Croping a picture in Word

[William Wolfe]

I have a .wmf file in a Word doc that I need to crop. The crop tool is
highlighted when I select it, but nothing happens. Are there only certain
graphic formats for which the crop tool works?

 

[CyberTaz]

What do you mean by "nothing happens"? What do you expect to happen?

Once you select the tool you need to drag the handles at the 4 corners
and/or midpoint of each edge to crop the image as necessary. Alternatively,
you can click the Dialog Launcher button for the Size Group & enter cropping
values if you wish.

 

[Mark]

..WMF files usually have vector information within them and can't be cropped
in their native format. You must either export the image to another type
(like JPG, GIF or BMP) and then you can crop to your hearts content.

To export a .WMF, insert the image and then select it and right-click and
"save as image"... that should give an option for .PNG or whatever... then
once it's saved in your My Pictures folder re-insert that picture "from
file" instead of clip art and then use that new .PNG you created. Viola! You
should be able to crop it.

NOTE WELL: Once it's something other than the vector type, you lose the
awesomeness of resizing it... first get it to about the size you want then
export it and all should be good. (You can resize anything but vectors are
more crisp than raster images.) - People call that issue "pixelized" or some
other term I'm sure.

 

[William Wolfe]

What you are describing is resizing. When I select crop I expect to hold
down the left click button and drag to create a rectangle that I want to
crop to. When I selct the crop tool and do this does not happen.

 

[William Wolfe]

My apologies - you are correct. Just a different technique that what I am
accustome to.

 

[CyberTaz]

Yeah, the implementation is a bit different than what you would expect to
find in most graphics editing software... but then, this isn't that Glad
you got it under control

 

[tooolnut]

Note that, when you just crop an image in Word, you only hide parts of the
image from view: you may later uncrop it, using the same tool, if that's how
you want it to work. But, if you are cropping a large part of an image and
wish to reduce the size of the document, you would have to "cut" it and then
paste it back by first selecting the Paste Special dialog box and selecting a
format to paste it back in as. You won't need to save the image as a file
first in order to change its format, if you follow my directions.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you "compress" the picture after cropping it, the cropped parts are
permanently removed.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[tooolnut]

I don't know why that is, but compressing always undoes any cropping of the
image I do before "compressing" it, so it hasn't worked so far, for me. Just
to be sure we're on the same page, in my unsuccessful attemtpts to compress:

1. After cropping parts of the picture, I right-click on the picture and
select Format Picture
2. under the Picture tab, I click on "compress..."
3. under Options, I make sure "Compress pictures" and "Delete cropped areas
of pictures" are selected, then press OK, OK.

My cropped areas spring right back into full view, and the cropped areas
never get deleted, no matter how many times I try.

--Jeremy

 

[tooolnut]

Alright, compressing works only if I first do Paste Special and select a
format (I guess, one that Word recognizes), such as ".png", before cropping.
It doesn't work when I do a direct paste of an image copied from another
application, even though Word is able to display it.

--Jeremy

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Perhaps the difference is that I always use Insert | Picture | From File
instead of pasting pictures in?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org