Crop Tool in MS Word 2003

[Rebecca]

Greetings. I have many scanned images that I have been inserted into a long
MS Word 2003 file, but these images have dark margins (from a book sloppily
xeroxed) have to be cropped. If I use the standard cropping tool that comes
with MS Word 2003, it takes a relatively long time to crop each image, so I
was wondering if there is any tool available that can be used in MS Word
(perhaps similar with the SnagIt cropping function), but will involve very
few mouse clicks: say, first select the area to be cropped, then click on an
icon (or whatever) to crop the image, and then I can go on to the next image
on the pages to repeat the procedure. I will deeply appreciate any help or
advice concerning this matter.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If the images exist outside the Word document (that is, if they were saved
as separate files), I find the Microsoft Office Picture Manager does a good
job with cropping. You can set a desired aspect ratio and automatically crop
to it or turn that off and crop freehand.

 

[JethroUK©]

another problem that has arisen (you may not notice yet) - but importing
pictures into word document increases the size of the document to ridiculous
10's of megabytes - the imported/cropped picture shoould be converted to
metafiles - these are compressed pictures with virtually no loss

provided you are cropping consistent sized borders off the pictures - it is
possible to automate the whole process (incl convertion) with a macro (1
click)

 

[Keith Howell]

Just a thought but if you made up a square version of the Autoshapes/Basic
Shapes/Donut you could simply copy it over each picture. I.e. 4 rectangles
grouped to form a square donut, set to fill white line white.

 

[Rebecca]

Thanks, Keith, but this is too time-consuming. All I need to do is make a
quick rectangular section, crop the image, and go to the next image and do
the same. The native MS cropping tool is far too cumbersome to do the job
(it requires one side to be cropped, then the other, and so on). There has
got to be some way to hid those ugly margins, but remember the files is
louded with hundreds of scanned book page images.

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi Jethro,

What procedure are you using to insert pictures into Word?
If you're using Insert=>Picture=>From File and saving in Word's default .doc format the inserted file size increase should often be
not much greater than the disk file size of the graphic.

Do you have a sample of the macro you mentioned you can post?

========
another problem that has arisen (you may not notice yet) - but importing
pictures into word document increases the size of the document to ridiculous
10's of megabytes - the imported/cropped picture shoould be converted to
metafiles - these are compressed pictures with virtually no loss

provided you are cropping consistent sized borders off the pictures - it is
possible to automate the whole process (incl convertion) with a macro (1
click) >>

 

[JethroUK©]

i insert a lot of pics by screen capture - prolly why they end up so
huuuuuuuuuuuge (bitmap i think)

but beside the picture type - something else to consider:

when you crop a picture in Word - it retains the cropped areas (for
uncropping later), which again has a big impact on doc size - i got a couple
that ended up a whooping 30 megabytes

macro i use frequently:

Sub CompressPictures()

Dim x%

With ActiveDocument.InlineShapes
For x% = 1 To .Count
.Item(x%).Select
Selection.Cut
Selection.PasteSpecial , , wdInLine, , wdPasteMetafilePicture
Next
End With

End Sub

basically cuts the existing pictures - paste them back as low-loss metafile
& removes cropped areas perminently - can make big reduction in doc size

note this only deals with inline pics (all i ever use) - you would need to
run the loop again for any floating pics

Hi Jethro,

What procedure are you using to insert pictures into Word?
If you're using Insert=>Picture=>From File and saving in Word's default

..doc format the inserted file size increase should often be