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June 10, 2015 2,025 views

How to extract images from Office documents

How to gain picture images from docx, xlsx, ppsx files

Learn how to easily extract images from documents created by Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint.

Microsoft Office open XML documents

Microsoft Office is one of the most popular office suite used on personal computers as well as on various mobile platforms. This complete office suite allows users to create rich documents, spreadsheets, presentations, databases and many more.

With Office 2007 Microsoft introduced new zipped Open XML format (also known as OOXML or OpenXML) for representing Office files (docx, xlsx, ppsx etc.).

It means, docx and other Office formats are renamed zip archives that contain xml formatted files, media, picture images and other data used to visualize document in Office programs, or compatible third party apps.

How to gain picture images from Office file

At first you need to rename Office document file extension, for example Microsoft Word docx to zip.

Click right mouse button on Microsoft Word document → Select Rename option → change docx extension to zip.

Rename docx to zip in Windows
Rename option in Windows menu

Rename docx to zip in Windows warning window
Warning window before change file extension in Windows

By default, Microsoft Windows hide known file extensions. How to view file extensions in Windows are described in these articles:

Double click on zip archive and navigate to word\media\ sub folder that stores all picture images and other multimedia content used in Microsoft Word document.

Now you can simply copy out the images you want.

Windows Explorer view content of the docx file
View content of docx file in Windows Explorer

These instructions also work for other Office files, like PowerPoint (ppsx) and Excel (xlsx). However, default sub folder will be not word\media\, but powerpoint\media, excel\media, etc.

 

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