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Face it: Some people are a little shy on artistic ability. That's why clip art was invented. With this handy feature, you can liven up any dry-as-dust document. The following steps explain how to drop clip art into your document:
1. Move the insertion point to the location where you want to insert the clip art.
2. Choose Insert --> Picture --> Clip Art.
Sorry, Word offers no shortcut key for this command. If you like the mouse, though, you can click the Insert Clip Art button instead. It's the one with the picture of the little cartoon person located near the middle of the Drawing toolbar at the bottom of the screen.
3. Behold the Clip Art task pane in all its splendor.
After a brief moment's hesitation, the Clip Art task pane pops up, as shown in Figure 1.
4. Type a keyword in the Search For text box, and then click the Go button.
For example, to search for pictures of trombones, type Trombone in the Search For text box, and then click Go.
Word searches through the Clip Organizer to locate the clip art you're looking for, and then displays thumbnails of the pictures it finds in the Clip Art task pane.
Figure 1: The Clip Art task pane.
5. Click the picture that you want to use.
The picture is inserted.
6. When you finish inserting pictures, click the Clip Art task pane's Close button (the X in the upper-right corner of the task pane).
The task pane vanishes.
 | If you find a clip art picture you like, you can find other pictures that are drawn in a similar style by right-clicking the picture in the Clip Art task pane (or by clicking the down-arrow on the right side of the picture) and then choosing Find Similar Style. |
The Clip Art task pane also has a Search In drop-down list that lets you choose which clip art collections to search. In addition, the Results Should Be drop-down list lets you limit your search to clip art, pictures, sounds, or videos.
Inserting clip art from the Internet
As if the vast collection of clip art that comes with Office and Word isn't enough, Microsoft also maintains a clip library on the Internet that you can use. If you have access to the Internet, you can access this additional clip art library by clicking the Clip Art on Office Online link at the bottom of the Clip Art task pane. A separate Internet Explorer window opens with a gallery of clip art options.
To search for clip art images, change the media type drop-down list near the top right of the page from All Media Types to Clip Art, type one or more search words, and then click the Search button (the green button with the arrow). If you find a clip art image you want, you can mark it for later download. Then, after you find all the images you want to download, you can choose an option that allows you to download the images directly into the Clip Organizer. You can then call up the images using the Clip Art task pane.
Sizing and stretching a picture
In most cases, you need to resize your clip art picture after you insert it. To do so, click the picture to select it. Notice the eight handles that appear around the picture. You can drag any or all of these handles to resize the picture. When you click one of the corner handles, the proportion of the picture stays the same as you change its size. When you drag one of the edge handles (top, bottom, left, or right) to change the size of the picture in just one dimension, you distort the picture's outlook as you go.
 | Stretching a picture by dragging one of the edge handles can dramatically change the picture's appearance. For example, you can stretch an object vertically to make it look tall and thin or horizontally to make it look short and fat. |
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