I am running LIbreOffice Version 6.0.7.3 on Linux Mint. I have a long Writer document (200 pages), the formatting of which is driving me crazy because some saved images keep disappearing. Not all images, but a lot. Some images always appear correctly when I open the document. Others never, and yet others sometimes do and sometimes don’t. It makes no difference whether they are JPG or PNG. The captions of the ‘vanished’ images remain, as do the boxes created around the image when the caption is inserted. I have checked that Tools>Options>LIbreOffice Writer>View>Display>Images and Objects is checked. Any help greatly appreciated.
Insert and edit images in Writer Part 1
The most common problems are caused by incorrect anchoring and positioning of the image.
Please upload a shortened and anonymized sample file containing the problem here. Thank you.
Thank you for your response. I am afraid that has not proved possible as yet, because when I copy and paste an offending sample of the document to create a new Writer file to attach here the photo magically appears in the new file. In the meantime I have discovered that if I change the anchor of the ‘vanished’ photos from whatever the default is (“As character” I think) to “To character” they show up and appear to be stable.
It turns out my “solution” was not a solution. I now find those photos which had appeared when I changed the anchor to “To character” are not stable, they appear erratically. If I change the anchor to anything, they reappear, but they are not stable - i.e. they are liable to disappear after I reopen the document. Extremely frustrating. It seems to me LibreOffice Writer does not handle images well. Time to migrate back to MS Word perhaps.
I am still unable to provide a sample. I tried saving a duplicate copy of the whole document, hoping to then delete all but a single page with a missing photo, but in the duplicate copy the photo appears again (but others don’t)!
You are using a very old version of LO; I believe that much improvement has been made to image handling since 2018.
You should consider upgrading.
Creating a peaceful coexistence between images or other “frames” with text is an art. It requires to have the humility to forget everything you think you know about text processing and to accept to start from scratch discovering the base principles in Writer. Those principles are different from those in M$ Word and prove more powerful.
But the biggest effort is to drop direct formatting which is the only way to work in Word and is nicknamed “intuitive” (because we are so much used to it).
Where images are involved, the most fruitful approach is to use a frame style, and here absolutely WITHOUT any direct formatting. Direct formatting has a much more devastating effect on frames than on other style categories. It is difficult indeed because frame styles don’t behave as smoothly as the others. But once you have designed satisfactory frame styles, it is rewarding and managing images is a treat.
Please note that anchor and position are practically independent from each other. Don’t use anchor To page until you have fully understood the goal and use case of it.
Thanks for the heads-up. I am running Linux Mint 19.1 and the version of LibreOffice I am using is the latest one available in the repository for this version of Linux Mint. I tend to put off upgrading my OS perhaps longer than I should as it is always such a time-consuming job to set up my system as I need it again. But I’ll see to it now.
Right, I will endeavour to look into frames.
Thank you for taking the time to write that to help me, I know that time is precious.
Speaking of which, I would offer that I suspect that in a busy life most users of word processing software most probably do not aspire to master a new art form 
; they simply want without too much fuss to use a simple sequence of commands (e.g. “insert” → “image”), choose an image and have the software put it and reliably keep it where they have inserted it; something which, if I remember correctly MS Word does, but perhaps I don’t remember correctly 
.
And Writer does it correctly in only two steps:
- insert image
- apply frame style on image
and, MOST IMPORTANT, do nothing else.
But this works after you’ve configured your frame style. Which brings us back to training: you must understand what frame styles are for and how they work. Since we all tend to write repetitive documents, our specifications and requirements are stored in a template file to avoid reinventing the wheel for every document. This phase (designing own template) is probably longer than under M$ Word because of the tremendous powers of Writer. But after that, I can assure you writing a target document is a treat because you no longer mix the act of creation with formatting (all formatting knowledge is embodied in styles).
Unfortunately users hurry too much to dive into writing, neglecting basic training. This behaviour has killed many very good programs because their driving and control was not the same as the current state of the art (which is frequently called “intuition”).
Touché. Thanks again.
Consider Ubuntu LibreOffice packaging team’s PPA, which allows to upgrade to a newer LibreOffice release without upgrading OS, and without loosing the app management from APT.
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That’s good to know, thank you.