Figure 2.9: Using the image resize handles
| Section 2-2: Jazz Up Your Word Documents | ||
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Why have plain, boring Word documents when you can have peppy, weird, and wacky ones? Of course, there are some times when plain is good, but for the home office, there are also times when neat effects and eye-catching graphics are in order. Tricky? Not at all!
The simplest way to add dazzle to a document is to insert one of the ready-to-insert pictures called Clip Art. To insert some clip art, choose Insert > Picture > ClipArt and select the appropriate image.
Once you have inserted an image, you will want to do different things to it. Select it by clicking it. You can move it wherever you want it by dragging it to the correct location and dropping it. When you select an image, eight resize handles appear around it. By dragging them around, you will be able to resize the object. The graphic below shows how they work.
Figure 2.9: Using the image resize handles
Look at the three pictures in Figure 2.10. The first shows the original image, the second how it would look if you squashed it using the right center handle, the third how it would look if you squashed it with the bottom center handle, and the fourth how it would look if you resized it with the bottom right corner handle.
NOTE
Remember, not only can you squash the picture in, you can also stretch it out and make it bigger.
Figure 2.10: Resized images
When you are inserting images into a Word document, you'll need to think about wrapping. Wrapping is jargon for how the picture affects the text around it. To modify the wrapping used, right-click an image, click Format Picture, Layout tab, and then select the correct style.
Places the picture on a line amongst the text. It only affects the spacing between the line it's on and the line above (it shifts the previous line up high enough to accommodate). Otherwise, it does not affect the text at all. You drag it around as though it were text. This is the default setting. Shown in the first image in Figure 2.11 below.
NOTE
In order to be shown in Normal View, pictures must have In Line With Text wrapping.
Wraps text in a square around the object. You can drag it wherever you want, and the text jumps out of the way to avoid getting hidden by the picture. It lines up to the most extreme points of the image. See second image below.
This is like Square, except that the text lines up as close as possible to the image. Illustrated in the last image. Notice how the text continues under the Oklahoma panhandle.
NOTE
You can edit the "shape" that is used for wrapping the object. Select View > Toolbars > Picture. This displays the Picture toolbar (it may automatically come up when you select a picture). Pick the dog surrounded by lines, and from the dropdown menu that appears, click Edit Wrap Points (at the bottom).
The object "floats" in front of or behind the text. Moving the object has no bearing on the text.
Figure 2.11: Examples of the various kinds of wrapping. Text is from the Wikipedia article on Goldsby, Oklahoma
Under the basic wrapping options are Left, Right, Center, and Other. This determines where the text wraps. For example, left puts the text on the left side of the object only. When the text hits the object, it starts a new line rather than moving to the right side of the object. Don't be afraid to experiment!
If you have two pictures that overlap one another, or one that has no wrapping or is floating over text, you can change their ordering, that is, which one is on top or bottom. Right click the appropriate picture, then choose the appropriate option from the Order submenu. "Move Forward / Backward" both move the selected picture forward or backward by one, while "Send to Front/Back" moves the selected picture clear to the very back or the very front. "Bring In Front of Text" and "Send Behind Text" changes between In Front of Text wrapping and Behind Text wrapping.
Bring up the Picture toolbar (if it is not up already) by right-clicking a toolbar. From the list of available toolbars, choose "Picture". Click the 
button. Now if you use the resize handles, they will simply hide part of the picture rather than squashing or resizing it. This is called (surprise) cropping, or trimming. If you drag the resize handles back out, they will reveal more of the picture. To return the resize handles to their normal function, click the Crop button again.
Inserting Clip Art is easy, but the Clip Gallery is not going to have pictures of your dog or cousins. If you have a picture such as this stored on your computer, either scanned, e-mailed or directly put in your computer by a digital camera, then you can insert it into Word. Valid picture files include metafiles (extensions of *.wmf and *.emf), JPEG (*.jpg), Portable Network Graphics (*.png), bitmaps created in Paint (*.bmp), Compuserve Graphics Interchange Format (*.gif), Targa (*.tga), and Picture It! format (*.pcx). Most pictures are JPEGs, bitmaps, or GIFs.
NOTE
The different picture formats and extensions are examined more closely in Section 7-1.
To insert a picture, select Insert > Picture > From File... or click the on the Picture toolbar. The standard Open dialog appears. Navigate to the directory that contains your picture and double-click it. The picture appears at your insertion point.
You can modify the picture in the same way you modified Clip Art. Please note, however, that when you resize a picture too big or too small it will usually come out blurry. Metafiles are not affected in this way, which also explains why Clip Art does not blur when you resize it - Clip Art images are all metafiles.
If you use a picture often, you may want to add it to the Clip Gallery, so you can select it from Clip Art rather than having to start all over and find it again. Ask the Office Assistant about "adding pictures to the Clip Gallery."
NOTE
On newer versions of Word you can download extra clip art from the Microsoft website.
Sometimes you will not want an actual picture, but an abstract shape, such as a triangle, circle, or square. Rather than creating a bitmap of a triangle in Paint, you can use a built-in feature of Word called AutoShapes.
To create a new AutoShape, choose Insert > Picture > AutoShapes. Two toolbars pop up, the AutoShapes toolbar and the Drawing toolbar. Clicking buttons on the AutoShapes toolbar make small "menus" appear, from which you can choose the desired shape, for example, a triangle. The shapes are sorted into six categories: Lines, Basic Shapes, Block Arrows, Flowchart, Stars & Banners, and Callouts (a.k.a. Speech Balloons: fun when used in combination with photos). When you click the appropriate shape, the cursor changes to a cross. Click and drag where you want the shape. A dotted shape appears. You can drag towards or farther away from the center to make it larger or smaller. When you let up off the mouse button, the shape appears. It has resize handles and can be modified like normal pictures. However, AutoShapes are much more flexible than normal pictures.
To bring up the basic options for an AutoShape, double-click it. The Format AutoShape dialog appears. It has quite a few tabs, all described below.
Figure 2.12: The Colors and Lines Tab
This is what you would call the "color" of the shape. It can be any of 40 basic colors, plus No Fill. More colors are available by clicking the "More Colors" option. From the dialog that appears, you can click the Custom tab to create a new, customized color.
NOTE
There is a sight difference between white and No Fill. White is simply an opaque white shape, while No Fill is transparent and lets you "see" through the interior to the text or other pictures behind it.
Figure 2.13: The standard color creator, as seen from Microsoft Word
The large colored box is how you pick the correct color. Lightness and darkness can be adjusted by moving the slider on the right.
Below the slider are six text boxes, which contain numeric values for the color. These six values are divided into two groups. The first group contains Hue, Sat(uration), and Lum(inescence). The second group contains the values for the amounts of red, green, and blue*. If red, green, and blue are all equal, you can only pick grayscale colors. All six of these values range from 0 to 255. Hue controls the left and right (X) position of the crosshairs in the color box, Sat controls the up/down (Y) value of the crosshairs, and Lum controls the slider. If you use a custom color often, it is worth writing its values down and giving it a name to use for your reference so you can type it in again later. Note that if you type in one group of values, the computer will automatically fill in the other group. Example: if you type in the Hue, Sat, and Lum values, you need not type in the Red, Green, and Blue values. Below are the numeric values of some example colors.
| Name | Hue | Sat | Lum | Red | Green | Blue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crimson | 0 | 240 | 101 | 215 | 0 | 0 |
| Radiant (Off-White) | 27 | 23 | 210 | 214 | 211 | 206 |
| Golden Yellow | 34 | 240 | 120 | 255 | 214 | 0 |
When your color looks the way you want it, click OK to return to the main dialog.
* = NOTE
While blue, yellow, and red are the painter's primary colors, red, green, and blue are the primary colors when working with light. If you look very closely at a TV, you can see little groups of red, green, and blue lights. Each group is called a pixel. (You can see the pixels on your computer screen too, but it's more difficult.) The more pixels there are, and the smaller they are, the less "grainy" the image looks.
If you choose Fill Effects from the fill color combo box, a dialog like the one above appears. Here, you can be creative and pick and choose interesting effects. You can fade from one color to another (such as blue to white) - this is called a gradient - apply patterns, add a texture such as marble or parchment, and even take pictures from your computer and use them as your "fill". This book can only hint at the myriads of combinations you can create with this dialog. Experiment, be creative, and most of all, have fun.
NOTE
When you are working in an unfamiliar dialog, you can right-click any option and click "What's This?" for a brief description of what the option does. You can also ask the Office Assistant.
These are the properties of the outer border of the shape. Color is the color of the line. Style lets you select thickness and style. Dashed contains different kinds of dashes to pick from. Weight is the thickness of the line in points.
These properties are available only if you have a simple line selected. There are two properties for each of the two ends of the line: arrow style and size. Style contains 6 different types of arrowheads. Size is the size of the arrow in relation to the rest of the line.
Figure 2.14: Size Tab
This is just the size of the object in inches. Rotation is the amount of rotation, in degrees, from the default shape.
Height and Width are the percentage of the new size settings to the settings before you changed them. For example, if you had a 1" wide square, and changed the width to 0.5", the Width box would change to 50%. If the Lock Aspect Ratio box is checked, then the original proportions are kept. Example: You have a 2" by 1" square. If the Lock Aspect Ratio box is checked, and you decreased the height to 1", the width would automatically change to 0.5".
The Layout tab was discussed in Wrapping above. The Web tab will be discussed in Section 2-5.
At some point, you will want to add text to an AutoShape. This is very easy to do; just right-click the shape and click Add Text. Type away! (You can now use the Text Box tab on the Format AutoShape dialog.)
A text box is simply a square AutoShape that automatically has text in it. It can be inserted by choosing Insert > Text Box.
WordArt is one of the things that make your document look professionally made and is extremely easy to do. WordArt is just text that has been converted into a picture and given some cool effects. Below are some examples of WordArt.
Figure 2.15: Examples of WordArt
To insert WordArt, click Insert > Picture > WordArt or click the 
button on the toolbar. An array of 25 choices appears. Click one that you like and click OK. Next you type in your text and can change things such as the text, font, and bold/italic. Click OK, and voila! The WordArt is on your page and you can modify it like any other picture.
When you have WordArt selected, the WordArt toolbar usually appears, or you can choose it from the View > Toolbar menu. Below are the options available on the WordArt toolbar.
Figure 2.16: The WordArt toolbar
If you have a diagram or flowchart made up of several AutoShapes, WordArt, and pictures, moving them and getting them lined up perfectly again can be a hassle at best. However, you can select more than one object at a time, and even group them together to be treated as one object.
To select multiple objects, click the first object; then hold down SHIFT as you click successive objects. You can now modify, move, or delete them all. However, if you have to repeatedly select three or more objects, you should probably group them together as one object. Right-click the selected object, and choose Grouping > Group from the pop-up menu. To break up the group, choose Grouping > Ungroup from the pop-up menu. Later, if you want to put the same group back together, just select Regroup.
Most people are not numbers-oriented, so rather than subjecting them to piles of numbers and figures, use a simple chart or graph like the one below. Choose Insert > Picture > Chart. A bar graph appears. Type the data in the Datasheet that appears, close the Sheet, and you've got yourself a chart! Right click it and choose Chart Options from the pop-up menu for more options. For more information about Charts, ask the Office Assistant.
Figure 2.17: An example of a chart generated by Word
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