Non-linked picture gives “linked image cannot be displayed”

My co-worker has been embedding pictures into Excel (with a macro that uses Pictures.Insert(path)) and Word (by copying and pasting from Excel). When I open the files, some of the pictures in Word, and all the pictures in Excel, are blank except for this error message:

"The linked image cannot be displayed. The file may have been moved, renamed, or deleted. Verify that the link points to the correct file and location."

However, as I said above, the pictures are NOT linked. I've confirmed this: in Excel the "Edit Links" button is greyed out. In Word I've tried displaying all the field codes and looking at the Alt text.

He had first saved the files to our mutual Dropbox. After that he emailed them to me, but the same issue occurred.

I opened the files both on my laptop (Office 365 on Windows 7 64-bit) and on a Surface tablet (Windows 8.1). My co-worker is also using Office 365 on Windows 7 64-bit.

The path is referring to the location of the images on the coworkers computer. So, the pictures themselves would have to either exist on both computers in the same location or perhaps on a removable drive. Are the jpg files always the same?

Originally Posted by dfrench

The path is referring to the location of the images on the coworkers computer.

But there is no path. The pictures are embedded, not linked.

Originally Posted by shawnvw

My co-worker has been embedding pictures into Excel (with a macro that uses Pictures.Insert(path)) and Word (by copying and pasting from Excel). When I open the files, some of the pictures in Word, and all the pictures in Excel, are blank except for this error message:

"The linked image cannot be displayed. The file may have been moved, renamed, or deleted. Verify that the link points to the correct file and location."

However, as I said above, the pictures are NOT linked. I've confirmed this: in Excel the "Edit Links" button is greyed out. In Word I've tried displaying all the field codes and looking at the Alt text.

He had first saved the files to our mutual Dropbox. After that he emailed them to me, but the same issue occurred.

I opened the files both on my laptop (Office 365 on Windows 7 64-bit) and on a Surface tablet (Windows 8.1). My co-worker is also using Office 365 on Windows 7 64-bit.

Read what you posted, your co worker uses a path. So there IS a path. Don't bother replying, i won't read it this time.

Originally Posted by dfrench

Read what you posted, your co worker uses a path. So there IS a path. Don't bother replying, i won't read it this time.

DFrench must think I'm being stupid or stubborn, since he or she won't read this thread anymore. If any of you are still bearing with me, please let me make myself clear.

First of all, I know exactly what my co-worker is doing, because I'm the one who wrote the macro.

Second, instead of saying "there is no path" I should have said "there is no link". The macro did embed the picture with the Pictures.Insert(path) command, but once the picture is in the file, the path is no longer used. He and I have been doing this with other pictures for weeks without having this problem. And I checked closely and saw no evidence of an actual link in either the Word or Excel documents.

Is there some reason an embedded picture would still try to access the external file? How would I change that?

From what I've just read (http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1613122), apparently using Pictures.Insert does retain the path to the picture, even though it's supposed to be embedding it. It also says that to avoid this issue, we can instead use Shapes.Addpicture with the "SaveWithDocument" property set to True.