Anchors for images revert after closing Writer: is there a way to prevent this?

Anchors for images revert after closing Writer: is there a way to prevent this?

When I insert an image Writer defaults to character. ( Image/right click/ anchor)

I change it to page.

When I close the document and reopen it, the images have moved and have reverted to character.

  1. Is it possible to change the default to page? ( I can’t find a ‘preferences’ for Writer and customization and options don’t change defaults.

  2. Why this happening and, more important, is there a way to make it STOP messing with my work?

Thanks very much
Nora G

In this case, it is .docx

I did find protecting position solved it.

Next time i’ll try both formats so I can see if it changes my result.

Thanks for caring
Nora

How do you save your document? .odt (native) or .doc(x) (foreign)

Also OS and LO versions

Edit your question to add this info, don’t use an answer.

There no way to change the default.

The reason why the anchor was changed is saving in .docx whose internal specification has not the same anchors as ODF. Welcome in the world of document compatibility and exchange :wink:

Anchoring to page is a bad idea. The object (image, frame, table, …) becomes anchored to this specific page (let’s assume for the explanation it is page 10) and no longer participate in text flow. Now you edit your document. Two things may happen:

  • you added material before the image

    Text is reorganised and new text will push existing one around the image. Consequently, text will no longer be in sync with the image (if that’s important for your document). Whatever you added, the image is still anchored to page 10.

  • you removed material before the image

    Text is again reorganised, pulling existing text after the image to a position before it. Imagine now you erased a huge sequence of paragraphs decreasing your content to 5 pages. The image is still anchored to page 10, creating empty pages 6-9. These empty pages are so artificial that you can’t remove them through editing your document. To do that, you must changed the image anchor, which is not obvious for most Writer users!

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Since i am making flyers, one page is all i need. I get to play dictator of where things go.
I do believe it does it on odt as well as doc. Will have to get back to you on this.

You should know the distinction between anchoring (where an object is connected to), and positioning (where it is placed, relative to other objects). And usually, it’s not needed to use to page anchoring when people use it; they only need to page positioning, which is also available for objects anchored normally, i.e. to character or to paragraph.

There are several bugs reported about the anchor of images in docx files.

docx anchor images