Working with Graphics

Office experts do not live by words alone. Photographs, charts, diagrams, and even whimsi­cal illustrations do wonders to make printed documents more readable, Web pages more accessible, workbooks more lively, and presentations more engaging. Office 2003 includes all the drawing tools you've used in previous versions, plus a few newcomers expressly aimed at making digital photos easier to use.

In this chapter, you'll find a thorough explanation of the often-confusing Drawing tools used throughout Office. If you're not sure of the difference between an AutoShape and a Clip Art object, or if you can't tell the difference between a drawing canvas and a drawing object, you should read this chapter closely.

Every version of MS Office includes one brand-new program that's undeservedly buried under several layers of subfolders on the Start menu. Microsoft Picture Manager allows you to pull together even enormous collections of digital photos. Using its healthy assortment of editing tools, you can crop, resize, compress, and generally tweak those images so they fit perfectly in Office documents.

In 2003 version of Office, Microsoft has also greatly improved the tools and techniques for working with clip art, including some impressive integration with the Office Online Web site. For this edition, we've expanded our explanation of how to use these cool (and often underrated) tools.

Using Office Drawing Tools

Every version of Office 2003 includes an assortment of applications designed to help you create, insert, edit, and manage graphics. But some surprisingly powerful graphics tools arc built directly into Office, and you can access them directly in Word, Outlook, Excel, Publisher, and PowerPoint. With a few clicks you can insert a prebuilt diagram, chosen from six basic categories, each with many options. With the help of the Drawing toolbar (the Objects toolbar in Publisher), you can add geometric shapes, lines, arrows, and text boxes to a document, worksheet, or presentation, and then add colors, shadows, and back­grounds to create images with impact. These aren't simple one-dimensional shapes, either— you can stretch, layer, and combine Office AutoShapes to create complex flowcharts and diagrams.

If you are a graphics professional, you'll quickly outgrow the basic capabilities of the Office Drawing tools. But for most business purposes, they're a welcome way to avoid the typical dull, gray report or presentation.

Questionnaire:

• Explain about the working with graphics in MS Office?