Remove image placeholders

[alex100]

In case Word is not able to retrieve an image when you paste an article from the web (because of a bad connection, for example), it will instead insert a placeholder on that location.

I am trying to remove these, and so far I have the code below, but it's far from working as it should...

For Each oShape In ActiveDocument.Shapes
    If oShape.AutoShapeType = msoShapeRectangle Then
        oShape.Delete
    End If
Next

It does remove some of the placeholders, but not all of them, as some will be left behind.

Then, how can I execute the code for the current selection only, instead of the entire document?

Thank you!

Alex

[Guessed]

On your first question, loops that delete items should always start from the back of the line rather than starting from the front. Imagine you have a queue of items where you remove item 3 and step to (the now) item 4. The end effect of this is that your loop skips any item immediately after any item that is deleted.

To avoid this procedural issue, you start from the back

For i = ActiveDocument.Shapes.Count to 1 Step -1
  If ActiveDocument.Shapes(i).AutoShapeType = msoShapeRectangle then ActiveDocument.Shapes(i).Delete
Next i

When you ask about current selection, there are two possible types of selections relevant to Shapes - because they are 'floating' objects that don't reside in the same layer as the text.

If you have selected the shapes themselves, you can use
Selection.ShapeRange.Count

If you have selected the text where some shapes are anchored, this is much more difficult and you would need to loop through all the ActiveDocument.Shapes and test whether their anchor is in the selected text.

[alex100]

Indeed, looping from the back made all the difference! The code does now replace all the image placeholders.

Thank you!

Alex