Picture placeholder in Word?

[JC in SE Wisc.]

I'm having a problem and not sure if I should be posting here or in VB.

I have a program that is creating a document that consists of a table, a photo (if it exists), and a series of graphs (jpgs) of accelerometer readings from vehicle tests.

My mission, and I didn't choose to accept it, is to find a way to put a placeholder on the document that will load the picture when it's there, and some sort of message when it's not. Basically, I want this thing to act like a web page with alt text in the pictures.

The aim of this is to programmatically open the document once the photos are available, load the photos, and re-save the document without having to run the tests and data through the computer again; we just want to regenerate the documents.

I tried sticking a text box in the document and saving it as an HTML file, but that doesn't do it. I guess the dynamic loading of photos is a function of a web browser and not Word.

Have I explained sufficiently, and is it possible? What do I need to feed into my document to get this to work? Should I be using a template?

[Anne Troy]

You can Insert-->Picture-->From File and choose to link it. Then hit Alt+F9 to turn on viewing of field codes. Alter the file names. When you want to see the pictures (AND they exist), hit Alt+F9 again to turn OFF viewing of the codes so you can now see the pictures. That's about the best I can offer off-hand.