Why do images disappear from OpenOffice.org documents?

I created a few documents using OpenOffice.org and these documents contained images.

When I saved it and opened it a few days later, the images disappeared.

In OpenOffice Word, the images were replaced with images of "two pin power plugs".
In OpenOffice Impress, the images turned invisible.

This has never happened when I used Microsoft Office, not even in the old versions from many years ago.

Why do images disappear from OpenOffice.org documents?
Is there any way I can prevent that from happening?

I've noticed this on occasion, but I've had documents for years with pictures in them which have stayed. Are you sure the pictures are actually contained within the document and not simply linked to within the document (so that if you delete or move the original, it doesn't have the needed data)?

Could also try asking on the OOo forums; they're pretty good at resolving such queries.

thx1139 said:

I've noticed this on occasion, but I've had documents for years with pictures in them which have stayed. Are you sure the pictures are actually contained within the document and not simply linked to within the document (so that if you delete or move the original, it doesn't have the needed data)?

Could also try asking on the OOo forums; they're pretty good at resolving such queries.

Well, I copied cells from an OOo excel document and then pasted them into an OOo word document... the cells/tables should have been contained in the OOo word document right?

How do you tell the difference? They appear the same when you are editing the document.