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This is one of the few things I hate about Microsoft Word, the almost-perfect word processor:

If I crop a photo in Word and then save the picture, the whole photo is saved, including the parts I cropped out in Word. In other words, the photo is being saved as it was originally pasted from the clipboard, regardless of modification that may take place in Word itself.

Here's an example:

  1. I screenshot a picture using ALT+Print Screen enter image description here

  2. I paste it into Word: enter image description here

  3. I crop out of part of it... enter image description here

  4. ... and I click "Crop". Poof, all that extra stuff - gone! enter image description here

  5. I go to save the picture... enter image description here

  6. ... and I save it... enter image description here

  7. ... and I open it up... and I see the whole picture again! enter image description here

WHY? And how do I save pictures from Word so the cropped out part doesn't get saved?

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  • found this to be crucial in writing technical documentations: I have screenshots from a customer installation and want to crop away remote desktop headers that would reveal the server name for data protection reasons. If I do that by cropping and forget about this very issue, I would disclose information that I thought was stripped from the document. I wonder if the cropped areas are also preserved in a PDF created with the "Save as..." function.
    – dlatikay
    Jul 9, 2018 at 9:45

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Select the cropped picture, and then, on the Format tab, in the Adjust group, click Compress Pictures. In the dialog box, the Delete cropped areas of pictures check box is selected by default. Click OK.

Alternatively, you can click File > Options > Advanced, and then, under Image Size and Quality, select the Discard editing data check box. Then, when you save and reopen the file, the cropped areas will no longer be part of the picture and therefore won't be included when you save it. Image resolution shouldn't be affected. If you want this behavior to be used for every new document, you can select All New Documents in the drop-down in the section heading.

I should add that, for both options, if you're concerned about loss of image quality, in that same section of Advanced options, you might want to adjust Word's Default resolution setting to something higher (for example, Word 2016 has a High fidelity option). This setting affects images when you insert them into Word. Therefore, it will almost certainly affect those images if you later save them back out of Word.

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The image file in Word still retains the borders you removed. This is a design feature to allow you or others to edit the area you want to show. Even if it is not visible in Word you might end up showing the whole contents of your desktop to people using an email program etc to view your Word doc as an attachment! Best to use the snipping tool or save as PDF.

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