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How do I fix an issue with displaying an ICON and not the first page of the document even when I click "Display as Icon"? Seems like a bug as I already said display it as an icon.

Anonymous
2025-04-07T20:54:20+00:00

I am trying to embed a document. I have the document saved to my Desktop. I am inside the Word file I want to add the embedded doc and go to Insert-->Object--> then select Microsoft Word Doc and select the box that says "Display as Icon". However it still puts the first page of the document and not the icon! I have tried this a bunch of times an thought it wold just work itself out. I have had this issue since before the new year and now its getting really annoying. Is this a known bug and how can i solve this?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For business | MacOS

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Bob Jones AKA CyberTaz MVP 435.9K Reputation points
2025-04-07T21:11:35+00:00

This has been reported & is reproducible but there has been no indication whether it is a bug or a design change. There is no fix at the user level. Please add your voice to the choir by using Help> Feedback in the Word menu bar to submit your comments to the Microsoft.development group.

The only reported workaround is to copy the content of the source document then create a new Word document to display as an icon & paste into it. The down side is that it increases file size without creating a link to the source document.

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-04-08T21:22:07+00:00

    It used to work with anything but PDF. so i was used to PDF not working. My complaint was more that it now stopped working for Word, Excel, PPT too.

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  2. Bob Jones AKA CyberTaz MVP 435.9K Reputation points
    2025-04-08T17:36:48+00:00

    I just installed v16.96 (25040711) [Current Channel (Preview)] which appears to have corrected the issue.

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  3. Bob Jones AKA CyberTaz MVP 435.9K Reputation points
    2025-04-08T14:36:46+00:00

    Well, just to offer some additional info: It isn't just PDF icons, it's anything other than Office document embedded as icons... The limited implementation is specific to Mac Office & not available at all in other Mac programs. Object Linking & Embedding [OLE] is a Microsoft exclusive technology fully implemented only on the Window platform. It never has been supported by Apple for security reasons among others.

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  4. Anonymous
    2025-04-08T04:16:40+00:00

    Thanks for your reply! Just submitted Feedback. If this is a design change we need to get rid of Office for Mac as thats a terrible design. Its bad enough we cant open embedded PDFs and now this.

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