"READ ERROR" for an image in a document

[stacie]

Honestly, I didn't create this original document. I had a designer make a logo for me and create letterhead for me years ago. It's been working fine in OO all this time. Now, all documents on my letterhead that I open have a read error for the top image (not the bottom one). Thoughts on what I can do to fix it? It's not particular to any one file.

[FJCC]

What happens if you try to open the image file itself? Just double click on it and accept whatever program your system chooses to use.

[stacie]

As in double click the image in the document or the original image file elsewhere on my computer? I'm not sure which version she used to put it in there...I have a few (bmp, jpg, png, gif). I can them all just fine from the separate files. In the document, it opens up the 'picture' pop-up.

[FJCC]

I meant that you should open the original image file wherever it is on your computer. I seems like you did that and the file opened without a problem. That shows that the image file itself is not damaged.

Please double click on the image in a Writer document and get the Picture dialog then select the Picture tab. Is any file listed under File Name in the Link section?

When you want to make a new document with this letter head, what exact actions do you take?

If you make a new blank document, can you successfully insert the image using the menu Insert -> Picture -> From File?

[stacie]

No file is listed. I don't think it was directly linked. I've taken that file on a thumb drive to use elsewhere without the image file and it was fine. I think the image was inserted into the drawing independently. As I mentioned, I did not create this document. A designer created it in Word 10+ years ago. I've been using it ever since. I usually don't use a blank. Mostly I use if for specific documents (invoices, proposals, etc.) and so I take a previous one, save as a new name, and modify sections of text. The image is in the header, I believe. I'm not sure which type of image file is the best for inserting. I used the png and it worked.

As an interesting side note, all of my invoices have the "read error". I looked at some proposals, and those seem to have the image compressed vertically by about 75%.

[Zizi64]

Please upload/share/link the problematic document here. (The file size limit is 128 KiB for the direct attachments in this forum.)

[stacie]

File attached.

[stacie]

Since they're acting different for some unknown reason, attached is a proposal. Both are on same letterhead.

[floris v]

Both documents look well, the logos are different, but I don't get a read error.

[stacie]

The logos are both there and both different? that's bizarre. Can you take a screen shot?

[FJCC]

What I see is that the logo in the Seedling document is misplaced, it is at the lower right corner of the first page, very faint, and it does not have the text Green Eye Studio. If I look at the internals of the document by renaming it as a zip file, the image is saved in the svm format and is only 2KB in size. In the Proposal document, the image is in the WMF format, is 21KB and has the text Green Eye Studio in addition to the drawing.

I extracted the SVM file from the Seedling document, deleted the image from the document and used Insert -> Picture to reinsert the image. I didn't bother much about the placement. The attached file shows the result of that. Is that the image you expect?

[stacie]

There should be a logo at the top left with the company name AND a grayed out logo only at the bottom right. The one at the top left is the only one that's messed up. Apparently it wasn't showing at all for you. Attached is what it should (and used to) look like. I should have thought to post that the first time.

[FJCC]

It seems then that the image that should be at the top left of the Seedling document is simply gone. I, like floris v, did not get a read error. To fix a document with that problem, the only solution is to reinsert the image, either copying from a document that does have it or using the original image file. It is strange that multiple documents should have this problem unless it happened to one and that was used as the basis for others. One document might lose the image through an accidental deletion or corruption during the save process. I can't see either of those happening multiple times in just the same way.

[stacie]

So weird. It's in all the invoices. I checked as far back as January. They were all fine until now. And now they're all not fine. It seems like it's got to be something in the program since it happened retroactively to all of them.

[RusselB]

Were the invoice files saved as separate files or are they linked to one another?
Are you using a custom template for the invoices?
Do you see the same problem if you open one of the invoices using a template other than the custom one (presuming the answers to both of the above questions is yes)?
If you do not see it using a non-customized template, then the problem, I suspect, lies in the template, not the actual saved files.

[John_Ha]

See 16. Lost images ... and a word of caution about using AutoRecovery. LibreOffice 6.1 may now be better than AOO in [Tutorial] Some useful hints on using images for a discussion on images getting lost.

[stacie]

The files are all separate, not linked. The original letterhead was created in Word over 10 years ago, but I've been using it in OO for many years without issue. I took the original letterhead file, made a few copies, made an invoice, a proposal, and a couple other docs. Since then I just make a copy of a previous doc of the type that I want, usually one of the most recent ones, and make edits. It's not an official "template" per se. So this has worked all these years, and the old ones held the images fine, but now all of the invoice ones are having the read error. I can't imagine something could happen to them all at once. That would be awfully coincidental.

[John_Ha]

Please upload a small file showing the problem so that it can be analysed. Use the Upload attachment tab below where you type (128 kB max); or use a file share site, Dropbox or Google Drive for a larger file.

Are the images linked or are they embedded? If embedded you have lost the image on your disk or moved it or moved the document so it longers finds the image.

[RoryOF]

There is a file from the OP on 10 Sept, John. Perhaps you have overlooked this?

[Zizi64]

The anchor property of the picture in the first attached file is very strange. The picture is "anchored to a character", but the anchor icon is located outside of the Page area. Tested in my LO 6.1.6:

The picture is virtually located in the footer, but the ornamentical lines and the picture are anchored to the header really (after dragging the picture the anchor icon moved to the header). Note: the Header has not contain any characters, but the anchor type is "to character"! ...Maybe it is reason of the faulty state.

Try to insert some space characters to the header, and anchor the upper picture to a space (or to the paragraph).
And try to anchor the bottom picture to the footer (to a character or to a paragraph).

[stacie]

Ok, it sounds like no one really knows why it happened. I'll just have to redo the images in any files I need to use. Thanks for putting your brains on my problem!

[stacie]

Ya know what's even weirder? I just opened one, thinking I was just going to fix it...And the image is there. I did nothing. I'm baffled, but grateful.

I'm attaching it to see if you see it, too...for curiosity's sake.

[RoryOF]

Yes, two images, one top left, the other bottom right.

[John_Ha]

There is a file from the OP on 10 Sept, John. Perhaps you have overlooked this?

Oops! My mistake - I skimmed the first posts. Sorry