Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

I want to insert images into my document. When I choose insert->picture->from file, the picture gets inserted into all manner of weird places in my document, and are anchored to the page. I went to the "graphics" frame default style, and looked for appropriate options such as changing to "anchor to paragraph". These were not to be found.

How can I ensure that when I insert a new picture from a file, that it will appear wherever my cursor is? I grow weary of tracking down images on page 30 (when they should have been on page 50), then changing them to paragraph anchor, and then trying to insert them without them ending up in a footer or whatnot. I just want the image where my cursor is when I choose "insert".

Any help for a poor frustrated soul who really wants to use OpenOffice?

This is version 2.3. I've done documents in 2.1 using a similar technique and had no problems. In fact, problems like this are why I wanted to leave Word in the first place, but now this is exactly Word-like behaviour. In the bad way.

Title Edited. A descriptive title for posts helps others who are searching for solutions and increases the chances of a reply (Hagar, Moderator).

Also,

Some of my images are turning to black! What gives?

2.1 needed some fixes for sure, and 2.2 was 'almost there'... but 2.3 is not giving me too many feelings of confidence.

and now I can't paste any images at all, after exiting the program and restarting it.

This is 3 days of work down the toilet if I can't figure it out.

You can change the default behavior through the styles. When you insert a picture, the Graphics frame style is applied.

Once the pic is inserted, set the anchoring and text wrapping as you want.
Open the Stylist (F11), go to frame pane, highlight the Graphics frame style and select Update style from the upper right pull-down button (still in the Stylist).

If you update the Graphics frame style in your default template (see here: [Tutorial] Creating a new default template) then it will always behave like that when you insert a pic.

Thanks to add '[Solved]' in your first post title (edit button) if your issue has been fixed.

I don't understand why you'd have to "update style" to something fixed rather than being able to locate the style on the list and select "modify style". I'm not sure if this fixes the issue, since I ended up having to revert back to a version I had saved a few hours prior. So, I only lost 2 hrs or so of work instead of 3 days at least.

I don't know how it became "broken" in the first place. I had set up all my styles (with more depth even than the tutorial) and was halfway through composing my document when the behaviour changed. The black image was also unexpected.

There's definitely something fishy about 2.3. I consider myself an intermediate-level user, and have made extensive use of OpenOffice's superior styles methodology since its inception. Not until 2.3 have these problems appeared. A similar issue today: applied a style, one I had used for the past several days in the same manner, with no issues, and now suddenly it wants to apply that style to all subsequent styles. I have had other bugs and crashes which I've reported diligently back to the team in order to attempt to improve the product, so I do wish the best for Oo.

I definitely appreciate your answer, and the "update style" is something I will try next time I see this issue.

To be honest, though, I will need to abandon OpenOffice as a production environment tool. It's simply too buggy. I will continue to use it for personal tasks where my job isn't on the line.

Greg

GregP wrote:I don't understand why you'd have to "update style" to something fixed rather than being able to locate the style on the list and select "modify style".

Good question. This is the only way that has been found since that parameter cannot be modified directly in the style!

There is an enhancement request:

Allow anchor settings in frame styles (graphic-styles) (Issue 14008).

Workaround: https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=19814#c14

7 years later in Apache_OpenOffice_4.1.1_Win_x86... I just found that this is still a problem.

I am replying to GregP and possibly many others that are frustated about some of their images becoming black when inserted. (I did it in http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?p=751027#751027, which is more related to this bug):

If I insert or copy-paste an image to OO Writer or any other OO application, a black rectangle appears instead and if I export this document to pdf, a corrupted pdf is generated.

I discovered that the problem is not related to the image size/dimensions, but it is related to how the image was created (properties). This is happening in all the photos that I took with my chinese phone that records properties with chinese characters, but even changing manually those properties through Properties>Details tab (Windows), there is no improvement when inserting.

Therefore, a workaround for JPG images (probably other formats as well) is:

• download irfanview and install it - it's the most useful and most awesome program to convert, crop, watermark, rotate, unameit, save with all the tweaks you want and navigate entire galleries of images for Windows. And it's free (... it shouldn't be );
• Open the image that has problems with irfanview and in the menu do File>Save As;
• A smaller window appears to the right of the explorer window, where you need to uncheck all the "keep original" checkboxes (you can leave the EXIF checkboxes checked);
• Save and import the saved image to your OO application and voilá!

With irfanview you can also save a bunch of images at the same time with these properties by using File>Batch Conversion/rename... (or just press B): add the images you need to convert, go to Options near the Output format and uncheck those boxes.

PS: I suspect that this bug is mostly (if not only) related to the image properties characters encoding. The moment someone fixes the image importation by using utf8 en(de)coding, I guess the bug will be squashed into a pulp. 8)
PPS: I haven't used BB forums for ages!!! How is this thing still running?! I found this thread through google's 1st result anyway