In Word 365, I edit scientific papers where most graphics (charts, usually) are not formatted as "Pictures". Instead, when selected, no Picture icon appears beside them, and Paragraph options are available. But occasionally, I get a paper where all graphics are "Pictures," several of which must appear side-by-side and are very difficult to position and to specify paragraph formats to them. They may appear over their captions or misbehave in other ways.

How can I convert a Picture into a non-Picture?

But, they are pictures. That is the nature of graphics.
If they are textual charts, you could try to run them through an OCR process.
The ones that are not pictures may well be tables.
Could you perhaps attach a sample file (a Word document) with one of the problem charts?

Your document may contain chart objects, which are editable in Office.

However, if you are indeed seeing a picture of a chart, there is no simple way to make it editable. It may not be possible at all.

As Charles suggested, upload a sample document, if you want us to take a closer look at what you have.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Thanks for your responses, Stephan and Charles. I don't need to edit the graphics, I'd just like to make the Picture graphic easier to deal with; e.g., have paragraph formatting available for it. I'd love to send the problematic Word document, but it's protected by my nondisclosure agreement. However, I'm sending a document containing the two different kinds of graphics I've dealt with. The (a) "non-picture" graphic is the kind I'd like to convert the (b) "picture" graphic to. Here's a link to the document: https://1drv.ms/w/s!AkTMlooucbHXg5tt...Kolfw?e=GNgmdB

The pictures can be set to be in-line-with-text and not necessarily appear side by side.

What you have is two items set into a two-column borderless table. Both are in-line-with text.


If you really want to convert to .pdf format, you can save your document as a web page and then from the resulting folder insert the relevant image.