Disappearing images and unnecessary spaces before tables

[angel5545]

Hey, I have two annoying problems occurring

1. The pictures that I put in my document, keep disappearing when I close and reopen my document to resume working on it.

2. I have multiple tables in my document, and there are these weird spacings above them, making it impossible for a table to be at the top of a page. When I erase these spacings, it only let's me remove a few, before pushing the beginning of my table on the other page, or making it stay lower on the page, leaving this awkward white space.

Also, my home computer is a windows, but I work on this document with a friend, so I savet it on a USB key and work on it on her Apple Mac laptop, just in case this information could help resolve my issue.

Thank you

[RoryOF]

Do you wait long enough for the pictures to reappear? When you reopen a document, it has to be rebuilt, sometimes two or three times - the text laid out, the tables inserted and the text adjusted, then the pictures inserted and everything readjusted.

There are text flow settings for tables which can allow them to break across pages, or not. These may be forcing your tables to the next page.

[angel5545]

The pictures never reappear, they simply do not exist anymore

And how would I change the flow settings?

[Bill]

You may also need to upgrade your version of AOO. It's unclear what version you're using since there is no version 40.1. The current version is 4.1.2.

[angel5545]

That's a silly mistake of mine, I meant to write 4.0.1 as my version

[PaulKnight]

There is another thread which goes into a lot of detail, at "The images in my document have disappeared".

For my case, I just upgraded to 4.1.2 today in hopes of solving this issue, but it did not help.
I opened a fairly large document (16 images and 20+ tables), and as soon as OO did "Autosave", several of the images disappeared, replaced by a box with the words "Read Error."
However, following suggestions in the thread cited above, I increased cache sizes, and so far it has not happened again.
I'll attach before/after images of my configuration. Before = instant image loss (upon autosave, apparently); After = apparently no more image loss (for 3 hours).

initial settings for 4.1.2, associated with image loss

Increased memory settings for 4.1.2 - okay so far

[Horse]

On Win 10, OO 4.1.2 I have been seeing similar disappearing images. In my case the images seemed to disappear when I updated tables of contents and/or indices, or perhaps when I printed the doc. I just increased the cache size and will test to see how it works. I had noticed that the disappearing images tended to be (maybe were, not sure) at the beginning of the doc. I did not notice any other correlation with disappearing except that most of the disappearing images were not in the local directory. I had borders around the images and captions, both of which remained when the image disappeared.
With the images restored, their files moved to the local directory, and the memory cache set to 100 MB, the pictures survived. Haven't tried printing again (120 pages), but the images also survived the reference generation that goes with printing. Looks good now.

[John_Ha]

See [Solved] Pictures move down to next page in .odt file Attachment(s) and The images in my document have disappeared Attachment(s) for some ideas. Also search on images.

For tables, look at Tools > Options > OOWriter > Tables and Compatibility. Remember Writer considers that a table is a very large character in the text flow.

[Horse]

Referencing John_Ha's comment, in case it helps someone: My pictures all have borders and captions, as mentioned, and all have paragraph anchors. As of now they have survived several file openings and closings.

[John_Ha]

... My pictures all have ... captions

When you add a caption to a picture, Writer adds a frame and places the image inside the frame, and adds the caption text into the frame below the picture. Borders are part of the picture.

So, the image in a captioned picture is "insulated" from the page by being placed inside a frame.

I wonder whether this has the effect of making the images more stable as it is the frames which now need placing in the document, which can always be done without ambiguity; and the pictures are automatically placed without ambiguity or difficulty in the frames. See Re: The images in my document have disappeared - looping for description of looping behaviour.

[RoryOF]

I think both John_Ha and I will agree on advising leisurely handling of complex files.

Don't pop such a file open (perhaps to check something or make a quick edit) and then close it immediately. Allow time for it to load up fully and adjust formatting before you close it down again - this formatting adjustment may take quite a lot longer than you think. Any extra time this takes will always be less than that taken to repair a damaged file (or, in worst case, to rewrite a severely damaged file). In any case, backup, backup, backup! It is good policy to backup each day or editing session, to a timed/dated backup, most particularly if the file is complex.