I’m using Microsoft Word in Windows 7. I dislike this program but I’m stuck with it at work for now. Is there a way to select multiple images and re-size them or add borders simultaneously? This question stumped my IT co-workers, so I turn to the Dope. I write reports with 60+ images and it’s time consuming to select each image one at a time to re-size and add a border. Cursory internet search engine explorations yielded references to writing macros, but I’m not sure how to do this. Thank you Dopers for your time.
Writing macros is relatively easy. (at least it is in excel, i’ve never written a word macro).
Basically,
- Click record,
- do your tasks/command(s) with the mouse or whatever
- Stop record
- assign to shortcut-key combination
Click each picture and hit your shortcut-key combination.
If your work is repetitive you’ll find yourself making macros all the time.
I’m pretty sure this used to be possible. Apparently, in Office 2010, you can only do it if the images are all within the same canvas. If you can arrange to place all the images within a canvas, simply select all the images and change their size, add borders or whatever. To create a canvas use: Insert->Shapes->New Drawing Canvas. To select multiple images, use Ctrl+A, or drag a box around the images, or use Shift+Click to select each image.
It’s weird. I can Ctrl+click them sometimes and do this. Other times I cannot. I think if you mess with the wrap settings, it might make it possible, e.g. “Tight”. I don’t know why, but it sometimes works for me. Maybe something with that canvas stuff?
If your PC has MSWord then there is a chance it also has PowerPoint also. Word specializes in text and PowerPoint is designed for graphics. I would use PowerPoint for the pictures and frames and then copy and paste on over to Word. Word and PowerPoint are from the same group of programs and are pretty compatible.
hi Enlightening Meditation, it is not an easy job to handle multiple picture at time in Ms Word because every time when you select a picture then upload it into the program and resize it accordingly. There is better solution for it. Firstly, you have to resize all picture into the same size from adobe photophop or ACDSee type imaging programs and just add them into ms word one by one then you will save much time to resize everyone.
There doesn’t appear to be any effective way of selecting multiple images in Microsoft Word 2010. (You can drag a selection over them, or use shift+arrow keys on the keyboard, but once you do so the Picture Tools tab disappears, and right-clicking to get the context menu deselects everything except for one image.)
However, you can select multiple images in PowerPoint 2010 (for example, by dragging a selection, or by clicking on the first image and then Ctrl+ or Shift+clicking on the others). You can then press the right mouse button to get a context menu, select “Size and Position…”, and then manually enter the image sizes. I imagine a similar procedure would work for specifying borders.
So as Stinky Pete says, perhaps you could first do your work in PowerPoint and then copy it to Word. Or alternatively if your document is already in Word, see if you can copy and paste the relevant portions into an empty PowerPoint document, process it there, and then copy it back.
One advantage of Word here is that it doesn’t lose quality when it shrinks images - it remembers what percentage of 100% it is currently. The disadvantage is that it can cause hidden reasons for document bloat, although the image size can be permanently reduced by choosing the “Compress Pictures” option, also to remove cropped areas permanently.