How to keep original image dimensions for images in Microsoft Word 2007?

Question

When I'm importing images into a Word document, if the image is a small image like 100x100px, then the image is imported as something like 300x300, thus making it hideously blurry.

This necessitates myself resizing the image so that it looks not as blurry, but it does not look the same at all.

It also seems that it happens with png files but not bmp files.

Is there a way to import the image at its original size?

Answer 1

I've never used Word 2007 but I think I might know what's going on here. A picture has two important relevant attributes: the resolution (ie dimension in pixels) and the DPI (number of dots to be printed per inch). You can have a 25x25 pixel image with a DPI of 10, that will be 2.5" square, and horrendously blurry. If your picture comes from a scanner then it's likely to have the correct size already. Otherwise the software tends to insert a standard 'default' DPI, that might be inappropriate. A decent image editing program lets you change the DPI. In fact you might be able to do it in properties from the Windows shell, but I'm not on Win any more, so I can't check.

Answer 2

After having copied the image, use MS Word's Paste Special option. Select Paste as Device Independent Bitmap option. That should do the trick.

Answer 3

1. Open the image in a browser, preferably Firefox or Chrome, and copy the image.

2. Turn view of the document to "web layout".

3. Paste the image in -- it should appear in full resolution.

4. You can now change back to your standard view and try to handle formatting from there.

This is the ONLY way I've been able to get it to work half-way right (especially using large resolution images), finally I'm getting the full resolution though. Of course your pages may not be able to display the full-size image depending on the actual resolution, so if you want them visible saving them in a format such at html may be preferable.