Excel Linked Pictures duplicating and remaining in place - making workbook unstable

Copper Contributor

I am using Linked Pictures to display tables in a Dashboard. I have numerous pictures linked, around 10 - 12. My file size is growing and the Workbook is now very unstable, going into 'Not Responding' after any action.
I have just discovered that each of the Linked Pictures now have multiple copies of it on top of each other. I don't know how many as the Workbook is now very slow and it is difficult to delete the pictures. 

Anyone know why there are duplicate pictures piled up on top of each other?

8 Replies

@Kenny20 

If you have a lot of pictures, no matter if you compress them or convert them to gifs to take up little space, it becomes more and more.

Unfortunately, that's how it is with the pictures.

Here is a suggested solution, instead of loading the images onto the Excel file,

simply link them and call them up again and again from the specified folder.

So the storage space is directly the hard disk and not the Excel workbook.

A file with Userform has been inserted here where you can look at it yourself.

I had this file in my archive a long time ago that I unfortunately don't know from where.

Try it out, maybe it suits you as a solution. If not, just ignore it.

 

 

I would be happy to know if I could help.

 

NikolinoDE

I know I don't know anything (Socrates)

 

* Kindly Mark and Vote any reply if it helps please, as it will be beneficial to more Community members reading here.

I was reaaaaly hoping this was going to have a solution because I'm experiencing the same problem now. Did you ever figure out why the linked pictures were duplicating themselves?

It's been about (two months) a month since you asked, so if you're still looking for an answer.. I lucked into one.

If you're working from a Onedrive account or a cloud account that enables the Autosave feature, each subsequent save makes another copy of the image. I turned off my autosave, cleared the multiple copies from their location on the page... and no more copies spawned. 

It only cost me.. a save click every now and then.

 

Hope that helps. It fixed mine, but YMMV.

 

@Dbstedman 

@Bobbloomer That's unfortunate.  Having to choose between autosave or duplicates is a bad situation.  I am so used to just closing windows when I'm working in Office because it always autosaves... turning that off is risky for me!  I just can't believe this issue still exists... I am seeing posts about this bug going back several years.

I find this just disgusting as a paying customer ... I now have over 4000 duplicated pics on around 200 excel docs and can only slowly remove each pic one at a time (IF I CAN ACTUALLY GET EXCEL TO WORK !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ....
Guys if you are using autosave on one drive or the likes STOP NOW before you end up like me with around 800000 pics to remove manually !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@desduk 

Re: Excel Linked Pictures duplicating and remaining in place - making workbook unstable

 I too am dealing with this issue and can't seem to do anything to fix it. It's very costly in time and efficiency for the client and the developer to have to spend hours re-opening a non-responsive excel file just to get like a few duplications deleted and seeing there are well above 10,000 images... When in reality your file had like 20 original images. I have been searching for a better solution. If anyone is able to help that would be much appreciated. 

 

I found that it duplicates the linked images every time it autosaves. The only solution is to switch off autosave and save manually. A bit of a hassle but the Excel file remains small and no duplication of the images.

@Mabster_7 

Hello,

Unfortunately I have resigned to saving manually to the pc hard drive if any excel docs have pics attached... I really Don't understand why it happens but pics seem to duplicate each time a doc is saved, edited or reused on Onedrive 🤷‍:male_sign: