Automatically Formatting Graphics and Shapes

When creating a document that includes graphics and/or shapes, you can spend quite a bit of time formatting. Getting graphics and their surrounding text to appear "just right" can be very time consuming. After a couple of formatting sessions, you may long for a way to set some sort of defaults that Word will automatically apply to all your graphics and shapes.

When it comes to graphics in general, there is no way to set any formatting defaults, with one exception—you can set the default wrapping style by following these steps:

1. Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2010 and Word 2013 display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
2. At the left side of the dialog box click Advanced.
3. Scroll through the options until you see the Cut, Copy, and Paste section. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The advanced options of the Word Options dialog box.

4. Use the Insert/Paste Pictures As drop-down list to set your desired insertion style.
5. Click OK.

Beyond this you can record a macro that applies your common graphic formatting options. This macro could then be used to format other graphics after you insert them in your document.

You have more options when it comes to shapes. Word allows you to define default formatting settings for shapes by following these general steps:

1. Insert a shape that you typically use.
2. Format the shape as you normally would.
3. Right-click the shape. Word displays a Context menu.
4. Select Set AutoShape Defaults. (An AutoShape is the old name for what Word now calls, simply, shapes.)

These steps set defaults for the current document. If you want to set the defaults for all documents based on a particular template, load the template itself and perform the steps. Similarly, if you want to set the defaults for all documents, load the Normal template and perform the steps.

You should realize that setting the shape defaults in this manner does not affect all formatting settings for subsequent shapes. In general, these steps set the defaults that appear on the ribbon and the Layout tab of the Format AutoShape dialog box. Settings on other tabs, such as size, aspect ratio, and rotation, are not affected and must be set on a shape-by-shape basis.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (8062) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, and 2013. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Automatically Formatting Graphics and AutoShapes.