Using Draw & inserting a picture

[Carolyn Stokes <ca...@hotmail.com>]

Hi,

I’m too wordy to be able to get an answer on the forums so I will ask this way. I have found that when trying to insert a picture, if I have something on the page already especially a rectangle, it inserts the pic into the shape instead of just overlaying it somewhere on the document so that I can grab it and move it to where I want it positioned. I ultimately have to delete the box and everything in it to clear out the pic. How do I insert a pic without having that problem?

Thanks,
Carolyn Stokes

Re: Using Draw & inserting a picture

[Brian Barker <b....@btinternet.com>]

At 08:30 01/12/2016 +0100, Dave Noname wrote:
>At 00:19 01/12/2016 +0000, Carolyn Stokes wrote:
>>I have found that when trying to insert a picture, if I have 
>>something on the page already especially a rectangle, it inserts 
>>the pic into the shape instead of just overlaying it somewhere on 
>>the document so that I can grab it and move it to where I want it 
>>positioned. I ultimately have to delete the box and everything in 
>>it to clear out the pic. How do I insert a pic without having that problem?
>
>It sounds like you have the shape selected (ie. displaying the 8 
>green resizing handles) while inserting the picture. In which case 
>you should click outside the shape to deselect it, then insert the picture.

That's an obvious guess, but a bit of experimentation shows that this 
is not the problem - or the solution. The problem is that inserting a 
picture into a Draw drawing sometimes inserts the picture as the 
background of an existing shape instead of as a separate graphic 
entity. Yes, that's "sometimes", and I haven't found out exactly what 
controls when Draw behaves either like this or as expected. It 
doesn't seem necessarily to choose the most recently created or most 
recently touched shape, for example. But it certainly goes wrong 
sometimes (often?) *even when no shape is selected*.

An additional problem is that you don't even get the picture that you 
wanted: because it is incorporated as a background, you may get a 
part of the picture showing or a tiled repetition - or both.

This is clearly a bug, and was reported two years ago in version 4.1.0. See
https://bz.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=125181 . The release notes 
for version 4.1.0 indicate that major changes were made in this area 
for that version, so the bug will probably have been introduced then. 
You may want to add your experience to the bug report, especially 
since the bug clearly persists in version 4.1.3 and also if you 
happen to be using a different operating system from the one (Mac OS) 
described there.

A slightly messy but effective workaround is to create a fresh Draw 
document, insert the picture there, and copy and paste it from there 
into your real document - abandoning the temporary document. That is 
only a few clicks and simpler than it sounds.

I trust this helps.

Brian Barker


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Re: Using Draw & inserting a picture

[Dave <no...@tasit.net>]

On 01.12.2016 01:19, Carolyn Stokes wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I’m too wordy to be able to get an answer on the forums so I will ask
> this way. I have found that when trying to insert a picture, if I
> have something on the page already especially a rectangle, it inserts
> the pic into the shape instead of just overlaying it somewhere on the
> document so that I can grab it and move it to where I want it
> positioned. I ultimately have to delete the box and everything in it
> to clear out the pic. How do I insert a pic without having that
> problem?
> 
> Thanks,
>  Carolyn Stokes

It sounds like you have the shape selected (ie. displaying the 8 green
resizing handles) while inserting the picture. In which case you should
click outside the shape to deselect it, then insert the picture.

Dave
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