Microsoft Office

Enhancing Your Work with
Pictures and Drawings
When it comes to visual presentation, Excel has a lot more up its sleeve
than charts. As you may know, you can insert a wide variety of graphics
into your worksheet to add pizzazz to an otherwise boring report.
This chapter describes the non-chart-related graphic tools available in Excel.
These tools consist of Shapes, SmartArt, WordArt, and imported or pasted
images. In addition to enhancing your worksheets, you’ll find that working with
these objects can be a nice diversion. When you need a break from crunching
numbers, you might enjoy creating an artistic masterpiece using Excel’s graphic
tools.
IN THIS CHAPTER
Inserting and customizing
Shapes
An overview of SmartArt and
WordArt
Working with other types of
graphics
Using Shapes
Microsoft Office, including Excel, provides access to a variety of customizable
graphic images known as Shapes. You can add a Shape to a worksheet’s draw
layer by selecting a Shape using the Insert ➪ Illustrations ➪ Shapes gallery,
shown in Figure 22.1. The Shapes are organized into categories, and the category
at the top displays the Shapes that you’ve used recently.
Inserting a Shape
To insert a Shape on a worksheet, just click the Shape in the Shapes gallery and
then click in the worksheet. A default-sized shape is added to your worksheet.
Alternatively, you can click the Shape and then drag it in the worksheet to create
a larger or smaller Shape. When you release the mouse button, the object is
selected, and its name appears in the Name box (as shown in Figure 22.2).
TIP
You can also insert a Shape into a chart. Just select the chart
TIP before you choose the Shape from the gallery and then click
inside of the chart to insert the Shape. When a chart is selected, the Chart Tools
context tab also displays an icon to access the Shape gallery: Chart Tools ➪
Layout ➪ Insert ➪ Shapes.
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