- Dressing Up a Document -

Microsoft Word has clip art!Word provides an assortment of clip art that you can insert in your documents and edit to suit your needs. If you chose the Complete Installation option when you installed Word, the clip art is on your hard disk now. If you chose the Custom Installation option when you installed Word, you may or may not have chosen to install the clip art on your hard disk. The clip art is normally stored in its own directory within the directory that contains Word for Windows. You use the Picture command on the Insert menu to insert the art. For more information on inserting graphics, see Chapter 16, “Importing and Creating Graphics,” in the Microsoft Word User's Guide.

West Coast Sales

Create and edit graphicsMicrosoft Word has a palette of all the drawing tools you need to create your own graphics: lines, circles, rectangles, arcs, freeform, and text tools. You can also use the tools to modify the clip art and pictures you import into Word. With the Drawing toolbar, you can group and ungroup graphics, flip and rotate them, and zoom in and out. To create a new drawing, click the Drawing button on the Standard toolbar (it has a triangle, circle, and a square as its icon). To edit a graphic that you’ve imported into a Word document, double-click the graphic. This displays the graphic in the Draw window, ready for you to edit. If you need Help as you work, the Draw dialog box provides its own menu bar, which includes a Help menu. The Draw window remains displayed until you choose the Exit And Return command or until you click outside the Draw window. For more information about the Drawing toolbar, see Chapter 16, “Importing and Creating Graphics,” in the Microsoft Word User's Guide.

Turn text into art with WordArtWith WordArt, you can take ordinary text and give it designs, colors, and shapes. WordArt provides a special dialog box in which you type the text you want to use. Then you experiment with different fonts, positions, and other options until you find the right combination for the effect you want. The dialog box gives you a preview of the effect before you add your WordArt graphic to the document. WordArt graphics appear in your document enclosed in a rectangular frame. The frame reserves space in the document for the WordArt graphic; it does not print. To create WordArt graphics, from the Insert menu, choose Object. Click the Create New tab, select MS WordArt 2.0, and choose the OK button. If you want help as you work, press the F1 key. Word displays information about the WordArt dialog box.

Emphasize important text with borders and shadingMake important paragraphs, tables, and graphics stand out on the page by adding a border above, below, or all the way around them. You can add single or double lines, choosing from a variety of widths. In addition, you can add shading to paragraphs to call attention to the text. You use the Borders and Shading command on the Format menu to apply both shading and borders. For more information, see Chapter 7, "Formatting Paragraphs," in the Microsoft Word User's Guide.