I inserted some graphics in a document, but now I can’t see them; or there is just an empty box where one should be; or my graphics won’t print

Article contributed by Suzanne Barnhill and Dave Rado

The solutions

The explanation

An understanding of the possibilities requires a little background. To understand how Word deals with and displays graphics and other objects in Word, see also the excellent article on this site The draw layer: a metaphysical space; and the excellent MSKB article WD97: General Information about Floating Objects. The articles explain the difference between floating and inline objects (and how to convert one to the other) and describe the various layers in Word.

Every document in Word has several layers: the text layer, the drawing layer(s), and the header/footer layer. The header/footer layer is like the “background” in a page layout application: anything you put there will appear on every page (and can “float” anywhere on the page so long as it's anchored to the header or footer paragraph).

Text, unless it is in a text box (or a header or footer) is always in the text layer. Graphics can also be placed in the text layer. They are then said to be “inline.” An inline object is part of the text stream and moves with it. Its formatting is determined by the formatting of the paragraph it is in (centered, left-aligned, with space before or after, and so on). Note that one reason an inline graphic may be incorrectly displayed is that the line spacing of the paragraph it is in has been set to an exact amount too small to accommodate the graphic. Objects in the text layer are visible in any view in Word.

Drawings (that is, AutoShapes created with the drawing tool, WordArt, text boxes, and “floating” graphics) are in the drawing layer. They are not part of the text stream, though each has to be anchored to a text paragraph. They can float anywhere on the page, inside or outside the margins. Objects in the drawing layer are visible in Page Layout (Print Layout) view and Print Preview but not in Normal view. Interestingly, a frame is a sort of hybrid object that can appear to float (and text can be wrapped around it), but it is actually inline and can be viewed (though not in position) in Normal view.

So if you are in Normal view, you will not see any floating objects at all. There are also several Tools | Options settings that affect what graphics are visible.

Objects in the header and footer are (like the rest of the header/footer) greyed out except when you are working in the header/footer pane.

Graphics pasted from the Web into Word 2000

The default paste behavior if you copy a picture from a web site and paste into Word 2000 is to create a field such as:

{ INCLUDEPICTURE "http://www.whatever.com//temp.gif" \* MERGEFORMATINET }

(Incidentally, there doesn't appear to be any reference to the MergeFormatInet switch either in Word's Help or in the Microsoft Knowledge Base).

If the picture is floating, you will need to change it to inline in order to see the field.

If you try pasting from a web page when working off-line, Word just hangs. And if you print your document when working off-line, with “Update fields” switched on, your pictures just disappear.

You can get round it by selecting Edit + Paste Special and choosing “Device-independent Bitmap” instead of the default of “HTML format”; or by downloading the image to your hard disk first, and then inserting it using Insert + Picture (which is usually preferable).

Somewhere along the line Microsoft seems to have forgotten that Word is used primarily as a word processor, not as a Web development program!!