Cannot copy and paste some images from web sites

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I started having a weird problem a couple of weeks ago. I frequently copy articles off of web pages into a Word document and save them for later. I simply highlight what I want on the screen, select copy, and then paste into the document. Now, however, sometimes images do not transfer. When I copy and paste these images, I get a blank box the size of the image. It takes up room. If I highlight it in the Word document, I see the outlines of the image. However, none of the image content is visible. If I instead highlight the image on the web page, select to download the image, then copy this download, I get the image fine. I have been doing this for years with no issues until I noticed it a couple of weeks ago. To further the mystery, some images copy and paste fine. Others have this issue. Does anyone have any idea what might be going on, or how I can troubleshoot this problem? Thanks.,

By the way, the photo of Susan Bradley in the Windows Secrets Newsletter online is one of the images that does not work .. if that helps.

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An issue I see with images on Web pages is they frequently will only be linked to the actual image in a different Folder or even on a different Server, don’t always transfer/copy with all the data. That would be a big part of the ability to Save the image. See the same a lot in forwarded E-Mails. This is the location of the image you mentioned:
https://windowssecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Susan-Bradley_avatar.jpg

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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This issue may very well have to do with where the images are stored. However, it seems to me like I never had this issue until recently. I am wondering if the copy paste function itself is corrupted somehow, but in a way that only affects certain situations. I assume this is part of Windows, but I have no idea how to check for that or what I could do to fix it without doing something major such as a reinstall or backup from many weeks ago. I suppose it could also be related to changes in the browser, in my case Firefox. You point out that the Susan Bradley photo is in a wordpress content folder. I just tried to copy some pictures from one of my WordPress sites in Firefox and in IE, and it did not work in either one.

It seems to me that the “save image as” command, which works fine, should be similar to the copy command, except copy saves the image in the clipboard. That is why this seems strange to me.

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Are you sure you don’t have Word’s ‘show picture placeholders’ option checked? See under File|Options|Advanced>Show document content.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Try pasting the image into paint first. That will tell you if you have actually copied something. If that works but pasting into Word doesn’t then Berton likely has it right.

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Thanks for the suggestion, gsmith-plm. When I copy the image into Paint, it works fine. When I copy into Word or Powerpoint, it does not work. I get only an outline box of the image. I am using Office 2007. I guess this suggests something in Office, perhaps an update made in the last month or so?

macropod, thanks also. I did check the settings, and I do not have ‘show picture placeholders’ checked. Besides, some images copy fine, others don’t. I actually found another article that had me check a registry key (which I did not have) and execute a command cmd /c “echo off | clip” that is supposed to clear or reset the clipboard. Neither had any effect on the problem.

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I just discovered a very interesting thing. When I go to Installed Updates, I find a large number of Office updates, including SP3, installed on 3/10/16. However, I don’t remember seeing or installing most of them. When I look at Update History, most of those updates do not appear. Did Microsoft sneak in a bunch of office updates?

Update History
43893-Update-History

Installed Updates
43894-Installed-Updates

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Since it shows up in Paint, you are copying it. But you are also copying it’s metadata – things like web address which Word may be trying to link to.

Not sure if this will work but it will help diagnose. Immediately after pasting into Paint, while the image is still highlighted, copy it. Then paste that into Word. It should be free of web metadata.

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Since it shows up in Paint, you are copying it. But you are also copying it’s metadata – things like web address which Word may be trying to link to.

Not sure if this will work but it will help diagnose. Immediately after pasting into Paint, while the image is still highlighted, copy it. Then paste that into Word. It should be free of web metadata.

That’s a great idea, and easier than the one I was going to suggest — use Snipping Tool to grab the image, then choose save or copy.

As far as stripping out the metadata, I use Notepad for a similar purpose — to strip out formatting from text.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Thanks for the Skype heads up. I have Skype consumer 7.0 installed, but it has not been used or updated in a couple of years.

I tried the suggested things with Paint. I copy the image to Paint. I see it fine. I immediately select “copy”, and paste into Word. Now I get the image fine. I am not sure what this means?

By the way, when I try to copy the image only into Notepad instead, the paste command is greyed out. If I copy some text and image, and paste into notepad, I get only the text. This time I don’t even get the box for the image as far as I can see. However, I have a line description where the image would be that seems to be the name of the image file (just text, no URL or .jpg) or it may be the alternate name.

I am not sure what the snip it tool mentioned is?

By the way, I just copied some images from a WordPress site where the images are stored in the WordPress content folder. That worked fine. However, when I select a image from my lventure.org WordPress website that is also stored in the host WordPress content folder, I have the problems I have described. Both are jpg images. I cannot tell the difference. This is really strange.

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Ok, I tried this. I copy the image to Paint. I see it fine. I immediately select “copy”, and paste into Word. Now I get the image fine. I am not sure what this means?

By the way, when I copy the image and go to Notepad instead, the paste command is greyed out. If I copy some text and image, and paste into notepad, I get only the text. This time I don’t even get the box for the image as far as I can see. However, I have a line description where the image would be that seems to be the name of the image file (just text, no URL or .jpg).

I am not sure what the snip it tool mentioned is?

By the way, I just copied some images from a WordPress site where the images are stored in the WordPress content folder. However, when I select a image from my lventure.org WordPress website that is also stored in the host WordPress content folder, I have the problems I have described. Both are jpg images. I cannot tell the difference.

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Ok, I tried this. I copy the image to Paint. I see it fine. I immediately select “copy”, and paste into Word. Now I get the image fine. I am not sure what this means?

Paul mentioned Options. There is a Word/Options/Advanced/Show document content/Show picture placeholders. If that is checked, then uncheck it and see what happens.

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Ok, I tried this. I copy the image to Paint. I see it fine. I immediately select “copy”, and paste into Word. Now I get the image fine. I am not sure what this means?

When you paste the image to Paint, and then copy it from there to Word, the reason it works fine for you is because Paint stripped out whatever was causing the failure. It “sanitized” the image.

By the way, when I copy the image and go to Notepad instead, the paste command is greyed out. If I copy some text and image, and paste into notepad, I get only the text. This time I don’t even get the box for the image as far as I can see. However, I have a line description where the image would be that seems to be the name of the image file (just text, no URL or .jpg).

Notepad strips out everything but plain text. That’s why you get only the text, not the image. So Notepad can be used to “sanitize” text, by stripping out everything except for plain, basic text.

I am not sure what the snip it tool mentioned is?

Snipping Tool is a program which makes it very easy to grab a section of your screen as an image, and then either save it or copy and paste it into another program — Paint, Word, etc. You should be able to find it here: c:windowssystem32SnippingTool.exe.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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What web browser are you using and do you have Skype for Business installed? A recent update to the latter has been reported as adversely affecting copy operations with some browsers.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Thanks, gsmith-plm, I mentioned earlier that “Show picture placeholders” is not checked. I can see images in Word once I get them there either from sites where the copy and paste works fine or by saving the image to a local file and then inserting the image. I am using the latest version of Firefox. However, I tried a couple of times with IE and seem to get the same issue.

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I will occasionally copy online guides for some of the programs I use, since I won’t always have an internet connection when using the program (ie MOBAC). This is especially true where there is no “pdf” guide download link. I have found that using the Snipping Tool for pictures that do not copy is actually as fast as copying to Paint, then into Word.

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Thanks, mrjimphelps. I just noticed the following. When I copy an image from a webpage, and then select the Paste Special in Word from the menu icon, I am given two options: HTML format, or device independent bitmap. HTML is selected as the default. This suggests there is some kind of metadata that indicates this came from a web page. Curiously, if I select HTML format (the default) for the paste, then I get the behavior i have reported. That is, some pictures show up fine, and some show only the outline. However, if I copy the picture that shows only an outline, and now paste special selecting the device independent bitmap option, I can see that image. This paste special bitmap option seems to clean up the extraneous metadata as Paint does.

So this seems to have something to do with how different websites are encoding images and how the copy command on a website picks up extra metadata with the images. It is curious to me that different WordPress websites would respond differently. I would think everyone who uses WordPress would get the same encoding.

I am going to try using the paste special with bitmap option when I have this problem in the future to see if that takes care of the issue.

Thanks again for all the helpful comments.

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I have a tool PicPick on my computer that copies any section of the screen. It sounds similar to the Snipping Tool. I use that to capture images from web sites when the images are created by Flash or similar dynamic feature and cannot be copied. However, there you get only the screen resolution of the image, where copy brings the full resolution stored at the website.

When I am getting articles from web sites, I generally just highlight the full section of text and images I want, use copy, and then paste that into a Word file. Sometimes the formatting is a bit off, but this usually works pretty well. Unfortunately, when I run into the copy paste image problem in that situation, I have to go back and retrieve each image in a separate operation. Add to that a two step for each image such as going through Paint or saving the image and then inserting makes this tedious.

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