Working with Pictures

Although memos and letters might look fine if they contain nothing but text, other types of documentsnewsletters, reports, and so oncan be jazzed up with pictures and other graphic elements.

Inserting a Picture from the Clip Art Gallery

The easiest way to add a graphic to your document is to use Word's built-in Clip Art Gallery. The Clip Art Gallery is a collection of ready-to-use illustrations and photos, organized by topic, that can be pasted directly into your Word documents.

To insert a piece of clip art, follow these steps:

1.	Position your cursor where you want the picture to appear.
2.	Select Insert, Picture, Clip Art; this displays the Clip Art pane.
3.	Enter one or more keywords into the Search For box, then click Search.
4.	Pictures matching your criteria are now displayed in the pane; double-click a graphic to insert it into your document.

tip

If you would rather browse through available clip art, select Insert, Picture, Clip Collection to display the Insert Clip Art dialog box; select a specific category to display all matching pictures.

Inserting Other Types of Picture Files

You're not limited to using graphics from the Clip Art Gallery. Word lets you insert any type of graphics file into your documentincluding GIF, JPG, BMP, TIF, and other popular graphic formats.

To insert a graphics file into your document, follow these steps:

1.	Position your cursor where you want the picture to appear.
2.	Select Insert, Picture, From File; this displays the Insert Picture dialog box.
3.	Navigate to and select the picture you want to insert.
4.	Click the Insert button to insert that picture into your document.

Formatting the Picture

After you've inserted a picture in your document, you might need to format it for best appearance.

To format the picture itself, double-click the picture. This displays the Format Picture dialog box, which lets you format colors, line, size, layout, brightness, contrast, and other settings.

To move your picture to another position in your document, use your mouse to drag it to its new position. You also can resize the graphic by clicking the picture and then dragging a selection handle to resize that side or corner of the graphic.

To change the way text flows around the graphic, double-click the graphic to display the Format Picture dialog box and then select the Layout tab. You can choose to display the picture inline with the text, wrap around the text as a square, flow in front of the text, or display behind the text.

The Absolute Minimum

Here are the key points to remember from this chapter:

• Microsoft Word is a powerful word processing program included with both Microsoft Works Suite and Microsoft Office.

• Most editing commands are found on Word's Edit menu; most formatting commands are found on the Format menu.

• There are several different ways you can view a Word document, selectable from the small buttons at the lower-left corner of the workspace. The most useful views are the Normal and Print Layout views; you can also use the Outline view to display your document as a hierarchical outline.

• If you reuse similar formatting throughout your document, consider using a Word style to apply similar formatting to multiple paragraphs.

• Insert clip art or graphics files by selecting Insert, Picture, and then selecting the appropriate type of picture.