Word processing isn’t just about words—and neither is Word 2013. Although text probably accounts for the bulk of your documents, you can liven up the proceedings and make your points more clearly by adding other elements. Tables organize information into rows and columns so that readers can easily navigate large collections of data. Charts take the same kind of information and present it graphically, which is great when you want to make a high-impact presentation of comparisons or trends. Graphics can be any kind of image: family vacation photos, a company logo, whimsical clip art, executive portraits, product photos—if you’ve got a picture on your computer (or stored in the cloud), you can put it in your document. This chapter shows you how to work with nontext elements in Word: inserting them into a document, resizing and moving them, editing them. Your documents will be that much more interesting, and your points will come across that much better. For centuries, philosophers have puzzled over the question “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” When you’re working with tables in Word, a less mind-bending—and far more practical—question is “Which comes first, a table or its data?” The answer is entirely up to you. When you create a table in Word, you can start by designing an empty table and adding information to it later, or you can start with the information the table will hold, and then use that to create the table. Whichever way you prefer, it’s easy. If you like creating tables by drawing them first and then filling in their cells with data, you have several options: Insert an empty table, insert one that’s preformatted, or draw it yourself. Best of all, when you adopt this design-first, enter-data-later approach, you’re not stuck with the table’s structure if you need to change it down the road. Later in this chapter, you’ll get the scoop on how to edit a table. To quickly draw and insert a basic grid of equal-sized cells, start by putting the cursor where you want the new table to appear. Then follow these steps:
When you create a table, the Table Tools contextual tab appears, adding two tabs specific to working with tables—Table Tools | Design and Table Tools | Layout. When you move outside the table to work on another part of your document, these babies disappear. So you only see ’em when you need ’em. If you have a certain type of table in mind—like a calendar or an expense list, for example—or if you just want a nice-looking table without doing all the work of designing it yourself, take advantage of one of Word’s predesigned, preformatted tables. Position the cursor where you want this new grid to appear. From there, you’re only a couple of steps away from inserting the table:
Preformatted tables contain some placeholder data, such as a month’s name, days of the week, and dates for a calendar table. To clear a table’s contents, select the whole thing by clicking Table Tools | Layout→Select→Select Table (Alt, JL, K, T) and then press the Delete key. This deletes the table’s data while keeping its structure and formatting. If you need a table that goes beyond simple rows and columns—one with different-sized cells, for example—whip out a virtual pencil and design your own table by drawing it. Here’s how:
If you make a mistake as you’re drawing the table (or if you want to merge some cells by removing gridlines), use the Eraser to get rid of any line you’ve drawn. Select Table Tools | Layout→Eraser (Alt, JL, SE), and the pointer morphs into an eraser. Click any line to erase it. When you’re done, you can go back to drawing lines by selecting Table Tools | Layout→Draw Table (Alt, JL, TA). Figure 4-3. When you draw a table, Word opens the Table Tools | Layout tab. Drawing tools are in the Draw section (circled). Click Eraser to get rid of any gridline you don’t want; click Draw Table to go back to drawing lines. When you’re drawing a table, display the Ruler to help measure intervals between lines. On the View tab, turn on the Ruler checkbox or press Alt, W, R. Many people like to start by getting all their data entered and then using it to build a table. If that’s your style, Word is happy to accommodate. To begin, type in your data, pressing the Tab key to separate the info into columns and the Enter key to separate it into rows. (You can use other characters to mark your columns, but tabs make it easiest to see how your table-to-be is shaping up.) Here’s a simple example: When you’re ready to convert the data to a table, follow these steps:
Now you can edit and format your new table however you want—the following sections give you the details on how to do that. If you live, breathe, and think Excel (covered in Part 4 of this book), you can build a Word table by starting with an Excel-style spreadsheet. In Word, position your cursor where you want the table to appear and then select Insert→Table→Excel Spreadsheet (Alt, N, T, X). Word inserts a spreadsheet that looks just like an Excel spreadsheet and changes the ribbon’s tabs to match those in Excel. When you’re done adding data, click outside the spreadsheet to turn it into a table and bring back Word’s ribbon tabs. If you want to go back and work with the table’s data later, double-click inside the table, and it becomes a spreadsheet-style table again. When you’ve created a table in your document, all you have to do to add information is click any cell and start typing. You move around inside a table a little differently than you move around a document, as Table 4-1 shows, although pointing and clicking with the mouse will always put the cursor where you want it. Table 4-1. Keyboard shortcuts for working with tables
After you’ve created a table, you may find you need to change it. You might, for example, want to make the table bigger to hold more data, or perhaps you didn’t need as many rows as you thought you would. Tables are very flexible; it’s easy to edit them to meet your needs. Just as you can select different parts of the text that makes up a document, you can select different parts of a table. Once you’ve made your selection, you can format, copy, or delete its contents. Here’s how to make selections in a table by using your computer’s mouse or touchpad:
Figure 4-5. After you’ve inserted a table, you can select one cell, a range, or the whole table. If your table looks too small or too big, resize the whole thing (keeping the cells in proportion) by clicking and dragging the lower-right handle. You can also select all or part of a table from the Table Tools | Layout tab. Click inside the table to make this tab appear, and then click Select. From the menu that appears, choose Select Cell, Select Column, Select Row, or Select Table. Or use these ribbon-based keyboard shortcuts:
As you work with a table, you might discover you need more rows or columns to hold all your information. No problem. The quickest way to add a single row or column uses the mouse pointer. If you want to add a row, move the pointer to the left side of the table and point to the gridline where you want to insert the new row. A blue + sign in a circle appears, and blue lines stretch across the table to indicate where the new row will be. Click the + sign to insert the row there. If you want to add more rows, keep clicking the + sign. This method also works for columns. Position the pointer above the table, aimed where you want to put the new column. When you see the blue + sign in the circle, click to insert the column. If you’re entering data in the last cell of your table (the cell in the lower-right corner) and you need to add a new row, hit the Tab key. When you’re in the table’s last cell, doing so adds a new row at the bottom of the table. Another way to add rows and columns to a table is by using the Table Tools | Layout tab. Start by clicking in a cell next to where you want to insert the row or column. Then take one of these actions:
Here’s a great timesaver when you need to insert multiple, adjacent rows or columns all at once. Start by selecting the same number of rows or columns you want to insert. If you want to insert two new columns at the right side of your table, for example, select the two columns currently at right. Then use any of the insertion methods described in this section, and Word inserts the same number of rows or columns you selected. What if a row or column somehow landed in the wrong place? You can move it to its proper location with good ol’ cutting and pasting. Select the row or column you want to move, and then do this:
You can select and move multiple rows and columns in the same way. Just select all the rows or columns that you want to move at once. You might think of a table as a perfect grid, with uniform, evenly spaced cells. But tables are more flexible than that. You can merge cells to make a super-cell that spans multiple columns or rows, or you can split a cell to divide it more narrowly than the other cells in its row or column. Whether you want to merge cells or split them, head to the Table Tools | Layout tab’s Merge section:
If you’ve ever created a table at the very top of a document, then tried to add a line of regular text above the table, you know it’s hard to do—Word wants to put your text into the table. When you’ve got a table at the top of a document, here’s a trick that lets you insert a line of text above it: Put the cursor at the beginning of the table’s upper-left cell—the one that’s in the first row and the first column. Split the table, and Word pushes the whole table down a line. Now you have room to type above the table. You can delete any cell, row, or column from a table, or the table itself. First, select what you want to make go away. Then use one of the following methods:
To delete just the contents of a cell, row, column, or table, without affecting the table’s structure, select the table element whose contents you want to delete, and then press the Delete key. A table is all about the information it holds. But you can make your tables eye-catching and easier to read by formatting them in various ways. For example, you might set off column headings with a different color or shade alternating rows. The easiest way to format a table is to use Word’s built-in styles, but you can also format your table by hand. To make your table look good, you can choose a predesigned style. When you do, Word automatically formats the table according to the style you chose. Say you want the table in shades of blue, with a dark blue row at the top to distinguish headings and alternating white and light blue rows to make it easier to read each row. Sounds like a lot of formatting work, doesn’t it? Not with Table Styles. You don’t have to figure out how to do all that formatting—just pick the style you want, and Word does the rest. The Table Tools | Design tab has two sections for table styles, as shown in Figure 4-7:
Figure 4-7. Choose the options you want, and then pick a table style. To pop out a larger selection of styles, click the Table Styles section’s lower-right More button. Here’s how to format a table using Table Styles:
If you’re the do-it-yourself type, you can format a table yourself using the Shading and Borders buttons in the Table Styles section of the Table Tools | Design tab. (Click any table to see this tab.) You can also use these buttons to change the look of a table you’ve formatted using Table Styles. You can shade any part of a table—a cell, a row, a column, or multiples of these—to call attention to it. You might want to set off the row that contains the column headings from the table’s data, for example, or highlight a row or column that contains totals. In a table you’re using as a calendar, you could use shading to highlight important dates, such as project due dates. To add shading to a table, start by selecting the part you want to shade. (You can select multiple elements by holding down the Ctrl key as you make your selections.) Then, add shading using this method:
Figure 4-8. When you shade parts of a table, you can choose colors related to your document’s current design using Theme Colors or pick whatever colors you like. Click More Colors to choose from an even broader palette. A basic table is a grid with borders around all sides and between the rows and columns to define each cell. You can show or hide any or all of those borders to give your table the look you want. (Borders still exist if you hide them—they’re how Word knows where each cell begins and ends—you just make them invisible.) Select the table (or the part of it you want to work with), and then do this:
Figure 4-9. Show or hide any of the borders in your table using the Borders menu. To adjust the line style, width, or color, use the drop-down options in the Borders section of the Table Tools | Design tab. The Borders menu makes one change at a time, closing after each one, which can get pretty tedious if you want to alter multiple borders. Here’s how to apply multiple changes without opening and reopening the Borders menu:
Here’s another way to custom-design your table: Choose your own border style, thickness, and color, and then apply these wherever you like. You can do this from the Table Tools | Design tab’s Borders section. The Border Styles gallery offers a wide range of predesigned borders that you can quickly select and apply to your table. Select Table Tools | Design→Border Styles (Alt, JT, G) to see a menu of—you guessed it—border styles, with borders you’ve used recently conveniently displayed in an easy-to-find section of their own. Click the style you want, and the mouse pointer turns into a paintbrush. Click any border segment to apply that border to it, or click and drag to style a longer border segment. As you drag, a thick gray line shows you which border lines are affected. You don’t have to choose from the Border Styles gallery; you can design your own borders. The Table Tools | Design tab gives you these options:
When you select a style, weight, or color, Word turns on Border Painter, making the mouse pointer change to a paintbrush. Click a border segment, or click and drag, and Border Painter applies your custom border to the table. When you’re done formatting borders, you can turn Border Painter off by selecting Table Tools | Design→Border Painter (Alt, JT, P) again. Picture this: You’re writing to family members about your new puppy, trying to describe just how darn cute he is. You could write a couple of paragraphs and still not get the message across as eloquently as one big-eyed puppy photo could. Images enliven a document, adding visual interest and illustrating key points. Whether you’re adding snapshots of the kids to a holiday letter, putting flowcharts into a project management plan, or including screenshots of designs for a website, showing—not just telling—is what makes your documents stand out. If you’ve got a picture stored on your computer—like that photo of your cute puppy—you can insert it into a document. Position the cursor where you want the image to appear, and then select Insert→Pictures (Alt, N, P). This opens the Insert Picture dialog box, shown in Figure 4-11. Navigate to the file, click to select it, and then click the Insert button. Word puts the picture where you positioned the cursor. Here’s another quick way to get a picture into your document. Open File Explorer (Windows 7 users know this program as Windows Explorer) and size the window so you can see both File Explorer and your document on your screen. Then, in File Explorer, find and select the image you want. Drag it into the Word document and drop it in place. Figure 4-11. Although Word comes with sample pictures, you’ll probably want to use your own. Find and select a folder in the left-hand pane, choose the picture you want, and then click Insert. When Word inserts a new picture, it opens the Picture Tools | Format tab so you can edit the picture. Keep reading to learn how to edit images in Word. Nowadays, few people store all of their images on just on their computer’s hard drive and nowhere else. You might have posted your images on Flickr, a photo-sharing website, to show family, friends, or colleagues. You might have stored your pictures in SkyDrive, so you could access them from any Internet-connected device. Or you might not have the perfect image to suit your needs and want to find one on the web. To put an online picture into your Word document, first make sure that your computer is connected to the Internet. Next, place the cursor where you want the image to appear, and then select Insert→Online Pictures (Alt, N, F). This opens the Insert Pictures dialog box, which gives you these options for tracking down the online image you want:
After you’ve selected an image, click Insert, and Word puts it in your document. Want to save that image you just inserted to your computer’s hard drive? Right-click the image. From the shortcut menu, select “Save as Picture.” Word opens the File Save box. Choose the folder where you want to store the image and give the file a name. When you’ve done that, click Save to store the image on your computer. If you’ve ever needed to show an image of a Web page or a dialog box, you know that getting that screenshot into a document can take a lot of work: You have to use some program to take the screenshot, save it on your computer, and then insert it into your document as an image. Happily, Word lets you cut out the middleman by taking screenshots and inserting them directly into your document—all in Word. It really couldn’t be easier.
Now, you can work with the screenshot just as you’d edit any image in Word (the next section tells you how). But what if you don’t want to insert an image of the whole window? For example, maybe you’re interested in the main part of a web page but not the ads along its sides. In that case, you can select a region of the window you’re shooting, and then insert just that region. Position the cursor where you want to insert the image and minimize all windows except for Word and the window you want to shoot. Then proceed like this:
When you insert an image, Word automatically opens the Picture Tools | Format contextual tab, shown in Figure 4-14. This tab also appears whenever you click an image to select it, and it’s what you use to edit or format an image. As you’ll see in this section, Word (and Office) has tons of tools for working with images—and those tools are great for making minor adjustments to a document’s pictures. But if you need to do some heavy-duty image editing, you still need a specialized photo-editing program like Photoshop to do the job. Figure 4-14. The commands on the Picture Tools | Format tab are divided into four sections: Adjust (for brightening or sharpening an image, adjusting its color, or applying effects), Picture Styles (to frame the image or give it shadows, beveling, or other effects), Arrange (to position the image in relation to other elements in your document), and Size (to crop the image or adjust its size in inches). Resizing an image makes it fit better on the page, but there are some limits to what you can accomplish when you change a picture’s size. For example, if you try to take a small image and make it much bigger, it will appear blurry and pixelated (the small squares that make up the image will become visible). Resizing works best for relatively small adjustments. When you select an image, square white handles appear at the image’s corners and halfway along each side, as you can see in Figure 4-14. The easiest way to make the image larger or smaller is to click a handle and hold down the mouse button as you drag. If you use this method, drag a corner handle; these handles keep the image’s width and height in proportion as you change its size. You can also resize an image using the drop-down lists of the Picture Tools | Format tab’s Size section. The Shape Height (Alt, JP, H) and Shape Width (Alt, JP, W) boxes show the image’s current size in inches. Change one dimension (use the up and down arrows or type in the number you want), and the other changes to retain the original proportions. Cropping is different from resizing. When you resize an image, you grow or shrink the whole image. But when you crop an image, you cut out parts of it that you don’t want. If you want only part of an image that you’ve inserted, you can crop the image directly in Word. Select the image to open the Picture Tools | Format tab, and then click Crop; on the menu that opens, click Crop again (Alt, JP, V, C). Cropping handles appear around the image. As Figure 4-15 shows, these cropping handles are at the same points as the resizing handles and look like bold black lines. Move the mouse pointer over a cropping handle until the cursor changes shape to match the cropping handle. Click (the cursor becomes a + sign when you do) and drag to crop out parts of the image you don’t want. As you drag, the original outline of the image remains. Let go of the mouse button to crop. Figure 4-15. Remove parts of a picture that you don’t want by clicking and dragging any cropping handle. As you drag, the grayed-out part of the image shows what will be cropped out. You can drag cropping handles both ways. So if you crop too far and want to restore some of what you’ve cropped, simply drag the handle back out to restore the image. You can do this even after you’ve finished cropping the image. Repeat with other cropping handles as necessary. When you’re done, click outside the image to save your changes. To add a fun effect to an image, crop it to a shape. Click the image and select Picture Tools | Format→Crop→Crop to Shape (Alt, JP, V, S). A menu opens showing shapes—hearts, triangle, arrows, lightning bolts, and more—that work like cookie cutters. When you choose a shape, Word crops the photo to make it fit within that shape. Some pictures have busy backgrounds that steal the focus from the main image. It can take a keen eye, a steady hand, and a lot of concentration to remove the background from an image. But Word makes that job a whole lot easier. As you can see in Figure 4-16, you can remove an image’s background after you’ve inserted the image into Word. Figure 4-16. ‘Fraid of Photoshop? You don’t need image-editing software to remove the background from a picture—you can do it right in Word. Removing a picture’s background works only with .docx files—you can’t do this if Word 2013 is working with an older .doc file in Compatibility Mode. Here’s how to make the main subject of an image stand out by getting rid of the background:
Background removal works best with clearly defined objects that contrast strongly with their backgrounds, but you can use the Background Removal tab’s tools to fine-tune which parts of the image stay and which parts go. You can tweak an image after you’ve removed its background. Click the image to select it and then choose Picture Tools | Format→Remove Background (Alt, JP, E). The image changes to background-removal mode, looking something like the image in Figure 4-17. From there, you can make whatever adjustments you want; click Keep Changes to apply them. Inserting an image into your document is just the beginning. Once you’ve got a picture in there, you can move it to a new position or adjust its angle. The easiest way is to use the Clipboard: Select the image, cut it from its current location (Ctrl+X), move the cursor to the new location, and then paste the image there (Ctrl+V). You can also drag the image to its new home: Click the picture to select it and move your pointer over the image until it becomes a selection arrow combined with a four-way arrow. Click and drag the image to its new position; let go of the mouse button to drop the image there. To position an image that’s on its own line (in other words, when there’s no text wrapped around it), head for the Home tab (Alt, H) and, in the Paragraph section, use the Alignment buttons to line up the image with the left or right margin or in the center of the page. When you insert an image, it appears in either vertical (portrait) or horizontal (landscape) orientation. To tilt the image at a rakish angle or turn it upside down, use the rotation handle. First, click the image to show the sizing handles. Above the image is a circular arrow; that’s the rotation handle. When you click it, the pointer becomes four arrows pointing in a circle, as shown in Figure 4-18. Drag the rotation handle, and a ghost of the image moves with it. When the ghost image is at the angle you want, let go of the mouse button to rotate the image to that angle. Figure 4-18. To rotate an image, click the rotation handle and drag until you’ve got the angle you want. Amateur and professional photographers alike adjust their pictures—sharpening here, brightening there, maybe adjusting the color saturation—to make the images look their best. You can make these same adjustments right in Word—no need to mess around with photo-editing software. You adjust a picture’s appearance in the Picture Tools | Format tab’s Adjust section (click the image to open this tab). Here are the buttons to use:
The basic drill for any of these adjustments is the same:
Figure 4-19. You don’t have to guess how changes you make to brightness will affect an image; the thumbnails in the Brightness/Contrast menu show you. When you pass the mouse pointer over a thumbnail, Word tells you what you’re adjusting and shows a live preview of the effect on the image in your document (this may take a few seconds). The Picture Tools | Format tab’s Adjust section also gives you these options:
Picture Styles add frames and other effects—like shadows, soft edges, beveling, and reflections—to your images. To apply one of these effects, select the image to open the Picture Tools | Format tab (Alt, JP). Quick Styles appear in the Picture Styles section of that tab, showing you some previews of different styles. You can use the up and down arrow buttons to scroll through the styles, but to save yourself some squinting and see all the options at once, look below the scroll-down arrow and click the More button (Alt, JP, K). Take a look at the different styles available and use your mouse pointer to see a live preview of any of them on your image. Click the style you want—and now your image has style! On the Picture Tools | Format tab, use the Picture Border (Alt, JP, SO) and Picture Effects (Alt, JP, F) buttons to create do-it-yourself picture styles. These buttons give you more options than the quick styles, including border colors, glow colors and widths, and various options for shadows, reflections, and rotation effects. The Format Picture pane, shown in Figure 4-20, gathers together some of the most common picture-tweaking tools. To open it, right-click the picture you want to format and select Format Picture from the shortcut menu. When the pane opens, you have these options to choose from:
When you’re finished adjusting your image, click the Format Pane’s upper-right X to close it. Figure 4-20. The Format Picture pane makes it easy to make multiple tweaks to an image, all at once. Use the buttons across the top (circled) to select the kind of formatting you want to do, and then choose specific settings below that. If you’ve got a lot of formatting to do in a document, leave the Format Picture pane open. The pane changes to accommodate whatever part of the document you’ve selected. For example, if you’re finished formatting a picture and you click some text, the pane automatically changes to the Format Text Effects pane. If you click a chart, the Format pane is now the Format Chart Area pane. And if you click an image again, you’re back to the Format Picture pane. Whatever you’re formatting, this pane has you covered. An image can be a pretty decoration, or it can be an essential part of your document. To incorporate an image into the text that it illustrates, you can wrap text around the image. That way, instead of looking lonely sitting all by itself on its own line, the image gets surrounded by text. This makes it clear which part of the text goes with the image, saves space, and gives your document a professional-looking layout. The two buttons you use to position an image in relation to text are in the Picture Tools | Format tab’s Arrange section:
You can also find the Position and Wrap Text buttons in the Arrange section of the Page Layout tab (Alt, P, PO for Position and Alt, P, TW for Wrap Text). You can manually adjust how closely the text wraps around your image by selecting the image and then taking these steps:
Figure 4-21. The Wrap Text button (circled) has a menu option that lets you edit wrap points. Click and drag any wrap point to change how closely text wraps around the image. Want a shortcut for positioning an image in relation to text? Use the Layout Options button. When you click an image, this button appears just outside its upper-right corner. Click it to see and select the image’s layout options. When you have multiple images, especially in a long document, it’s a pain to scroll through page by page, looking for a particular picture. Word’s Navigation pane lets you jump from one image to the next, browsing quickly through the document until you find the one you want. Here’s how:
You don’t have to be an artist or a graphic designer to add professional-looking graphic effects to your documents. WordArt bends and twists words in all kinds of ways—it’s great for creating things like attention-getting flyers (and it’s just plain fun to play with). And SmartArt adds punch to your words and ideas by representing them visually, graphically showing relationships between ideas, such as a hierarchy chart, or steps in a process—a flowchart, for example. Both features are easy to use—and you’ll look good, because your document looks so good. You can find WordArt in the Text section of the Insert tab. Here’s how to use it:
When you’re finished, click outside of the text box to go back to working with normal text. You can also turn existing text into WordArt. Select the word or phrase you want to convert, and then follow steps 1 and 2 in the preceding list. If you need to make changes to what WordArt text says, click the WordArt to display the text box that holds it. Position the cursor where you need to make changes, and edit as necessary. And here’s where WordArt gets really fun: adding effects. To change the look of the WordArt, head for the Drawing Tools | Format tab’s WordArt Styles section, shown in Figure 4-23. Click the WordArt in your document, and the ribbon automatically switches to that tab at the same time the text box appears. Inside the text box, select the text you want to monkey with. The WordArt Styles section gives you these options:
If you add a text effect to WordArt, when you bring up the text box to edit the text, Word temporarily removes the effect so you can see the letters clearly. When you click outside the box, it reapplies the effect. Figure 4-23. There are dozens of options for adding effects to your WordArt text. Transform effects bend words into circles, waves, arcs, and other shapes. To position WordArt on the page, click it to reveal its text box. Move the pointer over any of the dashed lines that make up the text box’s borders so that the pointer becomes a four-way arrow. Click, and the dashed line turns solid. Then, with the pointer still on the border, click and drag the WordArt wherever you want it. The circular rotation handle above the WordArt text box lets you change the angle of the WordArt on the page. Click and drag until the text box is at the angle you want. To delete WordArt, click it to display its text box, click any border of the box, and then press Delete or Backspace. Word 2013 gives you fine-grained control for getting your WordArt to look just the way you want it, thanks to the Format Shape pane. This pane is the place to go if you want to define and apply multiple affects to your WordArt. To open the Format Shape pane, select the WordArt you want to format, then head to the Drawing Tools | Format tab and, in the WordArt Styles section, click the lower-right button (Alt, JD, G). The Format Shape pane (Figure 4-24) opens, giving you options for formatting the shape and the text of your WordArt. Figure 4-24. Creating WordArt is just the beginning. Give it your own stylish spin with the Format Shape pane, where you can customize its color, effects, alignment, and more. Shape options are the same as the options available in the Format Picture pane (Using Picture Styles). Use them to give the text box that contains your WordArt a background fill color or a border, add special effects such as shadows or soft edges, tweak the size of the text box, and so on. Only the effects and corrections that apply to WordArt will be active here; any others are grayed out. Here’s where the “art” in WordArt comes into play. When you click Text Options in the Format Shape pane, Word gives you these choices:
When you’ve finished formatting your WordArt, click the Format Shape pane’s upper-right X to close it. Originally introduced in PowerPoint, SmartArt offered a way to add visual interest to ho-hum PowerPoint slides, replacing boring old bullets and cockeyed flowcharts with professional-looking graphics. And SmartArt can do the same for your Word documents, impressing colleagues, clients, and higher-ups with your attention-getting graphics. Chapter 22 discusses working with SmartArt in detail (it’s consistent across Office programs). So head there to see examples and read about editing and formatting SmartArt. Here’s how to insert SmartArt into a Word document:
To edit what you’ve written on a SmartArt graphic, click its text to reveal the text box that contains it and type inside the box. Alternatively, click the tab on the left side of the frame that holds the graphic to reopen the typing pane. If a picture’s worth a thousand words, a good chart is probably worth ten times that amount. Charts and diagrams take data and express it in an easy-to-understand visual form. When you insert a chart into Word, you present information that readers can easily interpret and absorb at a glance. Here’s how to insert a chart into a Word document:
When you click a chart you’ve inserted into a Word document, four buttons appear to the chart’s right. Here’s what they do:
The buttons just listed provide a quick, easy way to format your chart. If you prefer, you can use the ribbon’s Chart Tools | Design (Alt, JC) and Chart Tools | Format (Alt, JA) tabs to do the same formatting tasks. If you need to change the information in your chart, select Chart Tools | Design→Edit Data→Edit Data (Alt, JC, D, E) to reopen the mini Excel window and edit the data. To change a chart’s type, click the chart to display its frame. Then right-click the chart and, from the shortcut menu that appears, select Change Chart Type. This opens a dialog box that looks just like Insert Chart; select a type and style of chart and then click OK. Word converts the current chart to that style. If you want to work with the full version of Excel to edit your chart’s data, select Chart Tools | Design→Edit Data→Edit Data in Excel 2013 (Alt, JC, D, D). The full version of Excel opens in another window, letting you use any and all of that program’s features. To delete a chart from a Word document, click the chart to select it and then press Delete or Backspace. For more about working with charts, see Chapter 20. Get Office 2013: The Missing Manual now with the O’Reilly learning platform. O’Reilly members experience live online training, plus books, videos, and digital content from nearly 200 publishers. |