Can't delete graphic in heading

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This one is really bizarre.

Many of my documents have a graphic which is supposed to appear on the first page. It’s physically located in the text part of the page, but is defined in the first-page heading.

I just tried to delete one of these graphics, and I can’t. I can move it around, scale it, and do anything else I can think of trying, but when I select it and press Delete, Word just deselects it.

Any idea what’s happening?

In case it matters, I’m using Word from Office 365 ProPlus under Windows 7 Enterprise.

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Is the graphic “locked”? Is there a useful option when you right-click on the graphic? Does Shift>Right-click give any help?

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Kirsty, thank you, but ‘fraid not. The graphic was locked, but unlocking it made no difference. The context (right click) menu contains nothing useful, and Shift+right click looks identical.

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Can you replicate the problem on a different file? If so, perhaps you could upload a similar issue, so one of the “Office gurus” can attempt to pick it apart (thus protecting the contents of this specific file)?

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Could it be this? Or is this what you’ve already tried?

Can’t select the picture?
if you can’t select the picture, it’s probably a background picture.

To select a background picture in Word: Go to the Insert tab and select Header > Edit Header. (Once you are in Header and Footer view, you should be able to select the picture.)

Replace or delete a picture in Microsoft Office

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Kirsty: I tried several other files in the same (rather large) group. I think about 2/3 of them did the same thing; 1/3 behaved normally.

I should be able to sanitize one of these files and upload it. However, I’d have to be able to guarantee that all proprietary material has not been just deleted from the document, but unrecoverably removed from the file. I don’t have time to learn how to do that right now.

times, thank you for the suggestion, but that’s not it. The image is what you called “background”; I know that, and I opened the header as a matter of course. And as I originally said, I can select the image, and I can move it and scale it. I just can’t delete it.

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Two suggestions:

• Try using another editor to remove the unwanted information.
• Select the information you want and create a new file with the information.

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geekdom wrote:

Try using another editor to remove the unwanted information.

Heh, right. I’d see if LibreOffice can remove it.

These can be quite a problem sometimes, don’t know why it has to be so difficult to handle the component parts…

WSjsachs177 wrote:

And as I originally said, I can select the image, and I can move it and scale it. I just can’t delete it.

Well, can you mark it as hidden? Go to edit header mode, first page header; then (in the ribbon) go to Layout / Arrange / Selection Pane and click on the eye…?

Checked that this function was there for me on Word “Version 1908 (Build 11929.20300 Click-to-Run)”

When all else fails… sometimes I’ve ended up just opening the .docx as a zip archive and hand-editing the component file contents. (Keep a backup copy before you try. It’s extremely easy to break things that way…)

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I figured it out. It was pretty obvious once I rammed my nose into it. 🙂

The problem files have change tracking enabled and “All Markup” selected. So when I told Word to delete the graphic it did so, but it continued to show the graphic as “deleted text.” The graphic is rather dark and bleeds to the edge of the page on three sides, so the strikeout mark and the change bars were invisible.

The giveaway: I clicked Accept All Changes and the graphic disappeared.

2 users thanked author for this post.

geekdom, Kirsty

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