A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words!

Spice up your Microsoft Office documents and provide an added flavor or zing by including pictures. Whether it is a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet, a PowerPoint presentation or a flyer on Publisher, adding pictures enhances your document’s visual interest.

Clip art offers a plethora of pictures for you to choose from. Whether you want pictures about line dancing or skiing, arithmetic or truffles, you can almost always find a picture that you can use. We all know how to access Clip art from the MS office applications so I won’t belabor the point but there are two ways to go directly to Microsoft’s Clip Art website where you will find a surfeit of riches as far as images are concerned. Cip art from office Online will allow you to search by keyword for a specific picture, or you can browse images by categories.
Every image will have these four icons below it:

Use the copy icon to copy and then the paste command to paste the image of your choice on your document.

Here’s how you can access the Clip art website. Once you open the Clip art panel look towards the bottom of that panel and you will see the following:

Clicking on that link will take you to Microsoft’s Clip art website.
You can also type in the following address in your address bar and get to the same website: office.microsoft.com. Then click on the tab that says Clip Art to access Clip art.

Quick tips for a well turned-out document!

• Cute doesn’t cut it! When choosing pictures for your document don’t just go for the looks. The illustration you choose should support your text.
• Size matters. If an image is too small or too large, it can detract from your document or make your document look messy and ineffective. The image should emphasize your document’s visual appeal, not detract from it.
• Less is more. If you don’t want your document to look cluttered and disorganized, do not add too many images.
• And last, but not least, remember, unlike Clip art, almost every image on the Internet is copyrighted. If you do use an image from the Internet make sure to get the author’s permission.

- Rina B.