x in a box (2002 SP2)

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All the pictures in some of my documents have a red x in a box in the top left corner.

It goes away sometimes but then comes back.

What is this trying to tell me and how can I get rid of it?

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Hi Paul,

This is usually associated with low system resources or document corruption, but I haven’t seen it before where you get both the picture and the X. It can also mean that Word doesn’t have a graphics filter for the particular image. See http://word.mvps.org/faqs/apperrors/RedX.htm%5B/url%5D for more information.

Cheers

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Hi Paul,

This is usually associated with low system resources or document corruption, but I haven’t seen it before where you get both the picture and the X. It can also mean that Word doesn’t have a graphics filter for the particular image. See http://word.mvps.org/faqs/apperrors/RedX.htm%5B/url%5D for more information.

Cheers

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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The MVP site recommends keeping your temp folder clean. I recommend keeping your entire hard drive clean: http://www.theofficeexperts.com/cleanyourpc.htm%5B/url%5D

(Hi, Macropod!)

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The MVP site recommends keeping your temp folder clean. I recommend keeping your entire hard drive clean: http://www.theofficeexperts.com/cleanyourpc.htm%5B/url%5D

(Hi, Macropod!)

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These are HTML documents? In addition to the above suggestions, select the missing pictures and press Shift+F9 to view the path in the INCLUDEPICTURE field, and make sure it is a valid path. If it is a picture and not an INCLUDEPICTURE field, you might need to restart Windows to clean up some kind of memory problem.

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No they word docs.

The pictures show as {EMBED PBrush}.

Now, the doc from which I was copying the picture is 94Mb, although it ZIPs up to 3Mb. What a waste of space! You’d think someone could come up with a file format that’d optimise the space.

Now I guess that 94Mb is fairly resource hungry. A reboot seems to have sorted it.

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Hi Paul

There’s no doubt that this extreme “compressibility” is due to the inclusion of .BMP bitmapped graphics (as indicated by the PBrush). The filesize would doubtless drop dramatically if those embedded graphics were converted to .JPG, .GIF, .PNG etc.

Jefferson’s query about HTML is quite timely, since it reminded me of one of his tips for easy conversion of such graphics. If you save a copy of the .DOC in HTML format, Word will do a very good job on the conversions. The graphics will be extracted as separate files, which can be linked to or embedded in place of the BIG BITMAPS that might be causing problems.

Alan

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Interesting…

I tried saving as HTML and it did indeed reduce the size intensly and it saved all pictures as BOTH jpg and png. However, when I opened it up in Word and re-saved it as a DOC, it made all the pictures PBrush again and ended up at the original size.

If I save it as HTML filtered and then convert back, it stays small.

Now…

The picture quality in the former (HTML) after conversion back to a doc looks as good as the original, whilst the quality of the latter (HTML Filtered) is much worse.

So…

whilst the png files appear to be of good quality and small, the HTML Filtered conversion only uses the inferior jpg format and if I convert the former back to a doc, it ramps the size right back up again.

This is wierd.

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Hmmm… lots of variables there. What I was originally thinking of was to use the graphics from the converted copy to actually replace the large embedded bitmaps in the original DOC, or yet another copy of it. I guess you’ll play with it to see what best suits your needs.

Alan

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That’s what I planned to do to.

I “expected”, that having saved it as HTM and then converted back to doc, the pictures would still be small.

There are 125 pictures there, so it is no mean feat to change them all manually.

So I thought I’d write a script to do it.

Now here’s the rub, somehow, although they are all PBrush objects, word knows that 2 of them are the same image, so I end up with 2 fields with the same value.

Seems that any way that I try this, I am stumped.

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That sounds like quite a task with that many graphics. I can’t think of an (easy) automated way to do it, because I guess the new graphics have to be manually corresponded to their locations in the DOC. I don’t follow the problem with the duplicate graphic at all though. ???

Alan

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What’s more, the original document had 110 IMBED fields, which produced 124 picture files.

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What’s more, the original document had 110 IMBED fields, which produced 124 picture files.

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That sounds like quite a task with that many graphics. I can’t think of an (easy) automated way to do it, because I guess the new graphics have to be manually corresponded to their locations in the DOC. I don’t follow the problem with the duplicate graphic at all though. ???

Alan

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That’s what I planned to do to.

I “expected”, that having saved it as HTM and then converted back to doc, the pictures would still be small.

There are 125 pictures there, so it is no mean feat to change them all manually.

So I thought I’d write a script to do it.

Now here’s the rub, somehow, although they are all PBrush objects, word knows that 2 of them are the same image, so I end up with 2 fields with the same value.

Seems that any way that I try this, I am stumped.

Reply | Quote

Hmmm… lots of variables there. What I was originally thinking of was to use the graphics from the converted copy to actually replace the large embedded bitmaps in the original DOC, or yet another copy of it. I guess you’ll play with it to see what best suits your needs.

Alan

Reply | Quote

Interesting…

I tried saving as HTML and it did indeed reduce the size intensly and it saved all pictures as BOTH jpg and png. However, when I opened it up in Word and re-saved it as a DOC, it made all the pictures PBrush again and ended up at the original size.

If I save it as HTML filtered and then convert back, it stays small.

Now…

The picture quality in the former (HTML) after conversion back to a doc looks as good as the original, whilst the quality of the latter (HTML Filtered) is much worse.

So…

whilst the png files appear to be of good quality and small, the HTML Filtered conversion only uses the inferior jpg format and if I convert the former back to a doc, it ramps the size right back up again.

This is wierd.

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To convert an embedded Paint or Photo Editor object to a normal picture, just “unlink” the Embed field: select it and press Ctrl+Shift+F9. This will clear a huge amount of OLE code that Word retains for embedded objects and leave you with a BMP format picture. While BMP is not an efficient format on disk, Word automatically compresses BMP images to a size roughly equivalent to other lossless compression formats (PNG is best, but for a few kilobytes, not worth bothering).

Now, as for why they might be red X boxes, maybe they are taking a toll on memory?

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Sounds good, but how?

Whilst when I do Alt-F9, I get loads of fields that say { EMBED PBrush }, when I go to links, it is greyed out.

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Hi Paul:
What Jefferson is saying is to select the link & press Ctrl+Shift+F9. There is nothing to be greyed out.

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Ah yes I see now. The way it was written, I thought that the Ctrl-Shift-F9 was what I had to do afterthey were unlinked.

I just tried Ctrl-A and Ctrl-Shift-F9 but most of the pictures ended up blank.

Seems that the pictures aren’t actually loaded until I page down to look at them.

Is there a better way to ensure that they are all present rather than slowly paging through 159 pages and waiting for them all to appear (I tried Ctrl-A and then F9 but that didn’t work)?

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Hi Paul:
If these are linked & embedded pictures, then you shouldn’t have to view them to unlink them, but maybe 2002 operates differently. If you have linked pictures, then it might take awhile for them to load. Ctrl+A & F9 should work on linked pictures, unless the source has changed or isn’t available. You could try closing the document after going to Tools/Options/General… & checking “Upate automatic links at open” & then reopening the document.
Hope this helps,

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Hi Paul:
If these are linked & embedded pictures, then you shouldn’t have to view them to unlink them, but maybe 2002 operates differently. If you have linked pictures, then it might take awhile for them to load. Ctrl+A & F9 should work on linked pictures, unless the source has changed or isn’t available. You could try closing the document after going to Tools/Options/General… & checking “Upate automatic links at open” & then reopening the document.
Hope this helps,

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Ah yes I see now. The way it was written, I thought that the Ctrl-Shift-F9 was what I had to do afterthey were unlinked.

I just tried Ctrl-A and Ctrl-Shift-F9 but most of the pictures ended up blank.

Seems that the pictures aren’t actually loaded until I page down to look at them.

Is there a better way to ensure that they are all present rather than slowly paging through 159 pages and waiting for them all to appear (I tried Ctrl-A and then F9 but that didn’t work)?

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Hi Paul:
What Jefferson is saying is to select the link & press Ctrl+Shift+F9. There is nothing to be greyed out.

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Paul, select the field and press Ctrl+Shift+F9. This is the universal “convert the field code to the end result” shortcut. There is no menu equivalent.

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Paul, select the field and press Ctrl+Shift+F9. This is the universal “convert the field code to the end result” shortcut. There is no menu equivalent.

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Sounds good, but how?

Whilst when I do Alt-F9, I get loads of fields that say { EMBED PBrush }, when I go to links, it is greyed out.

Reply | Quote

To convert an embedded Paint or Photo Editor object to a normal picture, just “unlink” the Embed field: select it and press Ctrl+Shift+F9. This will clear a huge amount of OLE code that Word retains for embedded objects and leave you with a BMP format picture. While BMP is not an efficient format on disk, Word automatically compresses BMP images to a size roughly equivalent to other lossless compression formats (PNG is best, but for a few kilobytes, not worth bothering).

Now, as for why they might be red X boxes, maybe they are taking a toll on memory?

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No they word docs.

The pictures show as {EMBED PBrush}.

Now, the doc from which I was copying the picture is 94Mb, although it ZIPs up to 3Mb. What a waste of space! You’d think someone could come up with a file format that’d optimise the space.

Now I guess that 94Mb is fairly resource hungry. A reboot seems to have sorted it.

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