Understanding the Microsoft Clip Organizer

The Microsoft Clip Organizer, available from within Office XP applications, includes thousands of ready-made illustrations, photographs, sound files, and video clips to use in your presentations. You can search the Organizer by keyword or category to find the right clip, import your own clips to the Organizer, categorize clips, or download clips from the Microsoft Design Gallery Live Web site.

Opening the Clip Organizer

You can access the Clip Organizer in several ways:

• From the Windows desktop, select Start, Programs, Microsoft Office Tools, Microsoft Clip Organizer.

• Select Insert, Picture, Clip Art to open the Insert Clip Art task pane. Click the Clip Organizer link on the task pane.

• Select Insert, Movies and Sound, Sound from Clip Organizer or Movie from Clip Organizer to open the Insert Clip Art task pane. Click the Clip Organizer link on the task pane.

The first time you open the Clip Organizer, the Add Clips to Organizer dialog box opens. Figure 13.8 shows this dialog box.

From here, you can

• Click Now if you want the Clip Organizer to automatically categorize pictures, photos, sounds, and videos it finds on your computer.

• Click Later to close the dialog box and have it remind you to do this later.

• Click Don't Show This Message Again if you don't want to be reminded again about adding clips to the Organizer.

• Click Options to open the Auto Import Settings dialog box, shown in Figure 13.9, which enables you to place a check in all the folders you want categorized and remove the check from any folders you don't want categorized.

Having the Clip Organizer automatically categorize your clips doesn't move them, but rather just creates catalog entries that help you find them within the Clip Organizer.

Exploring the Clip Organizer

If you're familiar with other Office programs, the Clip Organizer (shown in Figure 13.10) will be easy to navigate and use. You can access the most common features from the toolbar, illustrated in Table 13.1.

Table 13.1. Clip Organizer Toolbar Buttons

Button	Name	Description
	Search	Displays the Search task pane, from which you can search for an image
	Collection List	Displays the Collection List task pane, which offers a hierarchical view of your clip collection
	Copy	Copies the selected clip
	Paste	Pastes the clip from the Clipboard
	Delete from Clip Organizer	Removes the selected clips from the Clip Organizer
	Thumbnails	Displays the clips in the selected collection as thumbnails
	List	Displays the clips in the selected collection as a list of filenames
	Details	Displays details about the clips in the selected collection, such as filename, type, size, caption, keywords, and date created
	Clips Online	Opens the Microsoft Design Gallery Live in a browser window (button active only if connected to the Internet)

Navigating the Collection List

By default, the Clip Organizer displays the Collection List task pane on the left side of the window, and thumbnails of the clips in the selected collection on the right. The Clip Organizer offers four different types of collection folders: My Collections, which stores your own clips that you've added to the Organizer; Office Collections, which stores clips that come with Office; Shared Collections, which stores clips on a file server set up by a network administrator; and Web Collections, which stores online clips, including clips provided by Microsoft partners.

To expand collections, click the plus (+) sign; to collapse them, click the minus (-) sign. When you find the folder you want, click it to display its contents.

In thumbnail view, you can click the down arrow to the right of the thumbnail image to view a list of options for that particular clip, most of which duplicate functions available on the toolbar. One particularly useful item on this shortcut menu is Preview/Properties. This option opens the Preview/Properties dialog box for the selected clip. Figure 13.11 shows this dialog box, which provides details such as file type, resolution, date created, and keywords.