Delete identical images

ads747 · #1 11-20-2019, 05:02 PM

Hi all,

I'm trying to automate the process of deleting old (dated) icons and images from a word document. The same images are repeated throughout the document. I've written this macro to delete images 'identical' to the selected. As the images do not seem to have names, I've been finding images of the same dimensions (imperfect I know). Is there a better way to do this or a way to find a unique identifier for identical shapes (even if resized)? A number of the icons have been slightly resized so I have to run this macro multiple times.

Heres what I've got:

Code:

Sub DeleteSelectedPicture()
Dim Shp As Shape, iShp As InlineShape
Dim DC As Integer, SHeight As Variant, SWidth As Variant
DC = 0

If Selection.InlineShapes.Count = 1 Then
SHeight = Selection.InlineShapes(1).Height
SWidth = Selection.InlineShapes(1).Width
End If
If Selection.ShapeRange.Count = 1 Then
SHeight = Selection.ShapeRange(1).Height
SWidth = Selection.ShapeRange(1).Width
End If

With ActiveDocument
  For Each iShp In .InlineShapes
    If iShp.Height = SHeight And iShp.Width = SWidth Then
    iShp.Delete
    DC = DC + 1
    End If
  Next
  
  For Each Shp In .Shapes
    If Shp.Height = SHeight And Shp.Width = SWidth Then
    Shp.Delete
    DC = DC + 1
    End If
  Next
  MsgBox DC & " pictures deleted."
End With
End Sub

Guessed · #2 11-20-2019, 07:35 PM

I think what you are asking for sounds like it SHOULD be easy but it is NOT.

Unique identifier implies there is no more than one of them so although every graphic has a unique id, it is not going to be useful to search for other instances of that unique id because if there was another one it wouldn't actually be unique. Size is not a valid thing to work with either since icons should be built to a specific 'static' size.

Another way to identify 'duplicates' is to use the underlying file properties. If you copy and paste a graphic which is already in the document, it won't add a second copy of the graphic in the word/media folder of the zipped docx file. This implies that you could parse the xml contents of the document.xml file but this looks exceptionally tricky and more involved than I have time for. It is also likely to be incomplete because if you insert a copy of the same graphic into the doc, you do get a new instance in the media folder. Also any picture corrections on a copy will give you a new instance in the media folder.

The way I would 'identify' a family of duplicates is to use the AlternativeText or Title property for each graphic. Copies would have the same name and therefore be quick to find. The drawback is that this requires you to have already labelled this property for every graphic.

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