MS Office

From Open Clip Art Library Wiki

This document deals with how to use clipart from the Open Clip Art Library with Microsoft Office applications.

Microsoft Office is not currently equipped to import SVG format clipart, which is the format used for all Open Clip Art Library Drawings. To use Open Clip Art Library clip art in Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, Powerpoint), you will need to convert the art into formats Microsoft Office can use.

Converting Open Clip Art Library SVG Files For Use With MS Office

The least expensive method is to download Inkscape. Not only is it free, but it runs on both Mac and Windows, so it can be used anywhere you can use Microsoft word.

The instructions below have been tested with Inkscape 0.45 and Office XP. YMMV.

1. Download and install Inkscape
2. Download an SVG format file from the Open Clip Art Library.
3. Open the SVG with Inkscape.
4. Select "Save As" from the file menu.
5. From the file format options in the lower right of the save dialog, select "Enhanced Metafile (*.emf)" or "Encapsulated Postscript (*.eps)" and save in that format.
6. In Microsoft Word, select "picture" from the "Insert" menu, and select the "from file" sub-option.
7. Select the .emf or .eps file you just created with Inkscape.
8. Microsoft Word will import the drawing and place it in your document.

To get vector art to work a little better in Word, do the following;

1. Right click on your image and select Grouping->Ungroup. This should prompt to convert to a Microsoft Office Drawing Object - select "Yes". Now, without unselecting the objects in the image, right click and select Grouping->Group.
2. Right click on the image and select Cut. Now click on the surrounding box edge and hit delete. Then right click on the page and select Paste to paste it back into the document without the box.
3. Converting to an Office Drawing Object puts a thin black border around everything. Right click on the image. Select "Format Object", then under the "Colors and Lines" tab set "Line Color" to "No Line".
4. To resize proportionally, select the image and hold the shift key while dragging the corner marker.
5. To rotate by 15 degree increments, select the image and hold the shift key while dragging the green rotate marker (not in pre-XP (?) versions of Word).

Cautions and Things To Think About

Some people may suggest that a better alternative is to use Inkscape's "export to bitmap" feature, which will save the drawing as a bitmap.

The EPS and EMF formats are what is known as "vector" formats. They allow you to use the drawing at a wide variety of sizes, especially big sizes. But Inkscape's export to them isn't perfect and it will mess up about 10% of the drawings in the Open Clip Art Library.

The bitmap export option will give you a more consistent appearance, but things will not resize as well, and you may need to understand concepts like pixels and DPI to get items to print well. The EPS/EMF option is more "worry-free" when it comes to printing and sizing. Using an exported bitmap is only recommended when the EMF/EPS save is messing up the image.