Inserting Pictures in Word

You may be doing a Holiday Letter to your family and friends this season. When you insert a picture using Microsoft Word, the program automatically puts it in the line with the text? Like this…

You may prefer that the text wrap around the picture and really integrate it into the document. Like this…

To make that happen, you can go through and change the formatting for each picture. This is done by right clicking the image and selecting Format Picture. Then select the Wrapping tab and select the way you want the words to wrap.

You can do this with Outlook Express also, by right clicking the image and selecting Properties. Then click the down arrow for Alignment (the default is Baseline). It might be good to add a few pixels of spacing around your picture also.

If you have a fairly recent version of MS Word, and you always want the picture formatting the same way, it would be more efficient to have Word format the picture to your preferences each time you paste in a picture.

To change the way Word formats a picture upon insertion, go to the Options window. (Tools menu, Options choice).

Once in the Options window, you need the Edit tab.

Look for the "Insert/paste picture as " field. Use the arrow to pull down the list and choose the formatting you prefer.

Click OK. And that's it!

Next time you insert a picture, you should find that it is automatically formatted to meet your standards from the very beginning.

This is a modified WorldStart.com tip.