Question

Has anyone had problems inserting a PNG file into a word document, using a VBA Macro?

I have an MS Word document that contains a very large directory listing of image files, inside a table. I’ve been asked to update the document by inserting the corresponding image in front of the name.

Now, if I enter the image manually (using Insert|Image|From File), I’m able to successfully place the PNG image … so I decided to write a quick VBA Macro to insert the image for me. The following is a sample of the code:

Dim myFile  As String
Selection.SelectCell
Selection.Copy
myFile = _
   Chr(34) & "C:\Documents and Settings\...\Project\Images\" _
   & Left(Selection.Text, Len(Selection.Text) - 2) & Chr(34)

Selection.InlineShapes.AddPicture _
   FileName:=myFile, LinkToFile:=False, SaveWithDocument:=True

Outcomes:

• Whenever I execute the macro, I get the “Unable to Convert” error dialog, and no image is inserted.
• I even changed the code to invoke the wdDialogInsertPicture Dialog instead, and it worked just fine.

This is very confusing … using a manual process, the insert works, but going with an automated solution, the insert doesn’t work!

Any ideas or suggestions?

Answer 1

I’ve tried the macro several times and it works … it seems that I’m no longer able to re-create the error again. So, I’m going to mark this under the “mysteries of Office VBA” column and leave it as is … this is not a high-priority project, so there is no need for me to continue investigating.

Thanks to Alain and Joel Spolsky for their help.