Pictures into a Word Document

[davidjpowell]

Hello

I have on a fairly regular basis a large number (150) photo's to mount into a document and then add short comments to.

To date I have used software to re size these to a standard size and then copy and pasted into Word, adding comment above or below each one. This takes hours just on the copy and pasting, and I wonder whether there is a more efficient way of doing this.

My last experiment with Word tyring to copy and paste all photos seemed to put them in reverse order no matter which way I copy and pasted.

I have tried Excel, but as a format it does not work particularly well with the pictures.

Regards

David

I have at my disposal Word, Excel, Publisher, Access (not sure how this would help).

If anyone has any brainwaves please feel free to shout!

 

[Piff]

Surely Publisher is the way forward.
I don't have Publisher, but I have serif Page Plus 7 which is a "publisher".
Word frustrates me when inserting pictures, with the text wrap options, etc.
With page plus, the pictures can be dragged around (even off the edge of the page if necessary. I then insert text boxes for the text - these can be moved around independantly, resized etc.

 

[davidjpowell]

I'll have a look at Publisher. What I want to be able to do is bulk edit the photo's and then copy them into a document with the minimum of manual intervention...

 

[wemorgan]

Hi David.

I've had a quick play with Google Picasa and it might be able to do what you want.

If you've not already installed it, download it and let it search your HD for photos.

Then select: View - thumbnail caption - caption

When you edit (double click any photo when in Picasa) you can add a caption to each photo. The caption length looks to be unlimited. Repeat for all the photos you need to add.

(You can add Tags too, if you want to search for photos quickly)

Return to the folder, right click and select Export as HTML. Chose your template format, 1 photo per page looks good.

You can now save that HTML page. Publish, print or what ever you wish.

HTH

 

[Piff]

I'll have a look at Publisher. What I want to be able to do is bulk edit the photo's and then copy them into a document with the minimum of manual intervention...

Not sure what you mean about "bulk edit"?

 

[davidjpowell]

I never thought of Picasso - that would be an interesting solution, but sounds like it could work well. I would probably need to get it back into a editable document for headings etc. Still should be able to get Word to open a HTML file for that mattter.

By bulk edit - I mean all the pics are too big and need to be reduced in size.

 

[wemorgan]

By bulk edit - I mean all the pics are too big and need to be reduced in size.

Another bonus of Picasa is that when you export to HTML you specific the photo resolution for all photos from original size, 1024 and down to 320 pixles.

 

[Piff]

Size - actual area or file size?
If actual area - these are easily re-sized in publisher - just click on the photo & drag the corner handle to resize.
Not sure about adjusting file size though

 

[davidjpowell]

Actual area. What I don't want to do is have to adjust each one manually. This is one I can solve with software though. It's more getting them into a document without copy and pasting individually that I am / was struggling with.

Hoping that Picassa that Will suggested may do the trick.

 

[davidjpowell]

Picasso will also resize, but I can't get the export to show anything other than thumbnails. Won't work for printing unfortunately..

 

[wemorgan]

When you right click the photo folder and select 'Export as HTML Page' at the top of that new window there are options 'Export pictures at' at then a drop down menu with different resolutions

 

[davidjpowell]

Got that. Problem seems to be Templates. All have thumbnail index page, which is not helpful

 

[BTB 500]

Noot much help with the pasting and titling, but most decent photo editors have batch processing facilities for processing multiple files.

 

[wemorgan]

There seem to be quite a few Picasa templates that you can download free.

 

[wemorgan]

Another idea, but still using Picasa.

Install a free PDF writer.Like http://www.cutepdf.com/products/cutepdf/writer.asp Make this the default printer.

In Picasa add your captions as before.

File-Print. Specify borders and text, so captions are on. Select the print format. Now when you print I think it will write out to a PDF file rather than physically print. Best remove the paper from the printer, just in case.

 

[Dec]

There is no easy way of explaining this in a post, there are so many ways of doing the same thing.

Open the folder with the pictures on one side of the screen.
Open Word on the other side the screen.
On the picture that you want to use, click and hold the click and drag it out of its folder, across to the Word document and drop it into the page, (known as drag and drop) your origional picture is not lost, it is still in the origional folder, a copy of it is now created in the Word document, Word will automatically resize the picture (if it is wider than the page ) to fit within the page borders.

You can move the picture up or down the page by drag and drop.

Use text boxes for text rather than typing a line or two of text, text boxes contain the text so that a block of text can be moved around and placed where ever you want and can be resized by clicking there “handles” at there corners and sides, pictures can be resized in the same way.

For text boxes click on the Insert Menu then click Text Box then type a few lines into the text box.

Each text boxes can be formated…right click it… so it has a White border around it so as it doesen’t appear to be a text box, it can also be made transperant and placed above the picture to give the impression that the text is part of the picture.

Pictures and any text box can be draged and droped anywhere on the page, its all practis practis practis, trial and error.

Don’t know if this is what you need but you could try a dummy run.


Dec

 

[davidjpowell]

Drag and drop etc. is too long winded.

But I have now got a solution. Re-size photo's using a bulk edit in Picasso. Then open Office Picture Manager (hides in a mini folder) and select folder.

I can then choose to insert the photo's into Word and off it goes. Easiest way to add text appears to be caption.

Thanks to all especially to Will. Although Picassa is not the ultimate answer - it was your idea's that led me to picture manager. This will same me hours.

 

[wemorgan]

invoice is in the post

edit: just checking, did you read post #15?

 

[Rayny]

IrfanView - Official Homepage - one of the most popular viewers worldwide

has a batch resizer - don't know if it does exactly what you need though.

 

[MOCAŠ]

Glad you've found a workable solution for this.

Another option would be to use Word's built-in scripting language - VBA (also in Excel and other Microsoft applications).

The code below basically imports all picture files from a given location and then resizes them to a specified width, maintaining the aspect ratio. To start with, you'd open the VBA Editor (Alt+F11 while in Word), paste the code into the window that appears and the update the three values highlighted in red to suit your needs:

• photoLocation: the folder where your photos are stored, including the drive name
• fileNamePattern: the types of file to look for. "*.jpg", "*.gif", "*.png", etc will find all files of those specific types in the folder; "*.*" will find all files of any type.
• requiredWidthInPixels: this is just how wide you want each photo to be.

Once you've done this, you can save the Word document with this code embedded, and use it each time you want to import a new batch of photos.

To run the code (assuming Word 2007), press Alt+F8 (View Macros), select importPhotos (should already be pre-selected) and click the Run button. The photos should then be imported and resized automatically, with pre-formatted placeholders inserted for the headings and captions (though you'd still need to type in the actual headings/captions themselves).

Sub importPhotos()
 
    photoLocation = "[COLOR=red]C:\myPictures\[/COLOR]"
    fileNamePattern = "[COLOR=red]*.jpg[/COLOR]"
    requiredWidthInPixels = [COLOR=red]400[/COLOR]
 
    thisFile = Dir(photoLocation & fileNamePattern)
    Do While True
        If thisFile = "" Then Exit Do
        With Selection
            .TypeParagraph
            .Font.Size = 20
            .Font.Bold = True
            .TypeText Text:="Heading"
        End With
        With Selection
            .TypeParagraph
            .InlineShapes.AddPicture FileName:=photoLocation & thisFile, _
                LinkToFile:=False, SaveWithDocument:=True
        End With
        With Selection
            .TypeParagraph
            .Font.Size = 12
            .Font.Bold = False
            .TypeText Text:="Caption"
        End With
        thisFile = Dir()
    Loop
    For Each iShape In ActiveDocument.InlineShapes
        With iShape
            aspectRatio = .Height / .Width
            .Width = requiredWidthInPixels
            .Height = requiredWidthInPixels * aspectRatio
        End With
    Next
 
 
End Sub