Importing images in Word file

[mr_scribbler]

Hi, after importing a Word doc into RH7 most images are correctly displaying in their topics but some just show a placeholder and filename of a .png image. This means presumably that png images are not supported by the Word conversion routine. I have imported .pngs successfully in the past in other projects. Is there a pre-conversion step I can do in Word to images to make sure they are treated properly by RH.

thanks,
mike

[Peter Grainge]

PNG images can cause a problem as not PNGs are equal. Search through the forums. There was quite a thread, couple of months back.

I think one trick was to open the PNG in Paint, do a Save As and save the file over the original. Yeah, I know.

Do that with the PNGs that were imported.

[mr_scribbler]

Thanks Peter for the reply. The odd thing (to me at least) is that some images convert as jpg and some as png. RH gives all images a filename in the project_files folder but shows the pngs as missing (with a red cross against the filename).
Where the pngs should be displayed in topics, there is a red oblong placeholder which includes the filename, eg. [Image image0001.png]

I can't find anything specifically related to my problem in the forum although there is a lot about .pngs.

rgds,
mike

[mr_scribbler]

...one other point is that I dont have the original image files, before they got into Word doc, so converting them to gifs will not be all that easy.

[Guest]

If you still have the legacy Word files you could copy and paste them into into a graphics program (Photoshop for example) and then save them out as .png files.
If you do not have the originals. then the graphics might have just been cut and pasted through a few iterations since they were originally created. I seem to remember that Microsoft uses a strange format for their images.

Hope this helps,
Marjorie

[Peter Grainge]

Another thought. Look in Windows Explorer. Sometimes the import process can put them in a folder that does not appear in Project Manager. If that has happened, then manually create a new folder in RH in the correct location and then RH picks up the content.

[mr_scribbler]

Thanks for the reply Marjorie. I do have the legacy Word files so I could do as you suggest. It might be easier to save the Word doc as .html, as Word creates image files (jpgs and pngs) from the graphics in the document. Then I could copy the images to the RH project after changing the png image filenames to those expected, but mysteriously not created, by RH.

[Peter Grainge]

Were the images not where I suggested?

[mr_scribbler]

Peter, I checked Windows Explorer and found nothing. I even searched my hard drive and found nothing! I am unclear about what RH does during its import/conversion routine as far as images are concerned. It seems to 'know' enough about the origin of images in a Word doc because, in my document, it created some as jpg and some as png. Unfortunately the provenance of the Word doc is unknown to me, so I can't say whether images were pasted in and cropped/resized in Word or imported from a graphics package...I suspect a combination of the two, which may explain the two converted image file types.

I'll recheck this forum to see if there is an answer to how images are created on importing a Word doc.

thanks,
mike

[mr_scribbler]

After further investigation involving importing a Word doc containing some inserted and pasted images, the upshot seems to be:
Dont insert .png images into a Word doc if you plan to import it into RH.

You can however import .pngs directly into RH using Insert->Image function. To my (simple) mind this seems inconsistent behaviour...but now I know what is happening I can workaround it, ie. don't use pngs!

mike

[HKabaker]

Next time you have trouble importing a legacy Word .doc, try this:

In Word, create a new file using the New command and the default .dot.
Insert the contents of the legacy .doc from the menu command (not by cutting and pasting).

In Word 7, they moved the "insert file" command to Insert > Object > Text from File . . .

I'd think "insert text from file" would mean pasting something that doesn't include graphics. However, Word will bring in everything from the legacy .doc including formatting and styles.

Save As . . . the new document as .doc or .docx. I don't think RH 7 cares. In our experience, jpegs and gifs sometimes were missing until we created the new Word file.

Another wrinkle: In Explorer view, with a folder open, File > New allows you to create an empty Word document right there. We had some trouble using one of these for importing and saving the legacy .doc.

Didn't have time to track it down. Was the legacy .doc created in Word 2003, and the conversion to .docx in 2007 glitched some images? In your case, it just happened to the .png files? As you previously speculated, images may have been handled differently in creating the original .doc.

My hypothesis here is, whatever the reason for images getting lost in the import to Word, everything gets fixed -- even for pngs -- when you start with a clean slate in a new Word document created from the New menu in Word.


Harvey

[mr_scribbler]

Harvey thanks for the advice. I tried creating a new document in Word as you suggested using Insert-> File to copy in the legacy doc. Still got the same missing image issues though. I am using Word 2003 but I gather the original doc was created in a previous version of Word.

thanks,
mike

[HKabaker]

Mike,
Thanks for testing, and for reporting back.
Maybe Word 2007 is different, maybe not.
H