Hello Paul,
Thank you for the microsoft link; unfortunately that method did NOT resolve my problem, BUT... the good news is that I managed to recover; here is what I did:
- first, in order to check the Windows sytemfiles, I ran the well known commands Dism and SFC... everything was OK
- I reinstalled my Office...>>> the Macro error message disappeared but when I tried to import a new image I got another error message telling that acrotray.exe could not be found; I checked it in the Adobe directory and, indeed that file was missing !...
- I reinstalled my Adobe Acrobat DC >>> NO error anymore, BUT... the recorded macro in Word was 'gone'
- I created a new macro (with your script) and .... everything is working perfectly again as before !!!
I presume that all the problems were caused by running a few days ago a deep cleaning Ccleaner session >>> I will NEVER, never use that program again !

Thanks a lot for your extended help !