Have you ever wanted to use Microsoft Clip Art in your document, but didn’t because it had the wrong colors, or an element you didn’t like? Like we teach in our popular Microsoft Word class, it’s actually possible to edit graphics found in the Clip Art Gallery. Note that this only works on drawings, not photographs, and not on all of them. Here’s how you do it:

On the right side of the PICTURE TOOLS > FORMAT Tab, click on the GROUP button, and then select UNGROUP. An alert box may appear that says, “This is an imported picture, not a group. Do you want to convert it to a Microsoft Office drawing object?” Click YES.

Occasionally, you need to Ungroup twice.

The image changes into a Drawing Canvas, with all the elements of the Clip Art broken up into tiny pieces. To see this in action, click once inside the frame, then press CTRL-A on the keyboard to SELECT ALL. You now see all the resizing handles for all of the graphic elements. Click outside the box—don’t change anything yet!

Change Clip Art Colors

Find an element to recolor. Click on it (it may take several tries to find the right one if there are a lot of overlapping elements), and use the DRAWING TOOLS > SHAPE FILL to change the color.

Delete and Add Microsoft Clip Art Elements

Click on any element to remove, and tap Delete on the keyboard.

To add an element, use INSERT SHAPES to create and position it in the Drawing Canvas.

Regroup the Image