Location/format of inserted pictures used for marker symbols in ArcGIS Desktop?

Question

I have an old mxd that uses several hundred custom made picture marker symbols. We don't know where the image files that were inserted as pictures marker symbols are, or what format they were in. We're trying to search our files to find said images but Arcmap (10.3) doesn't provide that information anywhere we can find. Inserted pictures give you the path, but not so with picture marker symbols for some reason.

Is there any way to tell the file name and/or format of these inserted picture marker symbols?

Answer 1

When you use the Picture Marker Symbol in ArcMap and import the image on your computer, the picture itself is imported in the .mxd. You can try using a large image (of several MBs) and see how the .mxd file is growing just after you added a layer and imported the picture as a marker.

If you delete the source image, the map document's layer symbols won't lost their picture symbols, because they were loaded into the map document at the moment of browsing.

The path to the source image is not stored within the layer properties; you won't be able to access this with arcpy or with ArcObjects. You might be able to obtain the bitmap of the picture with ArcObjects, and maybe save it to the disk for further exploration. But the source image location (from where it was imported) is not stored within the map document.