I was assigned to edit a long document, with many embedded graphics. I didn't originally made the document or any of the images. Some were made in ChemDraw, some seemed to have been made in Word, at least they were showing up as drawing objects. Word wasn't showing me any of the graphics, just empty boxes of the size and shape of the graphic. I could, however, see them in print preview mode. When I had to edit a graphic, I'd doubleclick it to get the Word Picture Editor. The Picture Editor would show the graphic but it would be really messed up. Each individual letter had its own text box, but the box was only half as tall as it should have been and each letter was cut in half. Take this lovely picture, for instance:

Opening it by doubleclicking it in Word made it look like this: .

So - the way I got around it, DON'T OPEN THE GRAPHIC IN WORD! Even if you can't see the graphic, it is there. Trust the force. Select the empty box by clicking on it once. Copy. Open graphic editor of choice. New 300 dpi file - paste. Edit to your heart's content. Save it as a pict file. Go back to Word. Delete original embedded image. Go to Insert/Picture/From File. Check the page in print preview and the graphic should show up. Print it. Do a joyful dance that you have managed to circumvent the mangler yet again.