Chapter 19: Drawing in Word

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The Drawing toolbar with its tools and WordArt are available for use in almost all of the Office applications (not available in Outlook). As I discuss them here, I refer to their use only from a Word point-of-view and not of their use in other applications.

Office Drawing Tools

With Word 2002/XP, using the drawing tools isn’t half as much fun as it used to be. They’ve given us something called a Drawing Canvas and many don’t like it. Well, you don’t have to use it. Just go to Tools → Options. On the General tab, simply uncheck the last checkbox marked “Automatically create drawing canvas…”

It’s been my experience that documents that contain Office drawing tools have a tendency to become corrupt more often than ones that do not contain them. I suspect it is due to Word not being able to keep track of many individual drawing objects at once. While I don’t have enough personal use or experience with documents that are created in Word 2002/XP and used only in that version, I suspect the issue remains because I see this problem as much as ever.

Tip 46: Working With Office Drawing Objects

This tip applies to using the Office Drawing Tools in any application. If your drawing contains more than a couple objects, or if you file contains more than several graphics creating using the Drawing toolbar, then you may want to follow these suggested steps:

1. Create your drawings in another Word document.

2. Select all of the objects they've used in their drawing and group them.

3. Save the Word document for use later—as you would a graphic file.

4. Copy the drawing.

5. In the actual document you want the drawing to be in, hit Edit Paste Special, as a Picture. (Enhanced metafile appears to provide the best image.)

WordArt

First of all, may I say that if you want your document to be professional, don’t use WordArt. It’s a terrific feature for an inhouse newsletter, a social club flyer or other non-business-related materials, but it doesn’t belong in a professional setting. You should not create your company logo with it.

There are many other graphic programs available for little or no money that provide much better features than WordArt.

If you want to learn WordArt, go for it. It’s very simple to use and doesn’t require any special skills. Of course, you should play with it. To my knowledge, its only true redeeming quality is the ability to “arc” or “wave” text.

PhotoDraw

Microsoft Office 2000 Premium came with a program called PhotoDraw. This is one of the best programs ever created. Microsoft has discontinued it. I suspect that I’ll be using it for a long time. Few people seem to be aware of its existence.

If you have Office 2000 Premium, look for PhotoDraw and use it! You can get some of the effects you’ve always wanted without a cumbersome and expensive professional graphics program like CorelDraw or Adobe PhotoShop.

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