Hello all,

Just wanted to report back, better late than never. We had some emergency work come in at work and haven't been able to return to this word manual until yesterday.

Reinstalling the program doesn't seem to correct the issue. I have tried reinstalling twice and even moved the file off of my computer and tried it with a copy of the file and same result. I can set the discard setting in Word, save, close and reopen the file and it will not decrease in size or delete the original file content.

It turned out the solution was that I have to select "Compress picture" from the picture tools menu bar and from it's pop up select to delete cropped area and set a resolution etc and then uncheck "apply only to this image"

It appears to be the identical choices from the advanced menu but for whatever reason this toolbar "compress picture" selection is the one that words, not the document options in the advanced menu. Hope someone else finds this helpful if they run into a similar issue.