About finding clips - PowerPoint - Microsoft Office Online

Warning: You are viewing this page with an unsupported Web browser. This Web site works best with Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or later, Firefox 1.5, or Netscape Navigator 8.0 or later. Learn more about supported browsers.

Email this link

Printer-Friendly Version Bookmark and Share

About finding clips

Applies to: Microsoft Office Excel 2003, FrontPage 2003, InfoPath 2003, PowerPoint 2003, Word 2003

Using the Clip Art task pane (task pane: A window within an Office application that provides commonly used commands. Its location and small size allow you to use these commands while still working on your files.), you can quickly and easily find photographs, drawings, sound effects, music, videos, and other media files— called clips (clip: A single media file, including art, sound, animation, or movies.)— to use in Microsoft Office documents.

You can search for clips by entering search keywords or phrases in normal, everyday language— for example, "buildings" or "people at work." If you find a clip that is close to what you're looking for, you can find more clips based on a similar artistic style.

If you want to narrow your search, you can specify the clip collections (clip collection: A hierarchical organization of media clips. You can create your own clip collections, import clip collections, or add, move, or copy clips from one collection to another.) you want to search or ignore, or choose to search only for certain types of media files.

Show Search results

As soon as you start a search, the Clip Art task pane begins listing thumbnails (thumbnail: A miniature representation of a picture.) of drawings, photos, sounds, and other media files.

If a clip isn't installed on your computer, you'll see an icon in the lower-left corner of the thumbnail that tells you where the clip can be found.

Icon	Clip location
	CD-ROM or DVD
	Microsoft Web site
	Microsoft Provider Web site (free)
	Microsoft Provider Web site (available for purchase)
	Unavailable

If a clip is an animated gif (animated GIF: A file that contains a series of Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) images that are displayed in rapid sequence by some Web browsers to produce an animated effect.), you'll see this icon in the lower-right corner of the thumbnail:

Show Search tips

You can use everyday language to describe the clip you want to find. The following guidelines can help you refine keyword searches.

Type this keyword	To find
car	Clips with "car"as the exact search keyword
blue car	Clips with the search key words "blue" and "car"
"blue car"	Clips with the phrase "blue car"
blue, car	Clips with the search key word "blue" or "car"

You can also search by entering the file name of the media clip you want to find. If you don't know the exact file name, you can substitute wildcard characters for one or more real characters.

Use the asterisk (*) as a substitute for zero or more characters in a file name. For example, type car*.jpg to locate file names like "cardboard.jpg"or "carton.jpg".
Use the question mark (?) as a substitute for a single character in a file name. For example, type car?.jpg to locate file names like "car1.jpg" or "car2.jpg", but not "carton.jpg".

Show The Microsoft Clip Organizer window

If you don't find what you need by using the Clip Art task pane, you can open the main Clip Organizer window, where you can browse through organized collections of media clips. The clips in Clip Organizer are sorted into collections— for example, Office Collections contains the media files that are included as part of Microsoft Office.

Clip Organizer has its own Help system, where you'll find such information as how to organize your clips in collections, how to assign keywords to clips for easy searching, and how to work with the Clip Organizer by using shortcut keys (shortcut key: A function key or key combination, such as F5 or CTRL+A, that you use to carry out a menu command. In contrast, an access key is a key combination, such as ALT+F, that moves the focus to a menu, command, or control.).