Clip Art
Clip art is a picture or graphic that can be inserted into a word processed document. Clip art comes in a wide variety of formats and styles, from a simple cartoon to a photographic image. Microsoft Word comes with its own clip art collection that you can use. We'll see how to do that in this section of the course. When you have finished, you will have produced the document below:
OK, create a new blank document and let's get started.
Inserting Clip Art
There is a document that goes with this section called ClipArtStory.docx and can be downloaded by clicking below. It is one of a few documents you need for this course, and all the other files are included in the download as well. However, it is a zip file. If you're not sure how to open zip files then you also need to read the short tutorial below.
Once you've saved the file above, open up the document called ClipArtStory.docxin Microsoft Word and we'll make a start.
To insert a piece of Clip Art, do the following:
- Position your cursor at the end of your text
- From the menus at the top of Word, click on the Insert tab
- Locate the Illustrations panel, and the Clip Art item:
When you click on the Clip Art item, you should see a new area appear to the right of Microsoft Word:
To see all the clip art click inside of the Search For box at the top. With your cursor flashing inside of the textbox, click the GO button. The big white area will then look something like this:
Use the scroll bars on the right hand side to see more clip art.
You can also narrow down the search by clicking the arrow on the Search In list. You'll then see this in Word 2007:
In Word 2010, you'll see this:
Select the Illustrations item.
For Word 2007 users, click the small plus symbol next to Office Collections to see a list of categories:
Click a checkbox to add or remove that category from your search. In the image below we've unchecked all categories except for animals:
Once you've narrowed down your search, click the GO button at the top. You'll then see only the clip art for your chosen categories:
We rather like the rabbit image, so we'll use that one. But feel free to select a different one. Word 2010 users will have to scroll down a bit on the Illustrations list before coming across the rabbit. You can use a different graphic, though, if you can't find it.
Once you've located an image, move your mouse over it to see a dropdown option appear:
Click the arrow to see the following menu:
Click the Insert option on the menu and your chosen clip art will appear in your document. It will appear at the point where your cursor is on your page.
But your article should now look something like ours below:
How to Resize and Move Clip Art
Resizing Clip Art
If your clip art is too big or too small you can resize to suit your needs.
Click on your image with the left mouse button. You should see some little white squares and circles appear around the edges of your Clip Art. These squares and circles are the sizing handles. The squares are used to change the height or width, while the circles are used to make the whole image smaller or bigger. You can see them in the image above.
To change the size of your image, move your mouse pointer over one of the circles, the bottom right circle is the best one for our purposes.
When you move your mouse pointer over a circle or square, the mouse pointer will change to the shape of a double headed arrow.
When your pointer has changed shape, hold your left mouse button down. The pointer will now change into a cross shape. With your left mouse button held down, drag your mouse outward to make the image bigger, and inward to make it smaller. Let go of the left mouse button when you're happy with the size.
If you let go of the mouse button and the image is not the size you want, just try again. If your image loses the white squares and circles around the edges, click on the image to get them back.
Moving Clip Art
To move your image to the right hand side, try this:
- Click on your image to get the sizing handles back
- Hold down your left mouse button
- Keep the left mouse button held down
- Drag your mouse to the right
What happens? Nothing! The image refuses to move to the right hand side! What's going on? And how do you move an image in Microsoft Word?
The reason the image won't move to the right is because of the way it is formatted. The wrapping style is set to "In line with text". What this means is that you can move your image up, and the text will shift to the top and bottom of the image. But it won't move to the right. It will be like this one below:
To move your image anywhere on the page, do the following:
- Click on your image so that it has the sizing handles around its edges
- From the Ribbon at the top of Microsoft Word, make sure the Format tab is selected, if it's not already
At this stage, you could choose a style for your picture, if you wanted. Try some of them out. Move your mouse over any of the Picture Styles to see what happens:
If you find one you like, you can click on it to insert that style.
But leave the style alone, and locate the Arrange panel. The option we're looking for is Position:
Position means the position of the image in relation to the text. We want it square and to the right.
Click the arrow on the Position option to see a dropdown list:
Again, move your mouse over each one to see what they do. But don't left click any. Instead, click the link at the bottom that says "More Layout Options". When you do, you'll see this dialogue box (select the Text Wrapping tab if it's not already selected):
Select the same option we have, in the image above:
Wrapping Style: Square
Wrap Text: Left Only
Distance from Text: 1.5 cm Left (0.59 inches)
When you have set the three options above, click the Picture Position tab at the top of the dialogue box.
For the Horizontal alignment, set it Right. Then click OK on the dialogue box. Your article and image should then look like this:
You should now be able to move your image around the page. Position it on the right, with the top of the image aligned with the top of the article text. Now select the text of the article and change the font size to 14. Change the size of the headings as well, any size you want. Your article will then look something like this:
To straighten the right edge of the text, do the following:
- Highlight all the text from "The remarkable Mr Presto" right down to the end "And they say entertainment is dead!"
- Click the justify icon in the Home tab, on the Paragraph panel:
Your finished article will then look like ours:
And that's it! You can now insert Clip Art into a document, and wrap text around your image. If you're not too confident about your new skills, go back to the beginning and start this section all over again - practice makes perfect!
In the next section, we'll take a look at multi-page documents.
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