Help?
What in LibreOffice writer is preventing images from, for example, a Word file, a file opened in Writer, from being copied or edited in external software? They are clearly visible in the original document, but cannot be extracted from the “frame” that LibreOffice has them embedded in. This creates what so far is an insurmountable obstacle to making use of older files and reviving the use of images and material of which they are a trove. I want and hope to extract the images (copy) and use them independently of the original file, in new files of my making. I wish I could overcome the obstacles or identify them, in LibreOffice writer. Just want to save images (.jpg or .png) as files themselves. Copy or cut only cuts blanks. Images disappear under layers; arranging images to the front fails also. Suggestions if anyone has them?
Current Word files, .docx, can be right-clicked to Edit in External Tool so I assume you are talking about older .doc files.
I used Lotus in the 1990’s; I recall that it was difficult to extract an image from Word .doc back then, usually it was just copied at screen resolution.
I had difficulty in finding an original .doc file with an image in it from that era but found a slightly later one. I can copy the image and paste it into Writer again or into a graphics editor in which it appears full size. It might have been a .gif when inserted into the .doc
There was a second image in the document which does not render well in Writer, nor in GIMP when copied to it. When opened in Word 2010, it identified it as a Microsoft Clipart object. Copied from Word, Free Clipboard Viewer says under Native that it is wmf. Copying from Word and pasting into Writer gives a low resolution bitmap. Pasting from Word into Draw gives an image indistinguishable from that rendered in Word.
Pasting from Writer into Draw gives an OLE icon and an error on double-clicking.
There is a list here relating to these files Bug 103859 (EMF-WMF) - [META] EMF/WMF (Enhanced/Windows Metafile) bugs and enhancements
A Word viewer might work to copy these images.
[Edit] A sample would be useful to identify what images are the problem
As a workaround, you can save the .doc file as .odt, open it with an archive manager (i.e., 7zip), then open the Pictures folder. There you will find all the images of the document.
I tried saving as .odt and extracting the images (Object1, Object2). I gave an extension of .wmf to the extracted object that was not displaying well and dragged it into Writer and it displayed much better than it had before but it was still a bitmap, not the vector that was copied from Word. Dragging into Draw gave same bitmap image.
The first image I gave an extension of .gif and that dragged into Writer OK.
I also tried opening a copy of the original doc in Google Docs which requested to convert it to .docx. The problematic image then looked very similar to that when opened in Word.