Saving as a web page won't do it - the graphics would have to be converted to something a browser could show and BMP isn't supported.



To see the graphics in their native state you will need to open the docx file with a Zip editor and go into the word/media folder. This will reveal each graphics's format.

I just did a test and discovered that after grouping a gif and png together, my media folder now contains a second version of both those graphics (so Word is storing them twice) but they are still in their native formats. If I then applied a graphic effect to the images, the GIFs were converted to PNG format and I also got another graphic added in WDP format. When I include a JPG in the mix, I end up with two of those too but one is JPEG format. I didn't test compressed TIF or other graphic formats.

So the suggestions I gave above on BMP conversion don't appear correct via my testing but versions of Word and different graphic formats may behave differently. Maybe the file size increases you are seeing are due to the doubling up of your graphics like I am seeing although your 1+1=7 doesn't align with this thinking either.

Do you know how to examine the file with a zip editor?
- The easiest way is using 7zip because with that tool installed you can then right click on the file and choose 7zip>Open Archive.
- Otherwise, rename the file and change the file extension to .zip instead of .docx and then double click it.

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

Very useful hints, thank you. In my case, I start with a file containing two BMP images of 1.1 and 1.2MB, plus some 0.1MB for text, styles etc. When grouping these two images, I get an XML file (called "document") of 3.3MB (but compressed to 2.4MB) plus TWICE the BMP files of (1.1+1.2). Now the arithmetic seems to add up: 2.4+2*(1.1+1.2)=7.0. I now assume that the "document" itself consists of 1.1+1.2+0.1, by which we have triple storage of the images. This explains the math: (3*)(1.1+1.2)=7.