Powerpoint - Red X - The picture can't be displayed

Question

Powerpoint - Red X - The picture can't be displayed

Anonymous

Hi,

I have been working in a Powerpoint Presentation with Pictures and suddenly most pictures have come up with 'Red X- The picture can't be displayed'. I have been working on Presentations like this for more than 10 years with the same way of adding pictures and have not ever had this issue. All my online research on how to solve this issue has not worked.

I please need help from your support team.

Thanks

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Answer accepted by question author

John Korchok 236.5K Volunteer Moderator

The most common causes of this issue are:

editing a presentation while it's on a USB/flash drive, or
editing a presentation while it's on an unsupported cloud service, like Google Drive or iCloud.

If either of those are possible, please editing files on your hard disk or OneDrive instead, then move them to a USB stick or other cloud service for storage and sharing.

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1 additional answer

Answer 1

Hi J2025

Welcome to Microsoft Community and thank you for posting your query.

A Red X usually means that Office App - in your case: PowerPoint does not recognize the path to that image. May I please know what version of Mac OS are you running? What version of PowerPoint?

=> Use the Menu Bar and choose PowerPoint > About Microsoft PowerPoint

Please try with this work around below first:

Clear cache
Make sure the latest Office update is installed.
Try File > Save As to save the file to another location. Close Word and reopen the file to see if the pictures display properly.

Other scenarios you can try it from your site. If you encounter the "Red X – The picture can't be displayed" error in PowerPoint, it may be due to a temporary file issue during auto-save, especially when using OneDrive

Step-by-Step Recovery Instructions

Open your OneDrive folder where the PowerPoint file is saved.
Look for a .tmp file that has a similar name to your PowerPoint file but is larger in size.
Carefully rename the .tmp file to have a .pptx extension (e.g., RecoveredPresentation.pptx).
Open the renamed .pptx file in PowerPoint.
Verify that your images and other content are restored.

Highly recommend:

Wait a few seconds after making significant changes before closing the file to ensure auto-save completes.
Manually save your presentation (Cmd + S) before closing, especially after inserting images.
If you see a .tmp file next to your document, do not delete it immediately—it might be a backup.
Consider working on the presentation locally first, then moving the file to OneDrive when done.

Please help me provide the screenshot if the issue still persists.

Best Regard,

Camila Th- MSFT | Microsoft Community Moderator