PowerPoint 2007 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies

What Is Clip Art?

Figure 4-1 shows examples of some clip-art images that come with PowerPoint. Use images like these to decorate your PowerPoint presentations. Use them to help illustrate an idea or simply to add a little liveliness to slides. In my experience, the hardest task where clip art is concerned is finding the right image. You can choose from so many images that finding the right one is a chore.

Figure 4-1: Examples of clip-art images.

Inserting a Clip-Art Image in a Slide

To place a clip-art image in a slide, you open the Clip Art task pane, search in the Clip Organizer for the image you want, and insert the image. The trick to finding the right image is knowing your way around the Clip Organizer. The majority of this chapter explains how to organize the art on your computer so that you can get it by way of the Clip Organizer. For now, you can follow these basic steps to insert a clip-art image in a slide:

1. Click the Insert tab.

2. Open the Clip Art task pane, as shown in Figure 4-2.

Figure 4-2: Inserting a clip-art image by way of the Clip Art task pane.

PowerPoint offers two ways to open the Clip Art task pane:

• Click the Clip-Art icon if you want to insert the clip art image in a content placeholder frame. This icon is found on several slide layouts.

• Click the Clip Art button on the Insert tab.

The Clip Art task pane is actually an entrée into the Clip Organizer, the Microsoft program for organizing and quickly inserting clip art. It is explained in more detail later in this chapter (see “Handling Media Files with the Clip Organizer”).

3. In the Search for text box, enter a keyword that describes the clip art image you need.

Later in this chapter, “Searching for a media file in the Search pane” explains how keywords work.

4. In the Search In drop-down list, select the collections you want to search in (refer to Figure 4-2).

Later in this chapter, “Searching for a media file in the Search pane” describes what these collections are.

5. In the Results Should Be drop-down list, select Clip Art (refer to Figure 4-2).

6. Click the Go button.

The bottom of the task pane shows the clip-art images found in your search. You may have to scroll through the task pane to see all the images.

7. Double-click an image or open its drop-down list and choose Insert to place it on your slide.

Your next task is to move the image into position and perhaps change its size. Book IV, Chapter 2 explains how to manipulate clip-art images and other objects.

Tinkering with Clip Art’s Appearance

Sometimes a clip-art image doesn’t sit well with the slide background. The image is too bright or too dark. It clashes with the colors in the slide background. When an image clashes, you don’t have to abandon it in favor of another image. As Figure 4-3 shows, you alter a clip-art image’s appearance in different ways. Select your image, go to the (Picture Tools) Format tab, and change the image’s appearance with these techniques:

Recoloring: Click the Recolor button and choose an option to remake the clip-art image in a different tint.

Changing the brightness: Click the Brightness button and choose an option to make the image brighter or darker.

Changing the contrast: Click the Contrast button and choose an option to enhance or mute the difference between light and dark colors or shades in the image.

Figure 4-3: You can change the look of a clip-art image.

Handling Media Files with the Clip Organizer

As computers get faster and better, media files — clip art, graphics, video clips, and sound files — will play a bigger role in computing. Dropping a clip-art image in a PowerPoint presentation won’t be a big deal. Playing video clips on PowerPoint slides will be commonplace.

Microsoft, well aware that the future is closing in on us, created the Clip Organizer to help you manage the media files on your computer. Using the Clip Organizer, you can place graphics, video clips, and sound in files in PowerPoint presentations (as well as Word documents, Excel worksheets, and Publisher publications). More important, the Clip Organizer is the place to organize media files on your computer so that you can find them and make good use of them. These pages explain how to manage the Microsoft Clip Organizer.

Do either of the following to open the Clip Organizer:

Open the Clip Organizer from within PowerPoint: Open the Clip Art task pane (on the Insert tab, click the Clip Art button). Then click the Organize Clips link at the bottom of the task pane.

Open the Clip Organizer: Click the Start button and choose All Programs⇒Microsoft Office⇒Microsoft Office Tools⇒Microsoft Clip Organizer.

Knowing your way around the Clip Organizer

As shown in Figure 4-4, the Clip Organizer is divided in two parts, with a pane on the left and a window for displaying files on the right. The Clip Organizer offers two panes, one called Collection List and one called Search:

Collection List pane: Use the Collection List task pane to organize your media files and to quickly locate and insert a media file. To display the Collection List task pane, click the Collection List button or choose View⇒ Collection List.

Search task pane: The Search task pane is for finding a media file on your computer. Notice that this task pane is identical to the Clip Art task pane in PowerPoint (refer to Figure 4-2). To display the Search task pane, click the Search button or choose View⇒Search.

Figure 4-4: The Clip Organizer window with the Search pane displayed (left) and the Collection List pane displayed (right).

Locating the media file you need

The Clip Organizer presents two ways to find a media file you need. Starting from the Search pane, you can conduct a keyword search; starting from the Collection List pane, you can select folders and subfolders to display clip art and other media files on the right side of the window.

Searching for a media file in the Search pane

By entering a keyword in the Search For text box, telling the Clip Organizer where to look, and telling it what kind of files to look for, you can pinpoint the clip-art image you need for your PowerPoint presentation:

Search For text box: Enter a keyword that describes what kind of clip-art image you want. As Figure 4-5 shows, each clip-art image has been assigned descriptive keywords. If the keyword you enter matches a keyword assigned to a clip-art image, the image appears in the search results.

Figure 4-5: For searching purposes, each clip-art image has been assigned keywords.

Search In drop-down list: Select the Everywhere check box to look on your computer and at the Office clip-art Web site for clip-art images. You can narrow your search to My Collections, Office Collections, and Web Collections:

• My Collections: Search among media files you have deemed “favorites,” files you placed in folders of your own making, and files you downloaded from Microsoft. Later in this chapter, “Storing your own files in the My Collections folders” explains how to place media files in the Favorites folder and create your own folders for organizing media files.

• Office Collections: Search among the media files that you installed on your computer when you installed PowerPoint and the other Office programs. These files are organized into categories. Select only a few categories to narrow your search.

• Web Collections: You can search online at a Microsoft Web site that stores media files by selecting Web Collections. As are Office Collections, Web Collections are organized by category.

Results Should Be: Choose which type of media you’re seeking — clip art, photographs, movies, or sounds. By clicking the plus sign (+) next to a media type, you can look for files of a certain kind. To look for JPEG photographs, for example, click the plus sign next to Photographs and select the check box beside JPEG File Interchange Format.

Click the Go button when you are ready to conduct the search. The results of the search appear on the right side of the menu (refer to Figure 4-4).

Locating a media file in the Collection List

If you know that the media file you want is stored on your computer, you can find it by starting with the Collection List.

The folders in the Collection List pane work just the same as folders in My Computer and Windows Explorer. Click a folder name to display its contents on the right side of the screen. Display or hide subfolders by clicking the plus sign (+) or minus sign (–) next to folder names.

When you click a folder (or subfolder) in the Collection List pane, its contents appear on the right side of the Clip Organizer window (refer to Figure 4-4). These are the top-level folders in the Collection List pane:

My Collections: Includes the Favorites subfolder (where you can store media files you use most often), subfolders you create yourself for different projects, and the Downloaded Clips subfolder (where clip art you downloaded from Microsoft is stored). How to store a file in the Favorites folder or a folder you create yourself is explained later in this chapter in “Creating your own My Collections subfolders for the Clip Organizer.”

Office Collections: Includes many subfolders, each named for a clip-art category. Select a subfolder to view clip art in a category. You installed these clip-art images when you installed Office. The clip-art images are located on your computer.

Web Collections: Includes many subfolders, each named for a clip-art category. To see these clip-art images, your computer must be connected to the Internet.

Inserting a media file into a PowerPoint slide

After you’ve found the media file you want, either by searching on the Search pane or browsing among the folders in the Collection List pane, you can insert it in a PowerPoint slide by following these instructions:

Clip Organizer: Open the file’s drop-down list and choose Copy. Then click in a PowerPoint slide, go to the Home tab, click the Paste button (or right-click the slide and choose Paste).

Clip Art task pane in PowerPoint: Either double-click the image or open its drop-down list and choose Insert.

Getting clip art from Microsoft

Microsoft has ambitious plans for permitting users of PowerPoint to get their clip art, sound files, and video clips from a Microsoft Web site. To see what kind of media Microsoft offers online, connect your computer to the Internet and click the Clip Art on Office Online link (you can find it on the right side of the Clip Art task pane). You come to a Microsoft Web site where you can download clip-art images and other media files to your computer.

When you find a file you like, do one of the following to make it a part of your PowerPoint presentation:

bullet Click the Copy button to copy the file to the Windows Clipboard on your computer. From there, you can paste it into a slide.

bullet Click the file’s check box. To download files that you selected to your computer, click the Download Items link (you can find this link on the left side of the window). Items you download from the Microsoft Web site land in the My Documents\My Pictures\Microsoft Clip Organizer folder on your computer. In the Clip Organizer, you will find the files in the My Collections\ Downloaded Clips subfolder.

Storing your own files in the My Collections folders

The Collection List pane in the Clip Organizer is a convenient place to go when you need a media file. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could go to the Clip Organizer when you want a file of a family photo, graphics that pertain to your work, or a video you’re involved with?

It so happens that you can use the Clip Organizer for your own media files, not just the media files that come with Office and PowerPoint. You can arrange it so that the media files you need are available to you simply by selecting the Favorites subfolder in the Collection List pane. For that matter, you can create subfolders of your own in the Collection List and keep your media files there. Better read on.

Adding your own media files to the Clip Organizer

If you’re a fan of the Clip Organizer — if you think it’s a convenient place to store and get at media files — place your own files in the Clip Organizer. This way, you can open the Clip Organizer and get right to work on making graphics or video for a project you’re working on.

Follow these steps to put your own media files in the Clip Organizer:

1. Click the Collection List button, if necessary, to see the Collection List pane.

2. Choose File ⇒Add Clips to Organizer ⇒On My Own.

The Add Clips to Organizer dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 4-6.

3. Select the file or files whose names you want to store in the Clip Organizer.

For example, open your My Pictures folder and select the graphic files that you often work with. You can select more than one file by Ctrl+clicking.

4. Click the Add To button.

The Import to Collection dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 4-6. It lists subfolders of the My Collections folder.

5. Select the subfolder where you want to store your file or files and click OK.

6. Click the Add button in the Add Clips to Organizer dialog box.

Figure 4-6: Making your favorite media files available in the Clip Organizer.

When you add media files to the Clip Organizer, you don’t move the files to a new location on your computer, although it may appear that way. Truth be told, the folders in the Clip Organizer don’t really exist on your computer. The folders actually represent categories. Inside each category are shortcuts similar to the shortcuts on the Windows desktop that tell your computer where the files are located on your computer. When you place a file in the Clip Organizer, what you’re really doing is placing a shortcut to a file located somewhere on your computer or network.

Organizing media files in the My Collections subfolders

The My Collections subfolders in the Collection List pane — Favorites and the others — are excellent places for storing the media files you use often. All you have to do to get at them is select the Favorites subfolder or another subfolder in the Custom List. Follow these steps to copy or move a media file to the Favorites subfolder or another subfolder in the Clip Organizer (the next section in this chapter explains how to make subfolders of your own):

1. Find the media file or files you want to store in a subfolder.

Earlier in this chapter, “Locating the media file you need” explains how to locate a media file.

2. Select the file or files on the right side of the Clip Organizer window.

To select more than one file, Ctrl+click the files, or choose Edit⇒Select All to select them all.

3. Give the Copy to Collection or Move to Collection command.

You can give these commands two different ways:

• Open the file’s drop-down list and choose Copy to Collection or Move to Collection.

• Open the Edit menu and choose Copy to Collection or Move to Collection.

You see the Copy to Collection or Move to Collection dialog box.

4. Select a folder in the dialog box.

If necessary, click a plus sign (+) beside a folder to display its subfolders.

5. Click OK.

To remove a file from a subfolder, select it and press the Delete key or open its drop-down list and choose Delete from Clip Organizer. Deleting a file this way does not remove it from your computer; it just takes it out of the Clip Organizer.

Automatically cataloging the media files on your computer

The first time you open the Clip Organizer, you see the Add Clips to Organizer dialog box, which asks whether you want to catalog the clip art, sound, and video files on your computer. Don’t do it! If you click OK, you will crowd the Clip Organizer with all kinds of extraneous files. You’ll end up with sound files and graphics from every trivial program that is installed on your computer.

For now, click the Later button to postpone cataloging your media files. When you’re ready to start cataloging, use one of these techniques:

bullet Pick and choose which files to catalog: Choose File⇒Add Clips to Organizer⇒On My Own and select files in the Add Clips to Organizer dialog box. See the earlier section “Adding your own media files to the Clip Organizer.”

bullet Catalog media files in folders: Choose File⇒Add Clips to Organizer⇒Automatically to open the Add Clips to Organizer dialog box; then click the Options button, as shown in the following figure. You see the Auto Import Settings dialog box. It lists every folder on your computer that holds media files. Go down the list, deselecting folders with meaningless media files and selecting folders with media files you may find useful. Then click the Catalog button to catalog the media files you really need.

Creating your own My Collections subfolders for the Clip Organizer

If you work with a lot of media files, organize them into My Collections subfolders. Put photographs in a Photographs subfolder. Put music files in a Music subfolder. That way, you can find media files simply by going to the subfolder where you placed them. Follow these steps to create a new subfolder in the Clip Organizer:

1. Choose File ⇒New Collection.

The New Collection dialog box appears.

2. Select the folder in which to place your new subfolder.

Selecting “My Collections” is the best choice, probably, but place your new subfolder wherever you want.

3. Enter a name for the subfolder in the Name box.

4. Click OK.

If you need to rename a folder, select it in the Collection List, choose Edit⇒ Rename Collection, and enter a new name. To remove it, choose Edit⇒Delete from Clip Organizer.

Chapter 4: Decorating Slides with Clip Art

In This Chapter