Inserting a picture or photo in a libreoffice writer document

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#1

Hi! I did a quick search for an answer to my problem, which is, essentially, having a box of blank space appear where a photo or picture should be (that I’ve copied and pasted). My search offered two answers, neither of which worked. Answer one was to go to LibreOffice Writer tools, then options, then LibreOffice Writer, then View, and then enable graphics and objects under Display. The problem? It was ALREADY enabled. Another answer involved a “bit map” which a)didn’t work because “bit map” didn’t appear as an option and b)would have been an unacceptable solution even if it had worked because I can’t be resorting to special measures every time I need to copy and paste something with a photo or picture of some sort since that occurs with almost every single document I compose.

I figure if Yahoo Mail can reproduce all photos and other graphics when I copy and paste them for an email, LibreOffice Writer should be able to do that too, and I’m surprised I’m having such trouble.

Image copy and Paste issue
#2

Hi @graviton, It’s not clear to me what you’re trying to do. Do you want to insert an image and have the text flow around it?

#3

Hi qubit, see below.

#4

@graviton, I just threw a couple of windows8 tags on this question. Still asking my peers for a win8 test machine. A few of them just received new windows laptops, all of which came with win7. Wondering if this an indication that the computer companies don’t trust win8 yet…

#5

Hi @graviton, Please file a bug report here. Please mention that you’re working on Windows 8, and hopefully someone will be able to reproduce your bug on a different win8 machine. Good luck!

#6

Hi @graviton,

Just checking back in with you. Did you get a chance to file a bug? If you do, please post a link to any bugs you file in a comment below using the format “fdo#123456”. That will allow us to resolve this Question as BUG FILED.

Thanks!

#17

Using LibO Writer 3.6.4 (the most recent stable version of the software) under Win XP, I hit first Ctrl-A on this page to select all text, graphics, etc., then Ctrl-C to copy to clipboard, then in Writer Ctrl-V to insert. Results:

  1. Font is changed to Times New Roman.
  2. The complex layout on this page
    (multiple indentations, shaded
    background, etc.) is lost in Writer:
    all text is left-justified to the
    same margin.
  3. Only two point sizes in pasted copy
    in Writer: 12 point for body text,
    18 point for headlines.
  4. Clickable hyperlinks (“All”,
    “Unanswered”, “Followed”, the
    headline) are preserved (using Ctrl-Click).
  5. Gravatars (the square avatars next
    to user names) at first did not show
    in Writer, I saw only
    “placeholders”. Once I right-clicked
    on one of them, the gravatars all
    showed, as did the LibreOffice logo
    at the top.

Tried again inserting into Writer, but this time using “Paste Special → HTML format”. The results were identical, except this time I did not have to right-click on a graphic for all the graphics to show.

Next I went into my Yahoo mail and started a new message window (“Compose”). Pasted this page into the window. The results are much the same as with the paste into Writer, except that

  1. Text appears in Arial font.
  2. Clickable hyperlinks are preserved
    differently. You have to right-click
    on one and then select “Open in new
    tab [or window]”

Overall, I did not find that the layout of this page was preserved any better in Yahoo Mail than in Writer, except that

  • Yahoo Mail does not show the
    distracting horizontal lines that
    Writer inserts.

Purely out of curiosity, I also used Firefox to “show source” of this web page and copy-pasted that into Writer. As expected, only the HTML code shows in Writer, not the product (the layouted Web page). However, if someone wanted to reproduce exactly the layout of this page, that code would provide valuable pointers.

By the way, you probably want to keep in mind that much content on the Web (including and especially photographs) is copyrighted. It’s legal to send other people links to the Web address where they appear, but you are breaking the law when you copy photographs and mail them to others.

#12

Hiya qubit, little did I suspect that this problem would prove so resistant to solution!!

You asked: “Hmm. Interesting. I assume you’re using Yahoo mail in the browser (right?), so the browser successfully copies the HTML and (possibly) the images as well. Oh! perhaps that’s the issue: Are the images in an email embedded or are they links? Perhaps LO just isn’t displaying a image linked by url…”

(By the way, qubit, you don’t need to restrict yourself to “comments”–you certainly should feel free to use the “answer” section, regardless of whether your response solves the problem or not.)

Yes, I’m using Yahoo mail in Firefox, and I find it interesting that you are clearly finding it hard to believe that I’m reproducing all images and graphics from the website in my email. But just to be emphatic–it’s not just the HTML, it’s not just links–every single feature of the webpage that I’ve copied is replicated in the email precisely as it appears in the original.

The reason I reproduce articles in my emails rather than provide links to those articles is that I have some lazy and/or incurious friends!!! A bare link is much less provocative than the article itself, so if the latter is right in front of them they are more likely to read it.

So qubit, what happens when YOU copy and paste images from a web page into Yahoo Mail in Firefox?

#13

(quick follow-up) I’m not sure I have a Yahoo Mail account right now, but I’m going to test in GMail with whatever test page you guys are using… once I read through the rest of the comments on this page! :slight_smile: also, karma for you for being so descriptive

#14

Win7x64.

With different LibreOffice versions, the images are showed after a while for update.

Paste do not embed the images in the document, but only the links, if you want the images embedded, you can do it breaking the links in Menu/Edit/Links -(Selecting links) - Break links. (in a text writer document).

In a HTML document, the links can not be breaking.

No issues pasting a single image.

Can you report a web link where to see the issues.

#15

@mariosv – thanks for the sleuthing! When you say “in an html document, the links can not be breaking”, what do you mean? Do you mean that you can’t embed images if you Save As HTML from within LO?

#16

@qubit1, when you go trough Menu/File/New, you can select between others, HTML document.

#7

Hi qubit, I see that I’m forced to use this method of replying to you because of the extreme brevity required for comments.

Well, what I’m trying to do is copy and paste portions of webpages and portions of other sorts of things, including any photos, into my LibreOffice Writer documents. As I mentioned, I routinely do this for my Yahoo emails. While waiting for help on this I did some searching and learned about “Insert”. As a result, I was able to insert a photo from a file of photos into a Writer document, but this is not really what I need to be able to do.

#8

Okay, I think I understand your question a bit better. How do you copy portions of webpages and paste them into Yahoo mail? Do you just use the mouse to highlight a portion of content, or?

#9

Re: comment length limit, I do apologize for that problem. I’ve tried several times, unsuccessfully, to campaign for that limit to be increased, filed bugs, etc, but I have no power to effect change and, apparently, little audience to hear my requests. Using the Answer field is a clever alternative.

#10

qubit, yes, I left-click the touchpad and move the cursor to highlight the desired portion of the webpage, then press Ctrl C, and then go to the Yahoo email, click on the spot on the email I want to deposit my parcel, and press Ctrl V. Everything-- text, photos and any and all graphics— is perfectly reproduced. It seems inconceivable to me that only lesser things would be attainable with LibreOffice Writer. But thus far, all I have are gaping holes where the photos should be!!!

#11

Hmm. Interesting. I assume you’re using Yahoo mail in the browser (right?), so the browser successfully copies the HTML and (possibly) the images as well. Oh! perhaps that’s the issue: Are the images in an email embedded or are they links? Perhaps LO just isn’t displaying a image linked by url…

#18

Hello Joe1234, I’m delighted to see someone with such a scientific spirit attacking this problem, but I’m disappointed by the way you chose to conduct your experiment.

As I’m sure you know (probably far better than I) web pages often have portions that cannot be copied and pasted, and THIS web page is abundantly furnished with elements that resist highlighting (and therefore cannot be copied). Furthermore, it doesn’t contain any photos, my principal concern. So, really, there cannot be a more unsuitable guinea pig for your experiment.

Let me note for the record that although for the past month I’ve had a new computer with Windows 8, for the prior six years I was using Windows XP like you, and everything I say NOW about reproducing web pages in Yahoo Mail is equally true of my experience with Windows XP in Yahoo Mail. And I am using, and have always used, Firefox, which works much better in this regard than other browsers, in my experience.

So, let’s conduct some new experiments with web pages that are more relevant. (Since you evidently have copyright concerns, you needn’t actually email any photos that you copy, or you can email them to yourself if you want to assure yourself, without violating the law, that images are preserved during the emailing process.)

So I just did what I’ve done for many years without the slightest problem. I went to a series of randomly chosen webpages with text and photos (and sometimes non-photographic images), carefully highlighted a portion of the page (making sure the photos/images were indeed “taking” the highlighting), and then pasted it all in Yahoo Mail using Firefox. 100% of the copied photos/images were precisely reproduced in Yahoo Mail (although sometimes a little smaller in size), and were preserved intact when emailed to myself. I then repeated the exact process using LibreOffice Writer (version 3.6.32) and precisely 0 % of the photos/images were reproduced there.

So, contrary to your findings: Yahoo Mail, a complete success, LibreOffice Writer, a complete failure.

Joe1234, I eagerly await your results when you attempt to replicate my experiment.

#19

Very well, let us repeat the experiment, this time with photographs. commons.wikimedia.org has photographs that may be used freely, subject to minimal restrictions (CC-BY-SA license). Entered “viaduct” in the search box. Then I selected everything from “There is a page …” to “View (previous 20…”)

#20

(cont.) Ctrl+C and then Ctrl+V in Writer. Again, right clicked one photo and soon after, all 17 photos appeared in all their glory in Writer. Did not perform this experiment in Yahoo Mail also b/c did not see the point.

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