Images from a Word Document

This is kind of a self-help post. By that I mean it’s here to help me when I inevitably forget how to do this. Maybe it will be useful to you, as well.

The story’s a bit long, but it started when I downloaded a version of LaTeX for Windows. Innocent in itself, but somehow I got hooked. I actually treat preparing documents the same way I do video games: just one more footnote! Blame it on the day job.

Anyway, I wanted to convert one of my old research papers to LaTeX as a kind of exercise. Simple enough . . . except for the embedded images. Luckily, it’s a simple process to get them back if you know how.

Thanks to a tip on LaunchPad Zero (of all places) and some clarifying information on Graham Mayer’s website, I found the trick: export the Word document as a web page with supporting files.

This will save all embedded images – including their original forms, if they’ve been modified – to a folder in the same directory as your exported HTML file.

One mild annoyance here is that trying to move the folder independently from the HTML file doesn’t work. Windows keeps them together to prevent link breakage (I assume), which means that if you really want to keep the images for yourself, you’ll have to copy them somewhere else. Realistically you’d probably do that anyway, but it’s nice to know.

Hope it saves you some time when you, too, get hooked on typesetting.

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