Red cross instead of image

[SueJB]

I'm editing a very large document with a lot of screenshots - currently doc
size is about 3Mb and 40+ pages. Randomly (and it has occurred early in the
document and now that I'm nearing the end) if I try to paste an image I
either get part of the image with a black background or part(s) of the image
with a large red cross instead of others. If I save the document with one of
these red crosses in it, the whole document is corrupted and unrecoverable
(found that one out the hard way!).

I've got image placeholders unchecked but don't think that's necessarily
relevant. I've tried every combination of Paste-Special, but the same result.

Am I simply overstretching Word? I'm using Office 2002 on a reasonably new
machine with 512Mb of RAM (176 showing as available) and 2Gb of virtual
memory (1.9 showing as available) so thought the machine could handle this.
Thanks
Sue

 

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I'm editing a very large document with a lot of
screenshots - currently doc
size is about 3Mb and 40+ pages. Randomly (and it
has occurred early in the
document and now that I'm nearing the end) if I try
to paste an image I
either get part of the image with a black background
or part(s) of the image
with a large red cross instead of others. If I save
the document with one of
these red crosses in it, the whole document is
corrupted and unrecoverable
(found that one out the hard way!).

I've got image placeholders unchecked but don't think
that's necessarily
relevant. I've tried every combination of
Paste-Special, but the same result.

Am I simply overstretching Word? I'm using Office
2002 on a reasonably new
machine with 512Mb of RAM (176 showing as available)
and 2Gb of virtual
memory (1.9 showing as available) so thought the
machine could handle this.
Thanks
Sue

It should handle that fine; mine are much larger and
some are very heavy in graphics.

It sounds like you might have file corruption; it "just
happens" unfortunately and if you continue iwth it, the
corruption often spreads within the document.

Are images linked, embedded, or a mix of the two?
Can you add images to another document without
problems?
Have you checked for macro viruses?

Close Word. Use Explorer to go to c:\windows\temp\ and
delete ALL the files that exist in TEMP. There might
be a LOT of them.
There might alse be a TMP folder: If there is,
delete the files in it also.
Run the Disk Cleanup app (Start, Programs Accessories,
System Tools, Disk Cleanup if XP.

See if problem still exists.

Try this: Copy the entire long document that exists
without problems, , with the exception of the very last
paragraph mark, to a new, blank document. CTRL-A =
Select all, CTRL-C= copy, CTRL-V= Paste.

Best case, it's OK now: Worst case, it's still screwed
when you add pics. If so, there may be corruption
elsewhere in the document, as in a buffer etc.

Should it turn out that the corrupted area/s are harder
to find than that, there is a method of "halving" that
will exponentially decrease the area of the document
the corruption is in, but I'll not go into it here to
avoid confusion.
Should everything go along OK and then suddenly
problems develop again when it gets larger, you might
need to use this method.

Let us know what happens.

HTH

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