Member Avatar for i686-linux

Prereqs:

Windows XP SP2
Office 2003 SP1

I have a workstation at a client with the following issue:

A user periodically takes a screenshot and then pastes it into Word. All appears to be ok until the user scrolls a bit down into the document, and then scrolls back up again when the pasted image becomes plain white. If you save/re-open the document all becomes OK again and if you print it, the image prints out ok. The image doesn't appear to be removed from the document, it is just rendered as being plain white.

I quickly googled to no avail. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance

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Dani AI

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Short summary and what actually fixed it: on Windows XP SP2 with Office 2003 SP1 a pasted screenshot could turn into a plain white box when scrolling, while saving or printing showed the image correctly. confirmed the behaviour and reported that ’s tip to disable Word’s picture-placeholder option resolved the symptom.

Why this happens: it’s a screen-render/refresh artifact, not an image loss. Word can use a “picture placeholder” to save memory and avoid holding full bitmaps on-screen. When the placeholder workflow interacts with a buggy video driver or hardware-accelerated drawing, the on-screen bitmap sometimes fails to re-render and looks blank. Printing/saving use a different render path (printer/GDI or file rendering), which is why they remain correct.

Practical, reliable steps (in order):

  1. Tools -> Options -> View -> uncheck "Picture placeholders" (the fix that worked here).
  2. Switch to View -> Print Layout or use Print Preview to force a redraw.
  3. Reduce hardware acceleration: Control Panel -> Display -> Settings -> Advanced -> Troubleshoot -> move the Hardware acceleration slider left, then restart if changed.
  4. Update the graphics driver from the GPU vendor (Intel/AMD/NVIDIA).
  5. If frequent screenshots are needed, use Insert -> Picture -> From File or Paste Special -> Bitmap/PNG to force an embedded bitmap instead of transient clipboard rendering.
  6. If problems persist across machines, run Office repair (Add/Remove Programs) and test the document on another PC to isolate Office vs. video-driver causes.

Note: because printing and saved files remain correct, documents are safe; this is primarily an on-screen rendering bug. Changing hardware settings can affect other apps, so document backups and a cautious approach are recommended.

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Member Avatar for MartyMcFly

Found some stuff off google for this, It appears no one knows why, certainly nothing came up from Microsoft.

Make sure the Picture placeholder is unchecked in tools - options - view tab.

They also suggest to update graphics drivers and turn down hardware acceleration.

This guy reckons he knows the fix, but i haven't tested this

http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-6129-0.html?forumID=29&threadID=48813&messageID=619305

Member Avatar for i686-linux

It worked. Thank you much.

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