Impress and Writer crash and I lose previews of pictures

[AMcRoberts]

I am placing screen shots in to a Impress document. The screen shots are between 250kb and 30kb in size. Not big at all. I keep crashing and end up having to 'recover'. Then after the last crash my pictues did not appear, only the outline I put around them. I get a blue, yellow and red set of three squares on the top right of the pic with three dots next to it. How do I get my pictures to load. I have searched the forums and it appears to be an image size issue. But my images are very small (in kb) screen shots.

Note, I spent about 2 hours in Writer doing this and the same thing. So I redid it in impress and now the same thing. I don't want to have wasted four hours.

Thanks for you reply

[John_Ha]

Your images are almost certainly lost due to a bug in AOO. See 16. Lost images ... and a word of caution about using AutoRecovery. LibreOffice 6.1 may now be better than AOO in [Tutorial] Some useful hints on using images for a discussion.

[AMcRoberts]

Thanks John.

[RoryOF]

I have found switching off Autosave/AutoRecovery of help in saving images in documents: my computers are (touch wood!) stable and I use a regular backup routine just in case of problems. This solution may be specific only to computers using linux - not using any current Windows I have not investigated if it is stable on Windows machines. It becomes your responsibility to regularly Save your file in progress, and a timestamped Save routine is advised.

I recently prepared for printing a book of some 70,000 characters, containing 31 images. Total editing time 25 hours, 130+ saves. Quite stable.

I do have a regular backup routine in place, using the TimeStamp at
https://kovleventer.com/
http://flowcont.hu/LO_oxt_store/

and hopefully soon to be at the extensions repository in its latest version.

However, I note that John_Ha and I differ on the efficacy of this method, which works correctly both for Writer and Impress on my linux machines. LibreOffice did commission a code investigation which seems to fix most instances of this problem, although there have been very occasional reports of a re-occurrence on LibreOffice.

Extensions in Java may cause other instabilities in editing large presentations; it can be good to disable these before editing a large presentation.

[John_Ha]

I have found switching off Autosave/AutoRecovery of help in saving images in documents ... However, I note that John_Ha and I differ on the efficacy of this method

Our difference is minor. The AOO image handling code is "broken beyond belief" and is the root cause of the problem.

While RoryOF believes switching off AutoRecovery fully protects against image loss I think it only reduces the probability of image loss. During testing I have witnessed images being lost even when AutoRecovery was not switched on. I have also witnessed images being lost at the precise moment at which an AutoRecovery save takes place.

[RoryOF]

I can only say that I have had no loss during several years (five or six) since adopting that strategy. Even today I was updating an existing presentation containing over 100 images (on 70 slides) and had no problems in an hour's editing involving insertion of some 20 or so updated images, and editing/animation of a title slide.

But, I stress, I am working on linux - specifically Xubuntu (currently 20.04) - and there may be a difference in the reaction of Windows and linux.

[Kingcharle]

I can only say that I have had no loss during several years (five or six) since adopting that strategy. Even today I was updating an existing presentation containing over 100 images (on 70 slides) and had no problems in an hour's editing involving insertion of some 20 or so updated images, and editing/animation of a title slide.

But, I stress, I am working on linux - specifically Xubuntu (currently 20.04) - and there may be a difference in the reaction of Windows and Linux.

Problem, is that technically they use almost the same things... since they use ports on Windows and use the original thing on Linux
First thing you gotta do is to try LibreOffice, open the same thing and check if it's solved, if not, that means OO literally screwed your presentation or that you screwed OO, else, good for you.

[Cazer]

I agree with some of the previous suggestions. The problem might indeed be related to the autosave/autorecovery feature in OpenOffice. You could try turning off this feature to see if it makes a difference.

1. Go to Tools > Options.
2. Under Load/Save, click on General.
3. Untick 'Save AutoRecovery information every...' box.

Also, you might want to consider using LibreOffice. It's a fork of OpenOffice, but it's more actively maintained, and many users have found it to be more stable.

Remember to save your work frequently and consider making regular backups. It's a hassle, I know, but it can save you from a lot of heartache down the line.