Since the Microsoft 2013 upgrade, I've had a difficult time formatting images. In all previous versions of Word, you simply right-click an image, then select Format and choose your border, or whatever. However, in this version it sometimes works but sometimes doesn't.

I have to take screenshots and paste them into Microsoft Paint because screen capture software images (like Snag-it) are too blurry for what I do. When I crop the image then cut/paste it into a document, the right-click>Format option isn't even there. When I click the image, it launches Paint and displays the image there. I can't apply borders or shadowing, or really anything because the right-click menu doesn't display the option to format.

And today I couldn't even insert a shape (an arrow) on that image. I tried new documents, etc. but this is a problem that goes back to software installation.

At the time of my original post, I couldn't see the pattern between when I could format images, and when I couldn't. It was frequently in the same document, and mere seconds often separated a "bad" image from a "good" one. I spoke to someone on online chat who suggested that I should disable my add-ins, which I did. And for a while I didn't experience the problem, until today.



With a little playing around, I discovered that the problem occurs when you paste an image into a table.

So my only workaround is to paste the image outside of the table, apply the formatting, then move it to the table. If I need to insert an arrow, I have to take a screenshot of the image with the arrow, and then crop it and paste it into the table.

Could someone please replicate those steps and see if that's happening for you? I presume there's no switch in the background that can shut this behavior off, am I correct? Thanks!

In Word 2013, I tried pasting a screenshot into a table and didn't experience the problem. When I right-clicked on the image in the table, the picture formatting menus were available.

I, too, created a table and inserted/pasted a graphic will no problematic effects. Formatting menu was used to insert a image shadow...no problems.