Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated December 31, 2022)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003
Patricia wants to know how she can I get a photo that she's inserted into a Word document to show up immediately when opening the document. When she copies a photo or attaches a scanned photo to a Word document, she notices a delay before the photo appears when later opening the document. She often has to scroll past the photo to get it to appear.
This seems to be rather common behavior for Word. More properly, one could say that it is common behavior for Windows. Why? Because Word needs to call upon the operating system to display graphic images on the screen, and delays in presenting those images can, more often than not, be traced to the speed at which the operating system responds to such requests.
There is very little you can do to speed things up, short of getting more memory, faster memory, and (perhaps) a more powerful graphics card. You could, however, make it easier for Word and Windows to display the pictures by making the pictures more simplistic. For instance, resize them so that they are closer to the size you want them in the document. You could also reduce the number of colors in the picture or reduce its resolution in some way.
Of course, all of these manipulations of the pictures should be done outside of Word. The idea is to make the pictures simpler for Word to process. If they are simpler, then they will display quicker.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (443) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.
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