OFF2000: Error Message: "An Error Occurred While Importing This File" When Inserting TIFF File

When you attempt to import a Tagged Image Format File (TIFF) graphic file, you may receive an error message indicating that the file format is not recognized, or a filter error. For example, you may receive this error message where drive:path\filename represents the path and file name of the image that you are trying to import.

You may receive this error message if the uncompressed file size of the TIFF graphic exceeds 16 megabytes (MB). Note that most graphic files are stored in a compressed format. This means that although a file may appear to be smaller than 16 MB, it may exceed the 16 MB limitation when it is being uncompressed during the import process, and so the process fails.

This is basically a filter limitation, although a number of other factors, such as the amount of available hard disk space or random access memory (RAM), may also affect whether or not you can import the image successfully.

Open the image in a graphics-editing program, such as Microsoft PhotoDraw, and either save the picture in a different graphics format, such as Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) or Portable Network Graphics (PNG), or resize the picture to a smaller size and resave it.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

For additional information about how to troubleshoot graphic import failures, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: