Writer lost linked images

[jsv1]

Yesterday, Writer lost 2 of 5 linked images in my very simpe document.

A document consists of 5 pages, one image per page. It seemed to work fine unless I opened the document next day and to my surpise there was just literally nothing where the 1st and the 3rd images were.

Yep, I reported the bug, but since I don’t know how to reproduce it, the bug report is not very useful for “developers”.

Have you experienced the same bug? Are there any secret tricks to avoid it?

Version: 7.2.4.1 (x86) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 27d75539669ac387bb498e35313b970b7fe9c4f9
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 6.1 Service Pack 1 Build 7601; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: en-US (en_US); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded

update as request by ajlittoz

All of images were linked images, and were anchored as characters. Here is a comparision of the XML markup of the image that is still in the file and the XML of the image that is now missing:

This is a part of “covid.jpg” image. This image is OK, it wasn’t removed.

<text:p text:style-name="P10">
  <draw:frame draw:style-name="fr1" draw:name="Image2" text:anchor-type="as-char" svg:width="415.11pt" svg:height="587.31pt" draw:z-index="5">
    <draw:image xlink:href="../covid.jpg" xlink:type="simple" xlink:show="embed" xlink:actuate="onLoad" draw:filter-name="&lt;All images&gt;" draw:mime-type="image/jpeg"/>
  </draw:frame>
</text:p>

And this is a part of the “house.jpg” image. This image is missing:

<text:p text:style-name="P6">
  <draw:frame draw:style-name="fr1" draw:name="Image1" text:anchor-type="as-char" svg:width="486pt" svg:height="273.34pt" draw:z-index="0"><draw:image/></draw:frame>
</text:p>

It is very clear that the second snippet is broken. The only question is why. All of the images were inserted exactly the same way, by clicking the “Insert > Image” and enabling the “Link” check box.

After the document was almost ready, I closed it, and then opened it again to edit some text. I have do it multiple times and the images were in their correct places. Then, two days ago, I opened this document again, and the images were missing, and XML markup is broken. It seems there was some internal error during the last save.

[ajlittoz]

If you expect any decent help, help us to help you: edit your question to add OS name and LO version (and please, don’t say “latest version” because the version won’t be the same tomorrow or next week).
Better: attach your file so that we can see the technical differences over the occurrences.

[jsv1]

Not sure there can be any help. Even though this exact bug will be fixed, I remember the similar one few years ago. I simply cannot trust software that silently harms my files. Since I need page styles, Word doesn’t support them, and Writer is unusable because it’s full of bugs (and I need to spend literally days and weeks testing and reporting them, given that my workflow and my documents are very simple), I think that I will simply switch to InDesign as my word processor instead, that’s it. And this will be in fact a way more clever financially: the time I have wasted messing around with LO bugs is way more pricey than InDesign subsciption.

[ajlittoz]

I never suffered image loss, even in my “catalogues” displaying hundreds of images. So the problem may be in your workflow.

You say you needs “page styles”. Indeed? Or a page-based design as opposed to usual flow-oriented design?

A page-paged design is possible in Writer (but has nothing to do with image loss) though it is not the ideal tool. Impress, the presentation application, could be a better choice because it is page-oriented (slide-oriented in its own parlance).

So it all boils down to which faulty step you made in your workflow. Attach your 5-page file for forensics examination.

[jsv1]

(I don’t mean that using page styles is related to image loss, but instead I mean that the lack of page styles is why I don’t consider to use Word.) I have just updated the post to provide the XML parts that are a subject of our interest.

[ajlittoz]

I am no developer so reading XML often doesn’t ring bells for me. All I can tell, like you, is: everything looks like the image has been deleted in the document. Another possibility: have you moved your document yo another directory, forgetting to move also all images?

The first snippet has xlink:show="embed" which suggests Writer caches an internal copy of the image.Have you unticked the corresponding option for the “missing” images?

This is why I prefer to look at the file itself instead of screenshots and other excerpts.