I have a mac running iPhoto, please advise when I copy the photo to add to a document while creating a pictorial when it is pasted it turns black, I have tried many different methods to over come the issue but unsuccessful

Question

My 6 month old Mac is using iPhoto. Please advise when I copy the photo from iPhoto to add to a word document while creating a pictorial artical as soon as it  is pasted the picture it turns black, I have tried many different methods to over come the issue but unsuccessful. In the past the iPhoo was default for direct download from a card, This I have now changed but in the meantime there are photographs that I need to use. I understand window completly but still on the nursery steps with Mac.
Please advise Heather

Answer 1

As I said before I am reluctanct to delete and reinstall the iPhoto as I only have the one copy of the file i am using stored in iphoto file and I caint loose them.
All storage hardware and all computers will fail.  Volumes will get corrupted.  Mistakes will happen.
Please learn from our past mistakes and from our past data losses: please have and keep regular backups.
Either via Time Machine (which is marvelously transparent, and very easy), or backups created via some other mechanisms and tools.  Old Toad recommends an external disk, and that's very effective.  If this is a portable Mac, then Time Capsule devices are also very handy, as you don't have to remember to connect the backup device; so long as the Mac is within wireless range of the Time Capsule, backups will happen.
Time Machine backups can also be used to replace your files or even to upgrade to a new Mac, should your computer be lost or stolen, or should your computer or your storage fail.
If you have not already seen these, Mac Basics and Find Out How could be interesting.
As for your photos...   I wouldn't expect this to be iPhoto and wouldn't go for an iPhoto reinstall as the first step, I'd tend to wonder if this is a bug or feature in Microsoft Word, or possibly a format incompatibility with what Office supports.  iPhoto organizes and edits the photos that are stored in your ~/Pictures media directory.  Try using iWork (if you have that) or some other tool (Apple Mail) that accepts and processes photos, and see if you can localize the problem.  Depending on the image formats used, also see if exporting the picture from iWork into a jpeg-format picture — something other than the image format you're currently using with the Microsoft Office imports — works.  (FWIW, I use iWork for reading and writing Microsoft Office documents as well as Pages and Keynote files, and have been using iPhoto with those and other tools for many years, and haven't encountered these blacked-out images.)