This session is about illustrations and how to insert them into the ribbon. If you click on insert, there’s a block of icons called illustrations. Firstly, if we click on pictures, we can insert a picture from our computer. Select a picture, click on insert, and the picture will appear. Pictures can very easily be resized using little circles in the corners and the middle.

So, make that a little bit smaller drag it up here, going back to insert. If we go to online pictures, there’s an extensive library of online pictures that, excel has given us access to. So, if we click on the apple, for example, we’ll get a vast range of apple pictures. Click on this first one here and click down here to insert.

Use Online Picture Option

We now have a picture of an apple, shrink that right down and drag it up here. Next, we have shapes, and we have quite a variety of relatively straightforward shapes. Click on this rectangle, and we get a little square cross. Now, draw this shape because it could be quite useful if we want to draw the user’s attention to a particular message. So, we can then just click on the shape and start typing a message; this is an apple.

Go back to shapes, and one of those I use quite often is this arrow. So, start the arrow on this circle where the apple is and attach it to the message and click away. Now, we can drag messages around, and the line is attached to both message and apple.

I use icons quite a bit; if we go down to technology and electronics, we can pick some icons that I think will be quite a useful printer. Click on this save icon and click on this USB icon. Click insert, so I have these three icons click away and drag them away.

Icon Variations

As we get a little bit more advanced, we’ll learn some basic macros that can enable us to do things, for Example, Printing, and saving, while we could easily do these with icons up in the quick access toolbar for those who aren’t that familiar with excel. Just to make printing or saving really easy.

Explore Animated Model Feature

We can attach a basic print macro or save the macro. Just click on the icon, and printing or saving will occur instantly. Next, there’s another type of icon up here called 3D models. I had never actually used this myself, not something you really need to use in excel. But if we click on all animated models and we would click on this cuckoo clock, we will click on insert and just show you one that I did earlier. So, here we have this cuckoo clock, and if we click on this cuckoo clock, we get a gift-type animation.

Screen Clipping Option

Next, look at screenshots so, for example, we could take a screen clipping from somewhere else, and we can insert it. Now, we’ve inserted some pictures and shapes; you’ll see that in the ribbon. We have a new tab called picture format; if we click on some of these icons, that tab will change.

For example, click on the shape, and the shape’s format gets changed either way. If we click on shape format, we can see a range of context-specific ribbon icons that have appeared.

We can change the shape over here, and we have color options here. So, drop down to go into more detail to apply to shade. We can also go into shape fill, and we get a full-color palette shape outline and shape effects.

So, maybe we want to do some sort of 3D rotation. Let’s undo that, and then we have some word art styles.

Choose another graphic and pull the printer over on top of this save button. Change the color of the printer just to make it stand out a little bit. If we go back to graphics format, click on bring forwards. We can bring the printer in front, or we can move it behind the save icon. We also have a line if I was to select maybe three of these icons. They’re a little bit all over the place, and rather than spend ages dragging one individual icon. Around we can align them.

 Alignment Option

If we go back into alignment, we got various other options. Now, I’d like to distribute them horizontally, so they’ve got even spaces in between. Click on that one, still a little bit close together. So, drag one over to the right and drag this. Select them all again, this time go back into graphic formats and then distribute horizontally.

Now, align to the top again, and they’re much tidier in terms of their alignment back into the graphics format. We could group these shapes so that if we first select them, we could click on the group and not have to worry about this alignment accidentally moving them. If we group them, the alignment will remain constant now that we’ve got a group. We can select the group and drag it around. We can use the circles around the outside, and we hover over them.

Until we change the name, as we have done here but we can see the icon group. We can see the name of the three individual graphics within. I could pick on one of these graphics inside the icon. I could then name that icon printer. We can see that it is now named an icon printer. If you want to move the printer item around, you can now do it. But if we select the whole group, then you’re going to move all three around together. Thank you!