Copy picture from word

3 Ways to Extract Images from a Word File

by Avantix Learning Team | Updated April 7, 2021

Applies to: Microsoft^® Word^® 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 or 365 (Windows)

In Microsoft Word, images can be extracted one by one or you can extract all images by converting a Word document to a zip file or saving it as a web page. Extracting all images is helpful if you’d like to find pictures that are inflated in size or reuse pictures in other files. In this article, we’ll use 3 methods to extract images (we’re referring to images or pictures that have been inserted into your Word document, not shapes or SmartArt you’ve created).

Recommended article: How to Reduce the Size of a Microsoft Word Document (10 Ways to Compress a Word File)

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Extracting one image at a time using Save as Picture

You can extract individual images and save them as new files using Save As Picture.

There are two benefits to this method:

• You can give each image a meaningful name and save it in a specific location.
• You can save the image as a different file type.

To save an image as a new file:

1. Right-click the image and then click Save as Picture from the drop-down menu.
2. In the Save as type drop-down menu, select the image file format you want to use. You can save a picture in many formats but common choices are JPG or JPEG (Joint Photographics Experts Group) or PNG (Portable Network Graphics).
3. In the File name box, type a name for the file.
4. Navigate to the desired location.
5. Click Save.

Displaying file extensions in Windows

In order to use the zip procedure (below), you may need to display file extensions in Windows if they are not showing automatically.

If you’re using Windows 8 or 10:

1. In File Explorer, click the View tab in the Ribbon.
2. In the Show/Hide group, click the File name extensions check box.

If you’re using Windows 7:

1. In Windows Explorer, click Folder and Search Options and then click Organize.
2. On the View tab, under Files and Folders, clear the check box for Hide extensions for known file types.
3. Click OK.

Extracting all images by changing the file to a zip format

If you want to extract all images, the following trick works with any Microsoft Word file using XML (Extensible Markup Language) format. XML files are stored as a package and can therefore be unzipped. They also end with an «x» such as .docx.

In order to use the zip method, you will need a document created in Word 2007 or a later version and File Explorer or Windows Explorer must be set so that it shows file names with extensions (see the following section if extensions are not displayed).

To extract all image files from a Microsoft Word file:

1. In File Explorer or Windows Explorer, select the document (it should have a .dotx extension) with the images you wish to extract.
2. Right-click and choose Copy or press Ctrl + C.
3. Right-click and choose Paste or press Ctrl + V.
4. Right-click the copy of the document and choose Rename.
5. Change the file extension from .dotx to .zip (Windows must be set to display file extensions).
6. Press Enter. A dialog box appears warning you that the file may become unusable if you change the extension.
7. Click Yes to continue. The file icon changes to a folder icon.
8. Double-click the zipped folder. The zipped folder contains multiple folders (some contain information such as XML code or properties).
9. Double-click the Word folder.
10. Double-click the media folder to view image, video and audio files. Each file is given a generic name.
11. Copy these files (or the entire folder) to another location to use in other documents and to rename the files. Copying to another location will unzip the files. You can also click the Extract button in Windows Explorer to extract the files to another location.

Below is a sample Word folder (with a media folder) created during this process:

Extracting all images by saving the Word file as a web page

Unlike PowerPoint, Microsoft Word files can be saved as web pages (HTML format). If you save a Word file as a web page, then separate files are created for pictures and media files.

To extract all image files from a Microsoft Word file by saving the file as a web page:

1. Click the File tab in the Ribbon and select Save As.
2. From the Save As Type drop-down menu, select Web Page.
3. Enter a new name for the file. A .htm extension will be added.
4. Click OK.
5. A dialog box may appear indicating that you may lose some formatting. Click Continue. Word will change the view to Web Layout View.
6. Close the file.
7. In File Explorer or Windows Explorer, navigate to the location in which you had saved the file. A folder should have been created with the same name and «files» at the end.
8. Double-click the folder. Image, video and audio files should appear in this folder. Each file is given a generic name.
9. Right-click any of the files to rename them.

Below are the contents of a folder that was created when a Word file was saved as a web page:

When you open Word again, click the View tab and select Print Layout (the default view).

It’s up to you which method you’d prefer but the last two are the easiest if you are extracting multiple images.

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Lately I’ve been in a situation where I had an image embedded into a .docx Word document, and I absolutely needed to get the original image file in order to be able to retrieve the original best-quality picture. See the screenshot below? My document contains a picture, it shows up as a small thumbnail, but I need the original high-resolution picture. This tutorial shows the way, it works with Microsoft Word 2007 and above.

There are several ways to retrieve or extract images from a Word document. I am going to be listing the top 3 ways to do so in this article. Feel free to use whichever way you want, but expect different results. Here is the article index here:

1. Renaming the .docx to .zip, opening the zip file and extracting the images (Best way!)
2. Copying and pasting the image into a picture processing application (Alright)
3. Saving the document as a web page and retreiving the generated images (Nice!)

Alternatively you could just use the Snipping Tool from Windows Vista/7, which allows you to save a portion of the screen into an image. Try it, it’s pretty much self explanatory, but the final quality of the picture depends on how much you can fit on your screen.

Option #1: renaming the .docx to .zip

This is definitely the best way to retrieve your images. Microsoft Word’s .docx documents are actually zip files! Before you ask: what if your document is a .doc, a .html, .odt or any other format? Well just open the document in Word and save it as .docx file, Word will convert it to a zip/docx file for you. So here is my file:

Note: if you do not see the .docx at the end of the file name, you *MUST* follow this tutorial for this to work (this will help you show file extensions in Windows Explorer).

I am going to rename the file to «products.zip» here, note as seen on the screenshot below, the icon changes to something different:

Now, double click your .zip file to open it with whatever program is associated with Zip files on your computer. In my case, Winrar does the job. If the document still opened with Word, you probably did not read carefully enough — go back to the part where I say to follow this tutorial.

Open the «word» folder as seen in the above screenshot. You should be seeing a «media» folder:

Open it, and you’ll now see all the images that appear in your document.

These are the original images that were inserted in the documents, regardless of the size in which they appear when viewing your document. You can extract them to your storage disk by selecting them and dragging&dropping them to the folder of your choice.

Option #2: copying and pasting the image

Another obvious option is to simply select the picture in Word, click Ctrl+C to copy the picture to the clipboard:

If you have and use a design/picture processing tool such as Photoshop, Paint shop pro or something, just open it and paste the picture by pressing Ctrl+V. I don’t have anything like this, so I’ll just open Paint:

Press Ctrl+V to paste the image into the current canvas in Paint. Unfortunately, the picture is copied in the same size as it appears in Word. If you want a bigger version, you’ll have to resize the image in Word first, copy it again, and paste it again in Paint! This is obviously not the best way to go, but it can be easier and faster than the first option I described earlier.

Option #3: saving the document as a Web page

This last option is technically the easiest in my opinion. First, open your document in Word, then save it as a Web page:

When offered to select the format, make sure to choose the «Web page» format… do NOT select «Web page (filtered)», this option will export low-resolution images. The «Web page» option on the other hand exports the original images as well as thumbnails.

Once the file is saved as a Web page, you will find that two new icons appear in your folder:

There’s the document itself, but also a folder that Word generated for you. Open the folder to reveal the images (both in original and thumbnail sizes):

You can now copy or save those files to other folders of your computer.

Conclusion

That’s it! That wasn’t so hard, was it? I still wonder why Microsoft didn’t originally include this feature in the Word application itself. In my opinion, we should be able to just right-click an image and see a «Save image as…» option in the menu.

Now, why did I bother writing about this on what is seemingly a sysadmin’s/developer’s blog, you ask? Because I’ve been looking this up on the web and most of the answers I found were unsatisfying. It took me ages before I finally stumbled upon a blog article that revealed the docx/zip trick. When I don’t (or hardly) find the answer to my questions, I usually whip up a quick article about what I was looking for, and hopefully it ends up helping people.