Numnbers loses photo thumnails and cannot recover

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Level 1

4 points

Numnbers loses photo thumnails and cannot recover

Hello. I use Numbers to manage a relatively small inventory of c.400 items with thumbnail pics of the items. I move a pic from iphotos directly into Numbers to do this. Now and then, I use 'reduce file size' to manage the file size, which Numbers has done very well. Until about 48hrs ago, when I ran a reduce file size function and on checking later, the pictures disappeared and were replaced with a colour fill which varied by line item. I checked back via 'load recent versions' and the same thing has happened to previous versions.

Can anyone help me understand the issue? I have not moved any photo file locations. It was all working fine until the last 'reduce file size' operation and it seems strange that previous versions cannot recover the photos. Running an M3 Pro with 32GB. Pic attached.

Thanks

Posted on Nov 26, 2025 1:00 AM

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Answer 1

Badunit

Level 7

30,318 points

Nov 26, 2025 4:41 PM in response to sound_freak

Also, did you try

Closing the document and reopening it?
Closing Numbers app and restarting it?
Resizing one of the cells or the column width or row heights to see if it corrects itself?

It might just be messing up the rendering of the images and one of those things might get it to re-render them

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Answer 2

Badunit

Level 7

30,318 points

Nov 26, 2025 3:59 PM in response to sound_freak

I have no idea what has happened. If you add a new column after your column of images, does that column show all the images correctly?

If that didn't do anything good, what happens if you select one of these messed up cells and drag the little image fill image from the format sidebar into another cell? Does that cell show the image correctly?

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Answer 3

sound_freak Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 26, 2025 5:19 AM in response to sound_freak

to add to this - some of the photos have come back, but those added before a certain date (the first 250 lines) have the colour fill as shown above. I checked the cell format and it remains an image fill but seems to opt for what looks like a colour fill.

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Answer 4

sound_freak Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 27, 2025 1:01 AM in response to Badunit

Thank you for replying. Yes, I tried all these approaches and nothing changes. I tried also hiding and unhiding the entire column, copying and pasting from the affected cells - same result, it copies the same error. Very weird. I can only imagine I have to rebuild the whole thing. Shame as I tried with Excel the same approach but there the file just grows to massive proportions and their file reduction tool doesn't work at all.

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