Graphics don’t appear onscreen (Word2002 SP3)

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This is giving me fits. I cannot make graphics (i.e *.bmp, *.jpg, “enhanced metafile”, “picture” files) appear onscreen in Word except (though only sometimes) when I go to the print preview view . This problem occurs whether I am in the normal or page layout views.

The graphics do appear on printouts, and when viewing the file in Word on another machine. Also, I have no problem viewing these graphics when they are pasted into Excel or Powerpoint on my machine. Weird.

I’ve already checked all the relevant-looking options in the Tools/Options/View tab. Any ideas what’s going on? I’d be grateful for any advice.

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I assume from your post that you’ve made sure that the “Picture Placeholders” check box in the View tab of Tools | Options is clear (off).

It might be a problem with your video card. Some things to try:

1) Look for an updated driver for your video card.

2) Decrease hardware acceleration:
– Open the Display Properties control panel (either by right-clicking an empty part of the desktop and selecting Properties from the popup menu, or through Start | Control Panel)
– Activate the Settings tab,
– Click Advanced.
– Activate the Troubleshoot tab.
– Drag the Hardware acceleration slider a notch or two to the left.
– OK your way out.
– If that doesn’t help, repeat.
– If it doesn’t help at all, you can restore the original setting.

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Thank you Hans, as usual your advice [this time, about the acceleration] worked. One quick follow-up question: with the acceleration now set to the middle (it had been set to the far right), should I expect some sort of trade-off, i.e. reduced performance with something else?

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You might notice a slight decrease of performance in graphics-intensive games such as realtime 3D games. Otherwise, I don’t think you’ll notice it.

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Hi Hans… I have a quick question. I’ve been contracting with the same company for 5 years and for most of my time here there is a problem with picture placeholder which I cannot resolve. For some unknown and infrequent reason, the Picture Placeholder option turns ‘on’. The user is not changing this option – this happens to me on a regular basis too… but it is not happening to everyone (3000+ users). Do you have any ideas on why this phenomenon is happening? Could it be the result of the normal.dot being deleted or perhaps a MS update… Thanx in advance… trish

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I’m afraid I don’t know why that happens. I haven’t seen it occur in the organizations I’ve worked for over the years.

It’s not Normal.dot – the setting for picture placeholders is stored in the registry (in the Settings value in HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice10.0WordData, where 10.0 is the internal version number for Office XP). Perhaps this value becomes corrupt, although that is much more rare in Word 2002 than it was in for example Word 97.

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Thanx Hans… I’ll find out if the reg key is being modified… you’re the best… trish

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Unfortunately, the values in the Data key are binary values, so it’s not easy to inspect them, let alone edit them…

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