Getting Pictures Out of Word

When working with other people's documents, you may wonder if there is a way to move graphic images out of the document and into their own files. There are actually several different ways you can accomplish this.

First, try right-clicking on the graphic. In the resulting Context menu, you may see an option called Save As Picture. (I say "may" because this option may not be available for all document formats or for all versions of Word.) Assuming you see the option, click it and you can specify a name and location for the image. This approach doesn't remove the image from the document, it simply saves the image into its own graphics file you can then work with.

Another approach works well if you have a graphics program on your computer—you can simply copy the files from Word to the graphics program. Follow these steps:

1. Load the document that contains the graphics images.
2. Start your graphics program.
3. In Word, click once on the graphic you want saved in a file. Small squares (handles) should appear around the graphic and the Picture toolbar may also appear.
4. Press Ctrl+C. This copies the graphic to the Clipboard.
5. In the graphics program, press Ctrl+V. This pastes the graphic into the graphics program.
6. Use the controls in the graphics program to save the graphic as you desire.

If you don't remember installing a graphics program on your computer, you should check to see if Microsoft Photo Editor is on your system. It has been available with several versions of Office, although it is not installed by default. If you would like to install it, you can run the Office setup program to do so, and then use the steps above.

Another approach to getting graphics out of your document is to save the document in HTML format. When you do, Word extracts the graphic images and stores them in their own JPG files. Use these steps:

1. Create a folder that will contain the HTML document.
2. In Word, open the document containing the images.
3. Press F12. Word displays the Save As dialog box.
4. Make sure you choose Web Page in the Save As Type drop-down list. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Save As dialog box, ready to save a Web page.

5. Use the controls in the dialog box to select the folder you created in step 1.
6. In the File Name field, specify a name for the file.
7. Click on Save.
8. Close the document.

At this point, the folder contains the HTML document and it also contains a new folder that contains all the images that were in the document. These are regular JPG files; you can open them with any graphics program. There is a drawback to using this approach, however: If you only wanted to save one of the graphics from the document, you will find that all of them have been saved in individual files and you will need to search through them to find the one you want.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (11071) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Getting Pictures Out of Word.