A picture is worth a thousand words. This might be a cliché, but it's apropos when it comes to communicating through written documents. Fortunately, Microsoft Word 2000 is very adept at mixing pictures and words in documents.

The creator of a document usually has to solve two kinds of problems when adding pictures. Some of the pictures must stay put and the text will flow around them. Other pictures must move with the text. In this article, you’ll learn how to solve both of these problems with clip art, photos, and pictures of other kinds. The procedures for graphics, such as WordArt and drawing objects, are similar.

All other file types require a graphics filter. If you didn’t include the filter for a given file type when you installed Word 2000, you can run the setup program a second time and add whichever one you need. You can find in Word’s Help system a complete listing of the graphics file formats Word 2000 can use. Press F1 to invoke the Help system. Choose the Answer Wizard tab, type “graphics file types” into the query box, and then click Search.

If there is already text on the page, position the cursor in the text approximately where you want the image to appear. Open the Insert menu (Figure 1) and choose Picture.

Figure 1

From the Picture menu (Figure 2), choose ClipArt to select a picture from the Office ClipArt files, choose From File to select a picture from your hard drive, network, or the Internet, or choose From Scanner or Camera to bring in an image from an optical device.

Figure 2

Microsoft’s Office ClipArt collection included with Office 2000 is extremely versatile, and you can download more for free from Microsoft. Select ClipArt from the submenu, and the Insert ClipArt dialog opens (Figure 3).

Figure 3

You may select by category or keyword from ClipArt already stored on your system, you may Import Clips from other locations, or you may connect to the Web for more clips by choosing the Clips Online button.

The new picture will be inserted to the left of the cursor position. This will create a result similar to Figure 4. This is a text wrapping style referred to as In Line with Text (“In Line” for short). You will notice that it causes an opening between lines equal to the height of the picture. Word automatically uses the In Line style to insert any picture.

Figure 4

You can even use Word’s Click and Type feature to insert an image in any open area on the page. If you are not familiar with Click and Type, place the mouse cursor in the open area where you want the picture to appear. Click once and the Click and Type cursor will appear, indicating as you move it around whether the content that is inserted will appear centered on the page or to the left or right side.

Place the Click and Type cursor over the spot in the blank area where you want the bottom right corner of the picture to appear, and double-click. The cursor will change to the normal flashing insertion cursor. Choose the Picture menu as indicated above and insert the picture of your choice. The picture will be inserted as In Line.

As text is added above and to the left of an In Line picture, the picture will move along with the text, always keeping its position as if it were a word. Click and drag is the only method available to reposition an In Line picture, other than deleting and reinserting it.

There are two significant characteristics of In Line pictures. First, they will always cause a break in the flow of text. Second, pictures In Line cannot appear outside of the text area — in the margins, for example, or between columns.

A Word document actually consists of layers. Text appears in one layer, and objects generally appear in other layers. When a picture object is inserted In Line, it is placed in the text layer and treated like text. By turning a picture into a floating object, you insert it into one of the other layers. You can then position it precisely on the page, in front of or behind text or other objects. You can also control the flow of text around a floating picture.

To quickly change a picture from In Line to floating and then rapidly position it, begin by clicking on the picture to select it. Choose the Format menu and select Picture. The Format Picture Dialog opens. Choose the Layout tab (Figure 5).

Figure 5

There are five basic wrapping styles from which to choose, and four basic horizontal positions where the picture can appear on the page. The wrapping styles are fairly self-explanatory. In Line with Text is familiar to you by now. Both Square and Tight styles flow the text past the picture, and both the In front of text and the Behind text styles allow the text to flow as if the picture weren’t there.

In each Wrapping Style chosen from this dialog, if the Left or Right horizontal position is chosen, the picture will be moved out of the text area and into the left or right page margin respectively. If the Center horizontal position is chosen, the picture will be centered between the text margins. The Other horizontal position leaves the picture wherever it currently is. The Left, Center, and Right positions are not available if the In Line wrapping style is chosen.

You can reposition any picture by clicking and dragging, no matter which wrapping style has been chosen. However, this positioning may be too “rough” for many purposes, so Word offers additional, more precise, methods.

You can fine-tune all of the positioning and text flow details to suit the needs of your project. Use any method to position the picture approximately correctly (click and drag, or by choosing a suitable insertion point with the mouse cursor). Then from the Format Picture dialog, select the Advanced… button at the bottom of the dialog.

When the Advanced Layout dialog opens (Figure 6), you can set almost any combination of Picture Position and Text Wrapping. Let’s begin by looking at the Picture Position tab. On this tab you can precisely set the picture’s horizontal and vertical location.

Figure 6

In the Horizontal section of the dialog, you have three choices. Some of these choices and their combinations will result in the same placement of the picture on the page, as far as the viewer of the finished product can tell. However, the advantages or consequences of each choice may become apparent if the document is reformatted or the picture is resized. Patience and willingness to experiment, and perhaps a sense of humor, are essential when deciding how to establish a position for a picture in Word.

The Alignment options offer the same horizontal choices (Left, Right and Center) that appeared on the Format Picture dialog. However, using the Advanced Layout dialog, you can set these choices so they are relative to the text margins, to the physical page, or to the column (the Format Picture dialog automatically set them relative to the page). Alignment here gives a great deal more flexibility, including the ability to place a picture anywhere on the page, inside or outside the text area. For example, you can place a picture between two columns of text and have the text flow around the picture.

The Book layout choice allows you to quickly place the picture either at the inside page margin or the outside page margin when making a multipage document that will be bound. On an odd-numbered page, the Inside choice will put the picture at the left margin of the page, and on an even-numbered page, the Inside choice will put the picture at the right margin. If you choose to make the placement with respect to the Margin, the picture will be in the text area of the page. If the placement is with respect to the Page, the picture will be out in the white space between the text area and the physical edge of the page. The advantage of this layout choice is that if additional pages are inserted, all of the picture positions will adjust automatically.

The Horizontal Absolute position option is tricky. The cue on the dialog says “Absolute position (so many inches) to the left of (column, page, margin, character).” It is important to remember that this is reversed. The picture will appear to the right of the feature selected. You might choose to employ this positioning method if you only have one picture on a page with no text, or if you have several pictures on the page and you want them to appear in a particular relationship to each other.

In the Vertical area, the Alignment and Absolute position options work in an analogous way to their horizontal counterparts.

The other tab on the Advanced Layout dialog, Text Wrapping, offers two more choices in addition to the basic ones already described. It also provides additional control over the text flow (Figure 7).

Figure 7

Again, experimentation is probably the best way to learn to use these advanced layout text-wrapping features.

If the paragraph to which the picture is anchored changes position vertically (due to the insertion or deletion of a preceding paragraph for example), the picture may move by approximately the same amount. The movement depends on how the picture position is defined.

If the picture was positioned using the Absolute position method, it will only change position if the paragraph it is anchored to is moved to a new page. If the Move object with text option on the Picture Position tab was unchecked, the picture will not move at all. Finally, if the anchor paragraph is deleted, the picture will also be deleted.

To find the anchor, select the picture. Then make the paragraph marks in the document visible. You can do this by choosing the Tools menu and selecting Options. On the dialog that appears, select the View tab and then check the option box that is designated "Paragraph marks." Or, more simply, in the icon bar choose the ¶ icon. You will immediately see the "locked anchor" symbol (Figure 8) in the left margin next to the paragraph to which your picture is anchored.

Figure 8

To unlock the anchor, return to the Picture Position tab of the Advanced Layout dialog. Uncheck the Lock anchor option box. If you will want the picture to stay in one place after moving the anchor, you should also at this time uncheck the Move object with text option.

Click on OK twice to return to the document. Notice that the anchor is now indicating "unlocked" (Figure 9). You can now drag the anchor to another paragraph. When this is accomplished, return to the Advanced Layout dialog and check the Lock anchor option. This will anchor the picture to the new paragraph.

Figure 9

With these tools, you should be able to solve any problem in the placement of pictures to accompany your text.