Graphics and Drawing Tips

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You can easily access the Drawing toolbar by choosing the Drawing toolbar button on the Standard toolbar (refer to Figure 19-1), or by View → Toolbars and choose Drawing.

Figure 19-1: Drawing Toolbar On/Off Toggle Button

Keep your file sizes to a minimum by inserting your graphics and then converting them to pictures. This does not apply to objects created from the drawing toolbar and should be tested in a copy of the file to ensure that it helps because it doesn’t always.
Try this in a file that you feel is oversized for its content:
1. Save a copy of the file to another name.
2. Select each graphic or picture.
3. Cut it.
4. Hit Edit Paste Special and choose As a Picture (Enhanced metafile option is best if it’s available).
5. Do this to at least 25% of the graphics in your document. Save the file and check the new file size. For the most part, it should be smaller than the original. Sometimes, it is significantly smaller. This entire manual, complete with embedded graphics, is less than 2MB.
Keep your file sizes to a minimum by inserting your graphics as links. If your graphics are separate files, try linking instead of embedding them. While a document with all the graphics embedded might be 50MB, the document and graphics separately ought to be about the same size.

The benefit is that the PC, when opening the document, doesn’t need to have enough RAM to open a 50MB file all at once; it only needs enough for the size of the document and the graphic(s) currently being viewed.

Also, you can send the files via email in several pieces that total 50MB instead of one big 50MB file. Another benefit is that if you edit one of the graphics, you don’t need to change the document. The document simply picks up the edited graphic.
If you want to add callouts, arrows or other drawing objects to a graphic, that graphic must not be formatted as In Line With Text. There is no comparable description in Word 97 for this; it is simply the opposite of Float Over Text.

However, after adding the drawn objects, you can select them along with the graphic and group them using Draw → Group from the Drawing toolbar. Then, you can cut it and hit Edit → Paste Special, As a Picture, which allows the In Line With Text option to become available.
Do not be surprised if the rotation tool is not available when you select your graphic or drawn object because most drawing objects and graphics cannot be rotated. You can cut the object, paste it into Paint or some other graphic program, and rotate it there.
Text wrapping around graphics can be difficult. If you cannot make the text wrapping work as desired, try inserting a onerow, two-column table. Put your text in one cell and your graphic in the other.
When creating watermarks or other graphics on every page, place the graphic in the header. This helps keep you from accidentally selecting the graphic while you work in your document.

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