displaying correctly. I get a border where the image should be and white space inside. But when I send the file to other people and they open it, they can view the images just fine. I can even add images to documents; I just can’t see them.
So I performed a Google search on this issue, but the only relevant “solution” was behind a paywall over at ExpertSexchange. After a few minutes of trying to figure it out on my own, I stumbled upon the solution, and to save everyone from the hell that is ExpertSexchange, here it is:
Click the Office Button (it’s in the upper left corner of Word), select “Word Options”, select “Advanced” in the left pane, scroll down to the “Show document content” subsection, and uncheck the “Show picture placeholders” option. Yes, it’s that simple. Somehow, when Word crashes, this option can get turned on all by itself. It’s really annoying because there’s no clue that Word is intentionally hiding images from you; it just feels like a bug. And the reason for this insane option?
That’s right, it’s for performance. And it improves performance only at the expense of severely crippling usability. You’d think this option should never be able to get turned on accidentally, yet there it is. At least you know the solution now.
June 26th, 2008 at 20:23
“Improve scrolling performance?”
What year is it, again?
June 26th, 2008 at 21:56
It makes me wonder what the minimum specs Office 2007 supports are. I’m guessing they’re low low low. You would have to think that a better solution would be to hide the images only when they’re scrolling? Then, if the user has scrolled to a new page that has images on it, have a timeout of a second or so before the images are rendered for display.
I’m guessing this would solve the problem a lot more nicely.
June 26th, 2008 at 23:54
I’ve used Word ’07 on some computers that were pretty much unusable if you were working on a document with pictures. I’m glad it’s there, though I didn’t know it was, I’ll definitely use it in the future.
June 27th, 2008 at 01:30
Is it just me or is there GIGANTIC whitespace desert in this post?
June 27th, 2008 at 01:40
T2A`: Alas, that’s an interaction between the floating sidebar and the wide image. If you increase your browser window’s width so that the image can fit alongside the sidebar, the “desert” will disappear. It’s a problem with this WordPress theme I’m using. I just have to be careful of not using images that are too wide to fit in typical resolutions readers will encounter.
June 27th, 2008 at 13:41
Hmm. I run Firefox in a window that’s about 1024×768 + 50px in each direction and it still doesn’t fit. I checked in Firebug and apparently the margin on the sidebar just barely overlaps with the image. D:
At some point I realized I didn’t enjoy browsing at 1680×1050 so I don’t do it anymore. Too much eye movement required, tbh.
June 28th, 2008 at 00:59
I hear what you’re saying about the horizontal eye movement. That bugs me too. Reading in narrower lines allows for faster reading, which is why newspapers are the way they are. I’m just not willing to go for such a radical departure from web convention, and I find that having a wider browser window is ultimately a bigger pro than wide text is a con.
June 28th, 2008 at 03:29
It’s not just the size, but on sites like this there’s just sooo much white that my brains start hurting. It all adds to the eye strain, and I’ve found a smaller browser window works wonders for it.
I guess my point is you should use thumbnail’d images so you don’t alienate the 1024×768 crowd. :P
August 5th, 2008 at 09:18
I had been experiencing severe problems working on Word 97-2003 files sent to me because embedded picures would not display in my Word 2007. Your straightfoward explanation of the fix, by simply unchecking the ‘show picture placeholders’ box, has really saved the day for me. Brilliant and thanks.
August 6th, 2008 at 05:22
Ha! I’d actually been wondering if anybody else didn’t like really wide lines, either. Good to know there are others. I keep my blog at about 750 pixels wide, with an extra 200 pixels of sidebar.
August 6th, 2008 at 21:35
Thank you for your solution. You’re saving my life. :)
August 15th, 2008 at 03:13
Many thanks. Needed to finish a document rapidly and then this insane function kicks in. I knew it would be a simple fix, but I find the new Word ribbons deeply un-intuitive and why the ‘Word Options’ hidden in such an obscure location. It’s like bloody Cluedo.
September 13th, 2008 at 17:32
I would sure like to know exactly what enabled this option. It wasn’t like this until recently. Thanks for the tip, I was beginning to get annoyed…
October 4th, 2008 at 03:56
Really usefull tip for just a simple fix which was difficult for me to find a few hours now.. thank you very muuuuuuch :) :) :)
October 6th, 2008 at 15:10
Oh for goodness sake. Thank you so much! It was driving me crazy trying to fix it for my boss.
November 24th, 2008 at 08:28
I’ve just had a strange problem where not just images but all elements are appearing as code, i.e. table of contents are replace by { TOC … } , hyperlinks are replaced by {HYPERLINK … }, images are { EMBED … } and {PAGE } etc. This is happening on all edit modes *exept* Full screen reading. This affects all my documents (*.doc;*docx). Fortunately this mode has an edit option so I should be able to rescue the situation.
November 24th, 2008 at 08:38
Found the answer to my problem. Word Options —> Advanced
“Show document content” section.
Untick show field codes
Untick show picture placeholders.
I think the wrong settings came in when I merged changes from an emailed document, maybe?
December 7th, 2008 at 05:40
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December 26th, 2008 at 13:05
I am running Word 2002 and had the very same problem which this solution fixed!! The only difference is the location of “picture placeholders” is under Tools/Options/View. Thanks!
Johnny B – should fix your problem with the embedded code displaying instead of the real text. Good luck!
December 31st, 2008 at 19:16
Excellent! clear concise and it works! I hate the new ‘improved’ version of office.
January 4th, 2009 at 09:26
Oh my god!
Had this bug, was driving me mental. Took me all weekend to do a couple of easy changes in a doc.
YOU are an angel , man!
Cheers for this!
January 5th, 2009 at 12:36
thanks, worked for me :)
January 7th, 2009 at 09:25
Thanks very much for this. Same happened to me a couple of weeks ago, couldn’t work out why, and it’s been driving me mad.
January 19th, 2009 at 10:22
Thanks, this has been driving me nuts in Word 2003 for the last few weeks. Lifesaver!!
January 23rd, 2009 at 13:06
Thank you so much for posting this – I’ve tried for months to resolve this problem!
January 28th, 2009 at 11:08
Worked like a charm.. Thanks for the great fix!
February 13th, 2009 at 02:36
Thanks so much. Like everyone else I have been trying to solve this problem for a while.
March 3rd, 2009 at 14:36
THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
March 9th, 2009 at 20:18
Gods bless you! :)
March 10th, 2009 at 12:31
Thank you! have been grappling with this recurring problem for months! Such a simple fix for a problem that really shouldn’t exist.
March 15th, 2009 at 00:16
Thank you.
March 22nd, 2009 at 13:16
I can not thank you enough. It have am working on a 100 plus page word document that just when white.
It would have been a nightmare if i had not found your solution!.. Many , many thanks
March 26th, 2009 at 17:24
Thanks a lot! Saved me a lot of trouble!
March 27th, 2009 at 22:25
THANK YOU VERY MUCH. IT WORKS. I’VE TRIED TO FIND THE SETTING THAT LEFT PICTURES VACANT FOR 18 MONTHS.
April 2nd, 2009 at 01:19
This is really awesome i searched in net a lot but only this site was helpful in fixing this problem….Appreciate it
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:38
I have done several searches over several months on and off to find a solution. Finally, that was so annoying.
thank you thank you thank you
April 2nd, 2009 at 12:33
I have a form of stationery in the .docx file, when i go to print i do not print the header or footer, where are the company logo and addresses and other elements of the company, can help me make print all of these elements please
April 4th, 2009 at 21:37
dude.. thanks ALOT.
here i was thinking id have to hand in my thesis on a laptop with full screen reading mode..
April 19th, 2009 at 18:42
Out of NOWHERE, when I copy an image from the Internet, I can not longer see them. I see a “box” around where the image should be. I tried reloading Word. It didn’t help. I have XP Dell, 2007 Word. Does anyone have any ideas?
Thanks much.
April 29th, 2009 at 04:17
thank you, thank you! this has been driving me mad!
May 19th, 2009 at 06:39
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May 26th, 2009 at 11:37
Never woulda thought in a million years…
Thanks for that!
June 21st, 2009 at 18:01
I just had to thank you, because this stupid “error”, bug or whatever gave me a good scare.
If you where here I would pay you a beer… thank you so mutch…
Bruno
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:07
Thank you so much for this post! Had a bunch of guys all staring at my screen trying to figure out what was wrong cause yesterday it was ok and today its bust! so relieved!!
*shakes fist at microsoft*
June 29th, 2009 at 12:05
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
June 29th, 2009 at 17:21
Thank you soooo much xD. I knew it was as simple as that and, of course, I couldn’t find the solution.
Best regards ^_^.
July 9th, 2009 at 05:30
What a legend! If you ever feel the inclination to publish such an simple solution to such a debilitating problem, do so – your solution helped so much! (after a very long time of not being able to see the images)
July 14th, 2009 at 04:04
thank you, at last the solution for that .. :)
its been making me crazy for days now..
10x
July 16th, 2009 at 09:16
Thank you very very much. It was making me crazy and I couldn’t find a solution for a long time. Thanks again. Cheers.
August 14th, 2009 at 03:45
Thanks very much, easy but you needed to find it, otherwise you think there is a bug somewhere.
August 17th, 2009 at 18:09
Thank you for taking the time to publish this solution – I’ve been knocking my head against a wall for too long on this!
August 23rd, 2009 at 06:25
Thanks man for finding time to share this remedy! Big help!
August 26th, 2009 at 01:03
Ah, the wonders of the Internet. Here it is over a year since the fix was posted and it’s still improving the lives of confused souls like me. Wonderful! And many thanks.
September 2nd, 2009 at 04:15
Thanks so much for this. Word 2007 was beginning to stress me out, but I can feel my blood pressure returning to normal levels now! :-)
September 10th, 2009 at 04:25
You made my day :)
September 13th, 2009 at 22:24
Thank you a lots , u really solved my problem. amazing!!!
September 16th, 2009 at 04:12
I accidentally clicked on this check box and saw a dumb whitespace in place of embedded pics ever since…. till I came across this nice post. Many thanx dear mate. May ur tribe increase.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:26
Thanks very much. It was driving me round the bend. I also had another symptom of the crash – dotted boxes around my text which I couldn’t get rid of. It is in the same bunch of options. “show text boundaries”. Again just uncheck it. Now I’m back to normal.
September 26th, 2009 at 14:45
Oh my gosh, I am SO glad I found your simple fix. Like Kevin (previous poster) I had other symptoms show up too — all of which absolutely drove me crazy, all of which showed up for no discernible reason, and none of which were addressed in any of the Microsoft “help” items. This has been driving me crazy for weeks. Now I’ll have to find something else to use as an excuse for being crazy! Thank you.
October 4th, 2009 at 05:14
Thanks from Bulgaria!!! :)
I have searched in Google for the solution of this problem (tried several explanations of the problem) – but couldn’t find out how to solve this issue, until I came upon here! Thank you again! Now I can go on working on my diploma project! :)))
October 5th, 2009 at 15:16
Well, this didn’t work for me.
Neither did these suggestions from Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918788
It looks like it might be my crappy on-board video “card”. *sniff* I’ll tell you, they expect a lot around here. Expecting us to actually be productive on these 5yo PCs is like expecting a carpenter to pound nails with a rock.
I did like your ExpertSexchange joke, though. I don’t pay for their answers either. Hmmm, they have a hymen…HYPHEN….in their name now….I seem to recall a few years ago it was actually http://www.expertsexchange.com.
October 5th, 2009 at 15:19
gaaak- i just wasted my valuable time typing in a response and then got your unfuckingreadable confirmation graphic, THEN on subsequent tries NO graphic. Stop wasting my time!!!!!
October 9th, 2009 at 22:03
Me too – I searched Google for the following terms ”ms word 2007 stop displaying images”, “ms word 2007 disable image printing”, “ms word 2007 print text only”, “ms word 2007 don’t print images”, “ms word 2007 turn off image printing” in a vain hope that I could find it. I guess that’s one hour of my life that I’ll never get back – how does a major software powerhouse let stuff like this slip through – it seems such an obvious one.
Hopefully, by including my search terms in this comment, somebody else will find it and not have to go through the frustration I went through.
Thanks very much for your information – helped me to solve it.
Regards,
Liam.
October 10th, 2009 at 12:03
THANK YOU SOOOOOOOOOO MUCH, JOHNY B!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
October 13th, 2009 at 16:30
Thanks!
October 15th, 2009 at 16:23
For me the option “Show drawings and text boxes” was the culprit.
Thanks for the tip.
October 15th, 2009 at 19:30
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!! Now why is it that none of those dopes at Microsoft, nor their so-called “Knowledge Base”, nor any of their so-called “Help” sites know anything about this?
October 18th, 2009 at 20:14
THANK YOU! I had this problem after Word 2003 crashed on me. I called tech support and they said I had to pay $49 to get the problem resolved. You saved me money I didn’t have!!!
October 19th, 2009 at 09:45
THANK YOU!!!!! I don’t know what I will do without people like you, publishing solutions.
so grateful.
God bless
Su
October 21st, 2009 at 20:34
Thanks!
October 23rd, 2009 at 09:04
Thank you very much!
BR
Sasa
October 26th, 2009 at 10:50
Thank you, worked well!
November 7th, 2009 at 12:12
Thank you so much for posting this! I have been so frustrated with Windows 2007 – it seems like one thing after another and none of the Microsoft help is of any use!
November 16th, 2009 at 03:39
Thank you very much.
November 24th, 2009 at 05:47
Thank you so much…. I didn’t even think it as a bug, I was about to reinstall the whole thing Again!!!…
Thank you again :)
November 24th, 2009 at 05:49
Thank you so much… I was about to reinstall the whole thing Again!!!
Thank you again :)
November 30th, 2009 at 10:36
Hey man
Thanks a lot for your time and concern, it was really a pain in the ass, especially that I had the same problem on my desktop, with Office 2003, and also I could not solve the problem, and when the people ask me why the images does not show, I claim to them that I did it on purpose to make the computer faster, but I have a big big laptop, but still I say the same thing. Thanks for saving me from embarrassment.
Salam
November 30th, 2009 at 17:09
Thank you so much bro..
that was of great help :)
December 3rd, 2009 at 17:12
AMAZING! THANKS. THIS WAS THE FIX.
December 5th, 2009 at 18:36
excellent work! did just the trick
December 7th, 2009 at 17:26
Thanks mate, was looking for the solution for over 2 weeks now. Thanks!
December 15th, 2009 at 18:55
I was really hoping this would solve my image display problem, but when I looked at the show picture placeholders it was already unchecked. Any other thoughts about why I get a little red x instead of my .bmp logo image in the header of my document?
December 17th, 2009 at 19:22
ymmd, thx! <3
December 19th, 2009 at 07:47
Thank you, it works
December 23rd, 2009 at 09:28
Thank u very much..
I was very disturbed by this problem. Thank u for the solution….
January 11th, 2010 at 23:16
this is very helpful.thats a lot for the solution.it has saved many stress
January 13th, 2010 at 10:51
You sir are a scholar and a gentleman !!! Thank you soooo much for this solution. I have been living with this issue for a while due to the fact that it just wasnt important enough for me to research. It finally annoyed me enough to do a second google search and BINGO !!! … again Thanks !!
January 13th, 2010 at 10:53
strike that, reverse it … Gentleman and a scholar !!!
January 21st, 2010 at 09:40
Wow, am I grateful! You just about saved my life – was about to go crazy needing to solve the problem fasst and not finding the solution anywhere, and then it was so simple! I have a deadline to keep, and after my computer got up and running after a crash, the time I have for the job is very limited – and then I couldn’t see the equations I needed to write in the text, only those blank boxes…. It was killing me! Thank you so much for being so generous that you save the rest of us poor souls lost in Microsoft-world! You’re great! :-)
January 24th, 2010 at 14:35
Microsoft word has been giving me fits for years with links to images.
I have a very large document with my family history in it and I insert links to hundreds of pictures by using the insert picture, from file, insert link to picture feature.
If I ever copy the directory to another computer or to a different drive, I find all the links broken. I toggle field codes to see what is wrong with the field code and the field code looks perfectly valid. The directory path and image file name is fine but I still see the rectangle with the broken link icon. The only way I have found to recover is to delete the link and re-insert the image which takes hours every time this happens.
Also, when I insert new images, it often inserts a path that is incredibly long such as ..\documents and settings\..\user\..\..\..\tmr\…
Is there another document editor out there that doesn’t have all these problems?
January 28th, 2010 at 22:11
Thank you for the information!!! I’ve no idea why this option was turned on suddenly. I’ve tried restarting MS Word again and again, restarted my computer, and bugged office MIS one whole day.
I’m short of re-installing the whole MS Office system. Your solution saved me!!
February 3rd, 2010 at 00:27
The solution worked and was to the point. Thanks very much.
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:11
Thank you for this. I was working on a 140 page doc when it crashed and thought I had lost them for good!
February 8th, 2010 at 08:28
Yup … it turned out to be genuinely that simple! Thanks.
February 12th, 2010 at 05:35
Thanks a lot……..
February 16th, 2010 at 07:39
Hello Sir,
Please help me out as well with two problems I am facing with MS Word 2007 documents.
1. When I write some text (English font), it appears perfect but when I print it, there are only special characters like !”#$%’() in the printout. I do not get any text.
2. And, second is the problem similar to what you have discussed above. I am not able to see any figure I add, but in full screen view, it is there. However, when I followed the steps, you mentioned, I found that “Show pictureplaceholder” was already unchecked in my case!
I would be very grateful if you could tell my some way out!
Thanks in advance!
February 16th, 2010 at 12:04
Thank You SO much!
February 18th, 2010 at 15:40
Argh!!!!! I have a similar problem, but my images will not display in outline mode only, fine in all other modes… !@#$%*
Jacob
February 19th, 2010 at 02:29
That was a real solution. Me also feel that this option is for better performance. But this is very annoying.. May be a bug…
Any way I have reported this is Microsoft forum… and waiting for the responses
March 8th, 2010 at 06:31
It is really a great help you did by posting this details. it saved me hell lot of time, one of my document to Client had got spoiled because of this issue, now i got back all the details.
thanks a lot for this posting and it really made a big difference.
thanks again,
Kanchana
March 8th, 2010 at 21:08
wow, this was driving me nuts on several computers! many thank ye’s good sir
March 9th, 2010 at 10:53
Thank you so much! Like you, I thought it was a bug, especially since the Picture Tools – Format ribbon doesn’t appear any more. I was getting ready to uninstall Word and re-install because I thought a major piece of functionality had been corrupted. Thanks again!
March 25th, 2010 at 13:43
If any IT folks are reading this, there is a Group Policy setting that you can apply for this as well.
Thanks for posting this!
March 31st, 2010 at 11:15
Thank you thank you thank you! This had all my company templates messed up!
April 2nd, 2010 at 01:37
Hey Really help full man Keep posting such great solution………U have great working time
April 14th, 2010 at 17:10
I would like to thank the gentleman who gave the solution to “pictures not showing in Word 2007 by eliminating the mark in “show picture placeholder” because he saved me a lot of time. It is very seldom that i can fix something wrong with a Microsoft product goind directly to Microsoft.
April 22nd, 2010 at 01:48
Thanks a lot…Dis was screwing ma work big tym!..thanks again…
April 22nd, 2010 at 10:22
Thanks for this! I thought there was some issue with my pc or word installation. Big time saver.
May 4th, 2010 at 05:14
thx it help me a lot preventing form reinstalling office
May 4th, 2010 at 09:00
Ben, you really are a great helper.
I’ve been experiencing this problem for a couple of weeks. I’ve even reinstaled the office and was getting very frustated with this problem.
Thank you verymuch for sharing this issue. God bless you, Man.
May 7th, 2010 at 13:22
Thanks alot….
I Reinstalled, but it didn’t help anything… I wish I had seen this a bit earlier, but thanks alot…
May 16th, 2010 at 03:29
Thank you so much. You saved me from so much trouble
May 17th, 2010 at 04:42
thanku very much for you solution (insrting image in word 2007) without you i could not do so. instead i resort to word 2003. so thank you very much
May 17th, 2010 at 06:02
Hi TQ so much…your instruction is so much easy to follow..and I can see the picture again…:)
May 17th, 2010 at 08:28
Legend! Had exactly the same problem. Much appreciated.
May 26th, 2010 at 03:46
I tried installing office again but this problem still persisted…. Thanks a lot for these instructions.. Really helped..!!
June 3rd, 2010 at 10:30
Thank you very much for this fix.
June 6th, 2010 at 12:23
I have frequenty run into this problem whereby links to images seem to get lost and you see a check box with a red X followed by “The linked image cannot be displayed. The file may have been moved, renamed, …”
This will occur if you change the name of any folder in the path to the images, but I have seen this without any changes being made. Word just seems to lose the link somehow. I fixed this by clicking on Office Button -> Prepare -> Edit Links to Files. All the linked objecs are listed and the path is shown below the links window. If you use Table of Figures, those links will appear the list above the links to images. You can select a specific item in the list or better just highlight all the ones you want to update or change path (click on first one then go to the bottom and Shift-click to highlight a range or all images). Then either: click Update Now (if path to images is correct) or Change Source which allows you to select the correct path to the images.
June 20th, 2010 at 00:15
Thank you so much for sharing this. I was scared my work was corrupted.
June 22nd, 2010 at 11:10
Thank you very much – have been struggling with this for a couple of hours since Word crashed in me (again – nothing strange there)!. thankyou.
June 22nd, 2010 at 23:40
thnx so much! you saved me a while of wondering what da heck was that problem
June 28th, 2010 at 10:51
Thank you so so much!!! for your solution. its been great help.
June 29th, 2010 at 11:25
Sweet fancy moses. I think you just prevented blood from shooting out of my eyes. Every time I wind up on a page like ExpertSexchange my already endangered brain cells are damaged further. Also, laughing might have saved my day. THANKS!
June 30th, 2010 at 10:05
You’d think the brain-dead developers at MS would think to put a checkbox for this on the VIEW menu, so you could turn it on and off as-needed. If you are jumping around a large document with lots of graphics on a slow machine, you could just turn it off- just like you can with the ruler and the gridlines. Idiots.
July 1st, 2010 at 14:12
While we’re on the subject of Word 2007 bugs–
I recently upgraded to Word 2007 from Word 2003. Oddly, I’m finding that sometimes when I type, some letters are either not appearing on the screen or are appearing only after a brief time lag. It doesn’t seem to happen all the time, but enough of the time to have become a most annoying problem. It’s not a computer issue, because the problem does not occur outside of Word; nor did it ever occur with Word 2003. I Googled the problem and discovered that other people have had similar experiences. Unfortunately, no one had a satisfactory solution. Can anyone help?
July 6th, 2010 at 22:07
Thanks… You just saved my bacon….. I thought I had lost everything. This is close to thedumbest option I have ever seen.
July 8th, 2010 at 04:44
Thank you!!! I thought the documents I had been working on had become unusable and was wondering if I needed to reinstall Word or something equally dramatic…
July 11th, 2010 at 12:28
Thank you. Facing this problem quite some time. Crazy MO.
July 12th, 2010 at 14:58
Whew
Thank you so much… This was driving me batty
July 16th, 2010 at 09:38
the PITA website you’re referring to, shouldn’t that be ExpertSexChange.com ? ;-)
just for the record, those expertsexchange links are less than useless.
thanks for the tip!
July 19th, 2010 at 15:10
Still doesn’t work.
i needed to cut and paste one image fromone document to another,
i need the image to be “behind text”.
it’s behind text alright, but all the text acts as though it is highlighted in a white color.
it shows wierd white bars that go in front of the image for every line of text.
there’s no highlighting turned on, and i tred all these steps.
this was never an issue in word 2003
-thanks in advance,
-sara
July 19th, 2010 at 16:24
I had the same problem…
After uncheck the “Show picture placeholders” it looks good…
Thanks
July 20th, 2010 at 16:28
Johnny B, Nov 28, 2008: thank you so much, I had the exact same problem, totally solved it.
July 29th, 2010 at 21:52
Thank you so much! You just saved me from damaging company property. =)
August 8th, 2010 at 08:02
after googling for FIVE minute i found that the issue is due to picture placeholder option, but couldnt find the way to reach it…
Thanks alot.. You save my time.
August 10th, 2010 at 11:54
Thanks a bunch. Just FYI for me this option seems to have been “abled” after installing drivers for microsoft mouse. I am a Windows fan but glitches like this make me wonder.
August 12th, 2010 at 19:17
THANK YOU!!! That has been driving me crazy for the last couple of days, and all people kept saying was “I dunno, maybe you should re-install MS Office.” By the way, if you also un-select the “Show Text Boundaries” box in the same menu, you also get rid of that annoying box.
August 13th, 2010 at 15:56
Thanks a lot. I was that close to reinstalling….
Thanks Again
August 17th, 2010 at 02:11
I’m encounterring a problem with my Word 2007 —- Its “Look-Up” feature is disfunctioning. I’d be grateful if anyone could tell me how to resume the function. The Look-Up feature comes up while left-clicking the mouse, it acts similar to a online dictionary—- handy and useful for look-up a word. Thanks and expecting someone to help me. jh
August 18th, 2010 at 10:21
Two years later this post is still useful. Thanks for providing a simple fix for this stupid problem. Word’s behaviour is just inexplicable sometimes.
August 20th, 2010 at 08:36
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!
August 26th, 2010 at 09:15
Excellent, THANKS! After my document crashed, I could only see the code values for all of my citations and automatic tables, such as contents, bibliography, etc. The solution was only a few checkboxes down in ‘show field codes instead of their values’, if that’s useful to anyone. Very relieved!
August 27th, 2010 at 04:19
Thank you. For me, the problem is same. But, the filed “Show picture placeholders” mentioned here already unchecked. After comparing all the fields, field “show field codes instead of their values”(last one in “show document content”) is checked. After unchecked this field, i am able to see the images.
August 30th, 2010 at 07:47
thumbs up!
September 6th, 2010 at 02:49
Thanks for the help. I faced exact same problem the solution worked for me.
September 15th, 2010 at 06:05
Since last one month i had been facing this problem and now it is solved, thanks a lot, even due to this problem, my microsoft outlook express was also showing this problem, this too is now resolved.
September 16th, 2010 at 00:59
Super! Have the same problem here so i’m really grateful for this post/solution.
September 17th, 2010 at 08:53
Thanks for saving my bacon!
September 23rd, 2010 at 05:53
Great tip. Thanks very much. Received a file from the client and was having this exact problem. The setting is found in Preferences/view on Mac OSX.
September 25th, 2010 at 02:59
I have recently upgraded to 2007 from 2003 an have been puzzling over this problem for weeks. What bugged me was that when you resized the picture, it re-appeared like magic, then disappeared again! However, what puzzles me even more is why I didn’t look to the web sooner. Many thanks for the fix
September 26th, 2010 at 05:57
Hi Everyone.
Please help … I have this image problem that I copied and pasted into my Word 2007 document, it appears as cropped image (somehow the image was cropped to appear only 1/9th of the full image).
It used to work fine but somehow one day it doesn’t work anymore. I am so desperate that I have resorted to Reset Word to Factory Setting by deleting the entire keys from “HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Office/12.0/Word”. Basically I deleted the “Word” folder that contains the entire keys. Even doing so, I still have this problem …
Could someone please help …
Regards
September 27th, 2010 at 11:38
Oh my god – THANK YOU!
Literally saved my life, was writing my dissertation (that iss due in in three days) and it crashed and then this happened!!! Was about to cry because all the graphs and tables were saved in various word documents and nowhere else – was about to have a panic attack! WOO! p.s. microsoft are so stupid – hiding my pictures did not help me AT ALL!!!
September 27th, 2010 at 14:33
This saved my IT group from replacing my computer. I was going to “drop” it down the stairwell…
Cheers!
September 29th, 2010 at 00:52
THANK YOU! The Microsoft web page on solving this problem was crap. Your post was spot-on. Thanks again!
October 3rd, 2010 at 09:19
A really helping article for those who are searching for Microsoft Word Help online. Looking forward to hear more from you in near future..
October 6th, 2010 at 05:40
Really help, this problme bother me several days and find no solution to it… There are really a great change for word 2007, but with much more bug and problmes…
October 6th, 2010 at 13:19
OMG thanks!!! I thought it my template got corrupted or something, then it happened on both computers! Finally tried to google it. My word has been crashing lately, so I guess it turns on that option. THANKS SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
October 8th, 2010 at 09:40
This bug is driving me nuts! With me Word is only displaying the bottom of the image !#?!?! – I tried your fix and word would still not display the image correctly.
Oddly enough when I changed styles it “fixed” the problem!
October 12th, 2010 at 08:59
Thanks for the feedback, i was really worried initially that i stumbled across some new bug and had to reinstall office
October 13th, 2010 at 03:00
Ecellent!!!!!! Thank you!!!
October 14th, 2010 at 02:37
Not able to understand & going mad about the behaviour of MSWORD suddenly – until yesterday it was displaying all the images… Thanks for the post…
October 21st, 2010 at 06:45
Thanxx so much, mate!
I’m a Product Manager at AT&T, and working with documents and images all day long.
I’ve been suffering from this problem for ages, and have beed too lazy to look for a solution.
I found a “solution” on Microsoft support: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918788
But it solves nothing!!
My life is so much better now :)
October 22nd, 2010 at 10:19
Thanks very much for posting this fix. You’ve saved me from a lot of time and aggravation in trying to solve such a mysterious little annoyance.
October 23rd, 2010 at 17:35
Thanks for the fix that got my pix back in my Word documents! I don’t know how that parameter got a check mark, just in the last day or two! Some evil MS genie I guess. I found nothing in Word’s “Help” stuff.
October 29th, 2010 at 01:22
Thank you very much, I’ve been facing this problem for a long time, now its fixed after doing as told above.
November 10th, 2010 at 04:08
Thanx!!! You are the best!
November 12th, 2010 at 05:24
thank you sooooooooooooooooooooooo much. God bless you:)
November 22nd, 2010 at 02:42
Help! This is happening to me in Word 2010. The box for “show picture placeholder” is already unchecked. It’s driving me nuts. The images only show in Full Screen Reading, or Outline modes. What else can I do????
November 22nd, 2010 at 08:21
thank you for this post.. it really helped me..
November 28th, 2010 at 02:19
I was in serious problem with this. Many Thanks for your GREAT help….
November 29th, 2010 at 08:50
its indeed that simple and it worked like a charm …. thanx
November 30th, 2010 at 04:45
I thought I was screwed. THANKS!!!
December 2nd, 2010 at 19:02
THANK YOU!!! You just put an end to my 2 days of word misery!!!!
December 12th, 2010 at 20:43
Thank you! That was so annoying, and I didn’t know if my images were showing up in my lab reports to my professor – and I was too afraid to ask, lol. Thanks for the post.
December 13th, 2010 at 06:36
Thank you so much… had been searching for the solution on Google – found links behind payment, so didnt care to go further – but the experience continued to be irritating. I think (logically concluding) that it happens when you try to set your machine for high performance.
Thanks again!
December 17th, 2010 at 08:21
Thanks for the solution. Indeed it was helpful
December 18th, 2010 at 05:51
Thank you a lot.
December 28th, 2010 at 11:04
Thanks a lot!!!!!! i am really fed up with office 2007 products
January 7th, 2011 at 03:40
You saved my sanity, and helped me make an editing deadline. I wish you endless karmic blessings, not least because your explanation was a thousand times clearer than Microsoft’s! Happy Year of the Rabbit from Taiwan –
Val C
January 7th, 2011 at 14:04
Thanks. I’ve had this issue for ages.
January 13th, 2011 at 13:12
whoah! thanks so much! My problem was actually that the “show field codes instead of their values” box was checked somehow; that option is also buried under the “Show document content” section on the Advanced tab. I had NO idea that was even there. You’d think they’d have a link to those settings off the View tab on the ribbon. Go figure. Anyways, thanks again for helping me figure out what was wrong!!
January 13th, 2011 at 21:39
Thank you very much for this article. My problem was exactly the same; my MS word crash because of my Trados program. I have scour around in word options for hours looking for solution. Thank you again :)
January 20th, 2011 at 07:43
Thank you so much for taking the time to share this. This had been driving me mental, and I simply could not find the solution anywhere.
Once again the distinction between “bug” and “feature” is not blindingly obvious!
Again, thanks so much for sharing. You’ve saved me a lot of time and frustration. Just tried it and it works.
January 25th, 2011 at 00:36
Thank you very much, I’ve just thought that is a bug of MS Words, but try to find clue by Google (and it works).
Don’t know when and why it’s set automatically but now the problem is solved. Thanks.
January 25th, 2011 at 12:00
THANKS. It hit me just as I was finalising a book with about 80 images. The panic was indescribable when I thought I had lost them all.
January 26th, 2011 at 11:59
Same here, with Word 2010. In the middle of polishing a paper with equations and a few diagrams, they vanish and these blocks show up. Multiple Google searches yielded nothing until I found yours. And I had looked at those options, but obviously not carefully enough. Thanks much! I hate Word with a passion (and don’t use it myself), but I have to work with others … .
January 30th, 2011 at 20:13
Thanks. Have wondered about this for a while – a rather odd “feature”.
January 31st, 2011 at 17:27
Thank you too! As a side note, I had to completely close out all Word documents and re-open Word in order for the “uncheck” to take effect. I found this out only after checking, okaying, printing, and unchecking, okaying, printing several times.
I originally thought optimal scrolling to be a good thing. blah. Thanks again.
February 1st, 2011 at 05:22
Thanks
February 1st, 2011 at 22:26
Other people want to buy you a beer – why not put up a Paypal button so people can donate as a thank you. You deserve it. Thanks.
February 3rd, 2011 at 08:35
Thank man, frustration is over
February 4th, 2011 at 10:49
Thank you. I had not figured that out my self – and the Microsoft help site was not any help at all.
February 6th, 2011 at 14:11
I cannot tell you how grateful I am that you posted this. THank you so much.
February 8th, 2011 at 04:26
Thank you so much! Stupid setting
February 10th, 2011 at 04:52
Thanks for this, it started happening to me yesterday, not following Word crashing, but in the middle of writing a document, the images suddenly disappeared.
All better now though – thanks again
L
February 11th, 2011 at 21:57
LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
February 21st, 2011 at 02:00
thanks a lot for this!!!
February 21st, 2011 at 13:14
Thanks!!! Frustration is over
February 22nd, 2011 at 22:54
THANK YOUUUUUUU !!!!!!
February 27th, 2011 at 10:51
Thanks for that!!! All you info is still VERY RELEVANT. I was ok until a crash.
March 1st, 2011 at 04:46
Thank you so much.I was really getting stressed with this problem.I even had office re-installed.Now I can work.God bless you
March 8th, 2011 at 04:57
Thanks a lot . I was thinking of uninstalling 2007 and going to 2003.
March 8th, 2011 at 09:45
you make may day..thank you
March 8th, 2011 at 19:55
Thank You SO MUCH!!
This just saved me hours of time and a headache from banging my head on the table repeatedly, trying to figure out.
I agree, what a stupid option, and Why does it change after MSWord crashes.
(I also like the reference to the “expert” pay for information site… very very funny!)
March 10th, 2011 at 21:54
Thank you!
This “feature” was really starting to rile me. Improve scrolling performance me arse!
March 17th, 2011 at 17:44
Thanks for this fix, it also works in Word 2003, Tolls, Options, View, under SHOW uncheck Picture Placeholders. Thanks so much. It is hard to believe that something so stupid could be so easy to fix, yet so hidden by Microsoft. No wonder they have so many fans. What is a Picture placeholder anyway ? Is this some new language ?
March 17th, 2011 at 23:15
Thanks for this fix. I spend many time to fix this problem and I search on Google and read this page. It is great. Thank so much. I love you! :-)
March 21st, 2011 at 15:48
great… i got fixed :)
March 22nd, 2011 at 13:20
Thank You so much from Paris !!!
You just saved me hours of time and a headache, trying to figure out :-)
March 27th, 2011 at 07:56
Great tip.
Clear, Straight to the point and more importantly worked first time.
thanks
Zarar
March 28th, 2011 at 11:40
Thanks alot! i was very close reinstalling ms word… stupid bug that is.
March 28th, 2011 at 12:00
This fix also applies to Word 2010. I had our Service Desk L1-2 work on this issue can could not fix it. Your resolution did the job. Keep this available!
March 29th, 2011 at 09:26
I was about to have a heart attach!!! My final year project and all its 100 + images all white, 22.000words and 78 pages…before I hanged myself I thought to count until 10, reboot the pc and have a break…then I found you.
Thank you! You same me and my family, to whom I would be grumpy all week…usability testing!
Carla
April 4th, 2011 at 08:01
Thanks a lot, I had that same problem, was re-installing MS Office, problem still there! Finally found your hint! Thank you!
April 5th, 2011 at 17:46
OMG THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH!!!!! This has been the bane of my existence!
April 8th, 2011 at 02:23
Thanks a lot..!!!
This is crazy.. I spent a few hours searching for a solution to this problem, in options page, and couldn’t locate it..!!!
There are ways to improve scrolling performance without doing this…
I still think it is a bug in word, and Microsoft, instead of solving the real problem decided to hide under a stupid option..
–
April 15th, 2011 at 15:57
Thanks for the solution…but why do MS insist on making their products *so* unusable. This is why I continue to use Office 2003!
Even finding the ‘Options’ option isn’t straightforward. I hope MS have learnt that this is just a disaster of UI design
April 18th, 2011 at 00:43
Thank you very much for publishing this :)
April 19th, 2011 at 22:46
Works for word 2010 aswell.. No idea how it got changed, but those settings were to blame for no pictures except in full screen or print mode.
May 6th, 2011 at 02:27
Thank you for this. You saved me time
May 9th, 2011 at 19:41
Thank you so much. Thought it was just me, but you’ve saved my Sanity.
So, why is this still an issue with MS Word? Why haven’t MS fixed this bug?
May 10th, 2011 at 09:42
Google you beauty!!! Was going nuts here
May 13th, 2011 at 02:41
Thanks a lot for sharing such a useful information. I was about to give a presentation to the business team and your sharing made it correct.
May 13th, 2011 at 10:31
I’d like to echo all the compliments that others have paid – you’re very generous and my blood pressure has gone down several notches as the result of sorting out this problem! Thank you, thank you
May 14th, 2011 at 03:52
For a whole year i had to work my documents in print preview to view the imges or change the text wrapping style of the images (from the default “in line with text”) to be able to work on the images. This is excellent.
Thanks so much
May 19th, 2011 at 04:41
Great works well
May 24th, 2011 at 10:48
I had a similar problem in Word 2003. I found the same checkbox under Tools/Options/View. I unchecked the “Pictures Placeholders” box, and now I can see my images. Thanks!
May 24th, 2011 at 12:53
Thank you so much for this article.
May 24th, 2011 at 14:14
thanks, i can’t believe this happens – it started today in the middle of meeting presentation.
May 24th, 2011 at 16:47
Thanks so much…I was going crazy with this. I thought I just blew all the specs I had been working on. This is by far the most useful article I’ve ever read on the Internet!! On a usefullness scale from 0-10 you rate a 20! :=)
May 25th, 2011 at 00:41
Thanks! I finally got fed up enough to search for an answer. It started a few months ago in Word 2010.
May 25th, 2011 at 05:14
1 000 thanks !!
Sure, whart a pleasure not to depens on ExpertSexchange !!!
May 27th, 2011 at 16:42
This site is very I got rid of my long standing issue in Work :)
June 2nd, 2011 at 00:15
You Have saved my time and effort.
GREAT HELP
thanks,
Saad
June 7th, 2011 at 07:50
Brilliant! It worked first time. Only problem:- when I printed it out I got 27 pages of comments from over 200 satisfied customers, over a 3 year period. But this is a small price to pay for eliminating extreme aggravation. However, why have Microsoft STILL not fixed this bug.
June 7th, 2011 at 22:53
Thank you so much for the resolution…..really saved me so much bother!!!
June 8th, 2011 at 17:58
THANK YOU! I accidentally checked the box when trying to create a report with pictures then couldn’t figure out what I had done to cause this to happen!
June 12th, 2011 at 14:34
THANK YOU!!
June 20th, 2011 at 10:32
Thank you very much, you really saved me from the hell :))
June 23rd, 2011 at 00:26
It did not work for me. But after some investigation I saw that ” show drawings and text boxes” is not checked for me. I checked and it worked.
thanks for pointing me to the right place
June 25th, 2011 at 19:47
THANK YOU VERY MUCH! You solved my problem.
June 27th, 2011 at 17:25
Hah! Been stumbling with Word 2007 for 3 mo now, thanks for this! Now maybe I can walk again!
June 29th, 2011 at 02:45
Thank you!
June 29th, 2011 at 22:56
Wow, this is awesome. Thanks so much. Was going head over heels over this issue!
June 30th, 2011 at 06:49
Pheew,
It took me 2 months and i was suffering in silence till i bumped into your website.
Thanks
June 30th, 2011 at 11:59
Just… Thank you !!
July 4th, 2011 at 06:25
I have an issue with image copied from Thunderbird mail to Word 2002 doc, picture will not display, only the border – I have gone to tools, options, view but ‘picture placeholders’ was already unchecked! I have played around with checking and unchecking some of the other boxes but have not found the solution yet…
Is there any other reason it will not display?!!
(Unfort cannot save image from the mailbox as does not give me this option when imbedded)
July 14th, 2011 at 09:07
This did NOT work for me.
Here’s what solved the problem on my XP machine running Office 2007:
Internet Explorer was set to work offline. Yeah, Internet Explorer! What it has to do with Outlook beats me! But setting IE to work online solved the problem.
Here’s how:
Start Internet Explorer
Click File
Uncheck “Work Offline”
Wow. What a PITA this was!
July 23rd, 2011 at 01:55
Thanks mate .. was really helpful !!!
August 10th, 2011 at 06:21
I cannot thank you enough. I spend ages over this and kept going back to it. So pleased I stumbled across your website. Thank you
August 10th, 2011 at 08:10
Thank you so much! I’ve been plagued by this problem for almost a year! I couldn’t find a clear answer anywhere!
Thank you again and again!
August 10th, 2011 at 20:26
Thanks, I’ve had this problem forever and was never able to figure out how to fix it. You’re awesome!
August 14th, 2011 at 16:42
Thanks a lot:) Stupid Microsoft people should have put “placeholders INSTEAD OF pictures”. Obviously the billions are not enough to hire people with BRAINS.
August 15th, 2011 at 17:41
Excellent! This was exactly my problem and this was the solution! Julie said it: You are awesome! Thanks!!!
August 18th, 2011 at 08:07
Thank you , this solved my problem !
August 21st, 2011 at 16:44
Thanks!
August 24th, 2011 at 21:24
This helped find the problem, which was one of the other check boxes in the same area. Thank you.
August 28th, 2011 at 13:18
Thanks! What a silly option to have in there! Great that you took your time to upload your solution to the net!
September 2nd, 2011 at 11:08
Thanks for such a nice article. I am woring on a project and on ciritical path. I found this aritcle very very helpful. I also searched other aritcles but none of them solved the issue in Microsoft Office 2007.
Thanks again.
September 8th, 2011 at 09:11
Thank you!!!!
September 8th, 2011 at 10:18
Very very helpful indeed! Thanks! A lot! And much better and relevant than stupid MS-Support ;)
September 9th, 2011 at 02:35
Thanks a lot, now i releved from such a head ache
September 12th, 2011 at 11:07
thanks a lot, i was really struggling to get rid of it…
September 13th, 2011 at 23:17
My file was saved in word 2003, I’m now using 2007. My problem is a large black rectangle where the picture should be, when I tick “show picture placeholders” it goes white! When I try the file in earlier versions of Word it is perfectly ok. Any ideas on this? I’ve now saved the picture separately in an earlier version and re-embedded it into the 2007 file.
September 23rd, 2011 at 01:54
Thanks..was really useful
September 26th, 2011 at 09:39
I thought i was doomed – thank you!!!!
September 27th, 2011 at 10:05
You are brilliant. You just saved me so much hassle and i was thinking my documents have all gone for a toss!!! Thanks!
September 29th, 2011 at 18:45
Cyde,
Props to you for pointing me in the right direction … However, the true checkbox that fixed the my slightly different issue of CODE being displayed in TOC and the places where images and Field Variable Values were to be displayed is controlled by a different setting.
“Show field codes instead of their values” is the setting that I found “Checked” when it should have been “Unchecked” following a Word Crash … same scenareo that caused your issue.
Once I cleared the checkbox, the TOC and all embedded Images and Field Variable Values appear in the familiar WYSIWYG format we have all come to depend upon when creating documents.
So, perhaps you can post an additional screenshot with that setting highlighted as an alternative root cause for this behavior or start a separate thread on this similar but slightly different topic. Of course, we may never know the true root cause for how this symptom comes into being from a simple application crash, but perhaps it’s a throw back to the days of when the “normal.dot” file would get corrupted rather easily and then word didn’t function at all … in this case, I suspect a bad normal.dot (but not so bad as to disable Word completely) which is were all these settings are held in the first place. I’ll leave that digging to someone who has more time. Ü
Thanks for helping me find the right area to start looking. I was getting ready for a reinstall which probably would have left me right where I started. Now I can go back to earning my paycheck. Cheers!
October 2nd, 2011 at 00:59
THANK YOU! ACH! I’ve been struggling with this all day!!! You’re awesome for posting this! <3
October 3rd, 2011 at 14:24
You’re a genius. I stumpled upon the same solution but via a different channel from within Outlook:
1. Open a new email message as if to send, but don’t.
2. In top left corner of message window left click the Office Button
3. In lower right corner of pop up, left click “editor options” / NOTE: if you search on “outlook email editor options” within Outlook help, you get no results.
4. In editor options pop up, select Advanced in left column. (looks different from posted above)
5. Scroll down to Display Email Content.
6. Make sure “Show Picture Placeholders” is NOT checked.
7. Make sure “Show Drawings and Text Boxes on Screen” is checked.
8. Click OKAY at bottom right of pop up. That takes you back to original blank message.
9. Escape out of the message without saving.
10. Go to inbox and select a message with graphics to see if it worked.
11. It should work. If it doesn’t, try exiting Outlook and restarting it.
12. If that doesn’t work, go to Outlook Tools/Trust Center/Automatic Downloads/ (again) and make sure that “Don’t download pictures automatically in HTML …” selection box is NOT checked. Click Okay and get out of there. if that doesn’t work, you have my sympathy.
Just want to post this because it was SO AGGRAVATING tying to find the answer, this might increasethe chances of a search finding your page.
October 11th, 2011 at 12:08
Thanks for posting this! :)
October 11th, 2011 at 13:20
Thank you so much for taking the time to post this solution. This “bug” has been annoying me for almost a year and saved me having our computer guy re-configure the profile on my computer.
Thanks!
October 12th, 2011 at 10:58
You are my HERO!!! No, really, you’re my HERO. I’ve been struggling with this problem for so long and finally could no longer take it. I googled “unable to view images in word”, and there you were waiting to solve my problem. Thanks so very much!!!
October 20th, 2011 at 15:13
This applies to office 2010 as well. THANK YOU, I PULLED MY HAIR OUT FOR HOURS TRYING TO FIND THIS
October 24th, 2011 at 00:39
Thank you SO much for this!!! Not sure how that option became set, but it’s been driving me up the wall!!!!!
I’m using Word 2011 on a Mac; never even realized that option existed until reading your post.
October 31st, 2011 at 00:03
thank you! it works :D
November 11th, 2011 at 01:09
thanks a ton for this. this has been driving me crazy for some time now
November 21st, 2011 at 06:48
great..
November 25th, 2011 at 06:17
Thanks A lot…. i already open many sources, but this is the best and the shortest answer that i’ve ever seen… it works….
November 26th, 2011 at 19:16
Thank you!! I was really upset about this issue but now is oK thanks to your post, :)
November 27th, 2011 at 10:47
Thank you so much. you have saved me so much trouble. I was so upset and frustrated with the problem. the solution was so easy. Thanks a ton.
November 28th, 2011 at 09:49
Hi … I would like to say your solution worked but sadly it did not. I am pasting an Excel pie chart into this Word document. when pasted, I get a portion of a thin black border and nothing else. Ideas? Thanx
November 29th, 2011 at 23:24
Thanks Cyde.
This post has really helped me.
December 8th, 2011 at 11:45
Thanks! Very helpful, this bug had annoyed me for a long time…
December 8th, 2011 at 13:38
So…I’ve done this and it DID NOT CHANGE A THING! Any more suggestions?
Thanks!
December 8th, 2011 at 14:24
This TOTALLY worked for me!!!
You’re a genius. I stumpled upon the same solution but via a different channel from within Outlook:
1. Open a new email message as if to send, but don’t.
2. In top left corner of message window left click the Office Button
3. In lower right corner of pop up, left click “editor options” / NOTE: if you search on “outlook email editor options” within Outlook help, you get no results.
4. In editor options pop up, select Advanced in left column. (looks different from posted above)
5. Scroll down to Display Email Content.
6. Make sure “Show Picture Placeholders” is NOT checked.
7. Make sure “Show Drawings and Text Boxes on Screen” is checked.
8. Click OKAY at bottom right of pop up. That takes you back to original blank message.
9. Escape out of the message without saving.
10. Go to inbox and select a message with graphics to see if it worked.
11. It should work. If it doesn’t, try exiting Outlook and restarting it.
12. If that doesn’t work, go to Outlook Tools/Trust Center/Automatic Downloads/ (again) and make sure that “Don’t download pictures automatically in HTML …” selection box is NOT checked. Click Okay and get out of there. if that doesn’t work, you have my sympathy.
Just want to post this because it was SO AGGRAVATING tying to find the answer, this might increasethe chances of a search finding your page.
Thanks so much cause it was driving me CRAZY!
December 14th, 2011 at 02:04
Great.. It works! Finally sorted out what was a pain in the neck. I remember few days ago the word 2007 crashed and I guess that’s when it happened..
Many thanks again
December 20th, 2011 at 17:08
thank you!!! if only I read this before uninstalling and installing again the entire office enterprise :-)
December 22nd, 2011 at 19:03
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. One of my users was having issues with Word not displaying images, and it turned out to be the next checkbox down which had somehow unchecked itself: “Show drawings and text boxes on screen”
December 23rd, 2011 at 10:01
Thanks so much. This option was turned on in Word when default settings were restored on my Outlook to fix a different problem that appeared with my new desktop.
December 27th, 2011 at 21:55
Thank you so much, my Word crashed because I was trying to modify the styles. I was planning to reinstall it if no solution was found.
January 10th, 2012 at 02:21
This other MS Word solutions (including those posted all through this thread): did not work for me. This is causing me HOURS and HOURS of extra work. For those who this Didn’t help, have you found a solution?
January 11th, 2012 at 16:45
Awesome! You just saved my sanity. All other generic solutions failed! Thanks!
January 12th, 2012 at 00:57
Thank you!! Thank you!! Thank you!! You are an angel!!!
I had a user manual submission today and my screenshots just disappeared like that after a crash.
Was just working up the courage to ask for one more time when your solution saved the day!!
January 18th, 2012 at 18:55
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
i was tearing my hair out this afternoon!
holly
January 25th, 2012 at 09:41
My IT guys said we have to reinstall WORD!!!
Thanks a lot!
February 6th, 2012 at 22:30
Million thanks mate… I was doing everything possible to bring the images back… Repair word, Reinstall word.. nothing worked. I dont why reinstall didnt work… that should reset all options right?? anyway… thanks alot… :)
February 8th, 2012 at 11:01
Thanks
धन्यवाद्
Vielen Dank
शुक्रिया
February 8th, 2012 at 12:39
Thank you so much! I have been trying to figure out what’s wrong with my computer for a couple of weeks now. I performed searches but found nothing until I finally found this. Such a simple thing to fix and I just had no idea.
February 19th, 2012 at 00:15
This was a big help, but that box was not checked on my machine. However, when I looked at it full screen I could FINALLY see the images. The box up at the right of the screen that says “show options” has a selection I clicked on that says allow typing. When I selected that, it allowed me to click on what I wanted to delete, and then I hit “backspace” and got rid of it, then went on to the next hidden image. I don’t know WHY that happened, but my blood pressure is down about 20 points thanks to this great solution.
February 21st, 2012 at 15:27
WORD 2010: I found a similar problem that will also cause pictures to not display. On my computer, the picture wasn’t showing up, and instead it was showing { HYPERLINK C:\filename.jpg }. We tried the “show pictures placeholders” solution above but it did not solve the problem.
A different message board said to ALSO UNCHECK “Show field codes instead of their values”. This was checked on my machine and it caused the problem. The effect was it was not showing the value (the picture) it was showing the field code (the file extension). Not sure how this got checked in the first place, but make sure that *both* “show pictures” and “show field codes” are BOTH UNCHECKED.
February 29th, 2012 at 11:31
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!! You are a life saver!!! I’ve been working around this issue for months now. Even resorted to printing things just to see the images are.
March 6th, 2012 at 16:16
Four years later and still changing lives. Thanks!
March 14th, 2012 at 10:42
THANK YOU SO SO SO OOOOOOOOO MUCH !!!! Really thanks.In my document nearly i have 100+ ScreenShots, suddenly those all are not appearing but in the print preview those are appearing.I got very confused and i have only 2 day left to prepare that whole document….luckily i got your solution…thanks for your great solution.
March 15th, 2012 at 03:41
Thanks sir.. Funny Microsoft playing on the users mind..
You saved my day!
March 16th, 2012 at 06:16
THANK YOU SO SO SO OOOOOOOOO MUCH !!!!
March 19th, 2012 at 17:58
Thanks boss for putting up this article , you really solved my problem
March 21st, 2012 at 03:43
Thanks a lot. This article helped me and solved my problem.
March 23rd, 2012 at 12:53
very useful, thank you very much!
March 23rd, 2012 at 20:43
Muchisisisismas gracias no soy una persona de agredecer mucho pero si gracia s gracias gracias
March 28th, 2012 at 05:54
please bear with me – my name says it all.
InWord 2007 when I want to insert a picture to forward to someone everyone tells me they see nothing on receipt of the email or some dont even get the email.
I tried sending it to myself (yeah, I am that desperate) and it only lands in my deleted box and not in the inbox
I have no problem in opening that attachment I received from myself (it comes through as an attachment)
I tried your suggestion above but it still doesnt help.
Now for the humdinger…. and you can stop rolling your eyes…..LOL
My default programme is Incredimail which I absolutely love for all the emoticons, etc., (reversed childhood kicking in) and in that programme I have saved pictures which I have taken from elsewhere and want to include them in an email sent from Incredimail ……some do and some dont end up in the email.
Where they dont I usually find when I go to insert, then picture and apply it I end up with a big square with a small red cross in it and no picture in the content of my email.
Next I tried inserting the picture I want from Word 2007 and it displays.
I then copy it and move to Incredimail and try and paste it there.
I am not given the option of a paste in the “thingy” (LOL) that should say copy,paste, etc.,
By now you are hyperventelating I am sure……yeah, we walk among you……
Come on! you sound like you know your way around problems – help out a nearly 70 year old technologically challenged old lady please! (now where is that fantastic emoticon I could use here! he he) :-)
March 29th, 2012 at 20:58
Thank god I found this!!
April 1st, 2012 at 03:09
I would have spent an entire weekend trying to figure out what was wrong with the word docs that took me weeks to create images for. Thank you SOOOOO much!!
April 5th, 2012 at 03:16
Thanks alot…
April 5th, 2012 at 13:30
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!! I almost had a heart attack with this mess. You are a lifesaver!!
April 12th, 2012 at 10:49
Thanks so much – I would never have figured that out on my own…!
April 15th, 2012 at 19:58
You rock! Thank you so much!!!!
April 18th, 2012 at 09:56
THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MY IT dep said that this cannot be done!!! WHAT???? THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!
April 19th, 2012 at 22:45
And you have saved me hours of searching, once again. :)
Thanks.
April 25th, 2012 at 15:24
dig it…thanks a bunch!!! this was like back in the school days when you would go to the back of the book to get the answers =)
gotta love the WWW
April 26th, 2012 at 20:34
Well done. You are a champ.
May 1st, 2012 at 15:54
THANK YOU SO MUCH !!
This was really helpful. Wondering why Microsoft help can be this simple or straight to the problem (go figure ;-))
May 2nd, 2012 at 14:43
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
May 4th, 2012 at 04:35
Thank you!!
May 7th, 2012 at 07:13
Thanks for the solution :)
May 15th, 2012 at 09:36
Thanks for the tip, Extremely helpful!!
I have been wrecking my brain since I got the new Word 2010 and no one around me could figure it out.
The title of this box is far from being user friendly. I would have never found that one and God knows I have spent lots of time searching the options…
You just made my day!
Yves
May 16th, 2012 at 23:41
You’re my hero! Many thanks!
May 17th, 2012 at 11:52
THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. This has been one seriously annoying bug
May 22nd, 2012 at 12:41
Propose naming Cyde Weys for an award based on the number of thank yous in this list of comments. As if we still needed a reminder that Microsoft does not actually design things, they simply add features (apparently) without regard for whether bugs/usability issues may be created elsewhere — BUT UNINTENDED BUGS/USABILITY ISSUES ARE INEVITABLE!. I once directed someone working for me to execute the $pq command on an IBM mainframe without fully understanding the implications (purges all queues not just the print queue…) After a few weeks IBM updated its system to include an “Are you sure” check before proceeding. How long has Word 2007 been out now…?
May 23rd, 2012 at 09:04
That sorted it. Thank you very much
May 30th, 2012 at 16:55
Thank you! I still wonder, though, why only one third of a tri-fold 11X17 document was showing only placeholders, and the other two thirds showed pictures fine. Now, after your simple fix, I can see all the pictures!
June 1st, 2012 at 10:22
Thank you – how silly!!
June 1st, 2012 at 20:37
THAT IS SO STUPID AND FRUSTRATING!!!!!! WHO’S BRIGHT IDEA WAS THAT? Stupid programmers. STOP WORKING 90HRS A WEEK AND BREATH SOME FRESH AIR AND FIND SOME FRIENDS WHO AREN’T PROGRAMMERS.
June 6th, 2012 at 10:30
Thank you very much for sharing.
June 8th, 2012 at 14:48
Thank you for the fix. I was about to reload Office….you saved me a lot of time!!!
Blessings!
June 9th, 2012 at 12:41
Thanks so so so so much!! :))
June 13th, 2012 at 23:12
You Rock!!!!! Thank you, this has been making me crazy :))
June 15th, 2012 at 09:59
Thanks dude for saving me some hard dough during this financial crisis. I was already going nuts ‘cos even after reinstalling the whole MS office, it still wouldn’t budge. You are the bomb ;) !
June 19th, 2012 at 04:55
Thank you :)
June 20th, 2012 at 05:17
haha 2012 and this is still a problem. thanks!
July 11th, 2012 at 17:37
Thank you so very much! I was going crazy trying to meet a deadline and all the pictures disappeared! Come to think of it, yes, I did have to close Word with the Task Manager before it happened. I followed your directions and now they’re back! Yea!
July 13th, 2012 at 04:06
Hi Cyde or anyone,
Please what of when you’re trying to paste a write up with several images on Word but some of the images fail to show? How does one make all the images to show?
July 17th, 2012 at 10:14
thank you so much……
July 19th, 2012 at 16:27
holy crap, thank you so much for this post. I am working a huge project with a deadline next week and out of nowhere that “feature” got turned on – thought I lost months of work. THANK YOU!!!
July 22nd, 2012 at 02:02
Thanks a lot for this solution.
July 25th, 2012 at 20:53
Thank you very much……. brother…. Your inform very usefully..
August 9th, 2012 at 05:28
really a helpful post after that happened to me today and even more important: I found it directly (first hit) when typing my problem in the google search text window. I guess one of the problems is also that Microsoft changes with every version the location where these settings can be found – I remember that I had a similar problem or the same a couple of years ago. Once you know how to do solve it in 2003 your knowledge is obsolete for 2007 and again im 2010 it is different again.
August 12th, 2012 at 09:46
when i was doing my mba project i struck into this problem…. so i searched on this problem in google…. now my problem got over …….. thank u so much…
August 13th, 2012 at 11:07
omfg thank you so much
you just saved my life
i shall write songs about you!
August 19th, 2012 at 22:11
That fixed a vexing problem in short order.
Nice job.
Thanks for your consideration, time & effort to post it for others.
August 28th, 2012 at 19:01
Thanks Buddy..it was really helpful :)
September 7th, 2012 at 04:09
I get pleasure from, result in I found exactly what I used to be taking a look for. You’ve ended my four day lengthy hunt! God Bless you man. Have a great day. Bye
September 11th, 2012 at 01:05
thanks buddy, it helped
September 11th, 2012 at 21:47
I find using open source Latex perfect for writing papers and reports, but still MS Word is handy for small documents specially when I need to bundle some html results from my analyses into Word to archive. This solution helped me alot as I was grappling how to save the images/plots in word doc, thanks.
September 27th, 2012 at 11:09
Excellent weblog right here! Also your web site quite a bit up very fast! What web host are you the use of? Can I get your affiliate hyperlink in your host? I wish my site loaded up as quickly as yours lol
October 4th, 2012 at 03:03
Thansk …………………………
i do not know why it happen but you help me fix it. Great! Appriciated
October 5th, 2012 at 06:48
i m preparing one document for my class with some pic i suddenly got torched with this headache on not seeing my inserted images in word thanks in a ton for your posting …i m out of problem thank you again in ton
October 9th, 2012 at 09:34
Brilliant – couldn’t fathom this. Assumed it was a memory error and kept re-booting to no avail.
Why this option gets set is anyone’s guess.
Thank you !!!!
October 16th, 2012 at 09:58
Thanks for this valuable information. I was struggling to finish a document and could not figure out why the images were not showing after word crashed.
October 18th, 2012 at 05:16
Thanks you saved my day.
Home Microsoft would allow to change this setting fom the picture itself with right “click show all” some day.
October 18th, 2012 at 09:18
Its 2012 and I got the issue now and it was still not fixed. Thanks Jonny B and folks. It is fixed now.
October 28th, 2012 at 22:12
I came across http://www.cydeweys.com and i love it !
arthritis treatment
http://arthritissymptomstreatment.blogspot.com/2012/10/what-is-arthritis_28.html
October 31st, 2012 at 13:25
Thanks a bunch. I ran into this exact same problem after Word crashed and I had been totally perplexed.
October 31st, 2012 at 17:05
Thank you so much!!! I encountered this when comparing / merging documents.
November 5th, 2012 at 13:38
Thank u so much…dude….Its save my time….
November 7th, 2012 at 18:08
wish I had seen this sooner. I was going crazy and being unproductive because of it. thanks so much for the fix!!!!!!!
November 13th, 2012 at 04:48
I am in IT user support and troubleshooting. I was literally stumped by this issue when one of our users came up with this complain, this solution saved me a lot of time. THAAAAAAnk YOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!
November 14th, 2012 at 07:55
Couldn’t leave without saying THANKS!
November 19th, 2012 at 07:55
Thanks a Ton!!!
Very very helpful :)
November 22nd, 2012 at 01:46
Thanks a lot.
November 22nd, 2012 at 05:35
Thank you! I have wasted valuable time trying to sort this out and you have made it so simple. Its so simple, I even feel a little dumb.
November 26th, 2012 at 05:42
Thanks, Clyde.
Why doesn’t ‘Word help’ help with this?
Good old Microsoft!
November 28th, 2012 at 02:39
Thanks my friend…. This is awesome solution. I tried alot and wasted almost 2 hours. I try reinstalling office which failed due to some reasons. But your solution really helped me. Thanks and you Rock…
December 5th, 2012 at 18:22
Thank you so much for publishing this. Imagine even our tech support was not able to help me with the problem and just following what you’ve posted, it resolved my frustration for the last three weeks. You are an angel. thanks again
January 6th, 2013 at 06:23
thanks my friend i search for this solution from lot time it is very useful for me.
January 28th, 2013 at 21:39
Thanks!!! What a relief to have that fixed!
February 4th, 2013 at 23:07
It is really use full trick. Thanks God and you!
Highly appreciated.
Warmer regards from Indonesia …
February 6th, 2013 at 14:05
Thanks a Ton, i got the issue fixed.
February 10th, 2013 at 22:18
Thank you so much!!! This issue had been driving me crazy for months!!! You are brilliant!
February 19th, 2013 at 20:32
Thank you. So easy but hard to find. Even when I was looking in the right place. Cheers.
February 25th, 2013 at 13:03
Thank you, thank you, thank you! This was driving me crazy. This suddenly hit me out of the blue. But now that I think about it, just as you suggested it was after Word crashed.
I looked through all the options and nothing was obvious. Thank you for pointing me to that un-obvious option that fixed the problem.
March 1st, 2013 at 22:02
I face with this problem too. That really make me crazy. Now, I can open it. Thank you!
March 5th, 2013 at 09:39
Many thanks!!
March 22nd, 2013 at 09:38
I had been troubled by this problem for quite a while, until I found your solution, worked like a charm.
Thanks
April 8th, 2013 at 16:07
Thanks! That has been bothering me for some time now!
May 13th, 2013 at 19:26
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May 14th, 2013 at 12:05
Thanks for posting this.
May 14th, 2013 at 17:03
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May 15th, 2013 at 00:34
I was very pleased to find this web-site.I wanted to thanks for your time for this wonderful read!! I definitely enjoying every little bit of it and I have you bookmarked to check out new stuff you blog post.
May 21st, 2013 at 08:34
Wow, thanks a million!!!!! your tip really helped me.