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In the attached startup file for Blender, I cannot -for the life of me- get rid of the path of an image file reported as missing.

The offending file was the photo of a mug used in a previous project, as a background image in an ortho view. In my startup file, I have deleted references to any image file being added to any view, as far as I can tell.

You may confirm that the path is not found by selecting File -> External Data -> Report Missing Files.

I suspect that references to the file are left, somehow, in my startup file, but I cannot find any.

Can you help me get rid of this very annoying message?

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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You can do the following:

  • In the file menu, external data, uncheck 'automatically pack into blend'
  • In the UV image editor, select the image
  • Then ShiftClick on the cross button to delete the image and unlink it from the data
  • Save your file again (or startup file if it was startup)

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ blender 2.93.4: 'file/cleanup/unused data blocks' was what solved after shift+click on X $\endgroup$
    – Aquarius Power
    Commented Nov 30, 2021 at 5:52
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Blender won't remove the image because to it, the image is still in use. That is because the image has a 'fake' user, indicated by the 'F' next to the filename:

enter image description here

Add another background image (so you can access the image properties again, like I did above), choose your image and click the 'F' to remove the fake user. The image will now have 1 user, the background image, which you can then remove. After saving, closing and re-opening the file (or by clicking File> Save then File> Revert) the image will now be gone.

Fake Users are used for the very purpose that was causing you an issue, to keep data around even when it's not in use. This can be useful if you have multiple materials and you are swapping between them. The material might not currently in use, but you might want to keep it around in case you want to use it in future. You would click the 'F' to create a 'fake' user of the material data, making sure blender never deletes it, even if it's not in use.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thank you very much gentlefolk! Lemon's method worked as described, and Ray Mairlot's solution taught me about Fake Users! I am, again, much indebted to you both! $\endgroup$
    – John Paravantis
    Commented Apr 22, 2017 at 15:04
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In Blender 2.8

  1. In the Editor Outliner (⇧ Shift + F9), change the Display Mode from View Layer to Blender file
  2. Expand Images it will a list of all images used, including missing images
  3. Delete the image that is missing
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