Adding clip art to your PowerPoint presentations can make them more visually appealing and help convey your message more effectively. As someone who frequently creates PowerPoint presentations, I often get asked about the best way to find and insert clip art. In this article, I’ll share my step-by-step method for easily inserting clip art into PowerPoint.
Conduct a Clip Art Search
The first step is to open the PowerPoint presentation you want to add clip art to and navigate to the Insert tab. From there:
- Click on Pictures
- Select Stock Images from the dropdown menu
This will open up the stock images search bar where you can search for clip art.
Pro Tip: Make sure you have an internet connection for the broadest search results.
Next, type a relevant keyword or phrase into the search bar that describes the type of image you’re looking for. For example, if your presentation topic was about reading, you might search for “person reading book.”
Hit enter and PowerPoint will display related clip art results.
Filter Your Search
On the left side of the stock images window, you’ll see options to filter your search results. This allows you to zone in on exactly the type of clip art you need.
Here are some of the key filters to use:
- Type: Narrow results down to just clip art files
- Color: Search for full color or black and white images
- Orientation: Choose horizontal or vertical facing images
- Style: Select line drawing, flat, or detailed art styles
I recommend checking out all the different filters to see the variety of clip art available.
Select and Insert Your Clip Art
Once you’ve found the perfect clip art for your presentation, simply click on the thumbnail image to insert it onto your slide.
Hot Tip: You can insert multiple pieces of clip art by holding down the CTRL key while clicking.
And that’s it! The clip art will now appear on your slide and you can drag to resize or reposition it as needed.
Extra Insert Options
In addition to the built-in stock images search, there are a couple other options for inserting clip art in PowerPoint:
Online Pictures
This works the same way as the stock images search, except it opens up Bing image search results. You can find some great web-based clip art here but have to filter more diligently for royalty-free images.
Your Own Clip Art Collection
If you have a trove of clip art files saved on your computer from past projects, you can insert them via:
- Insert > Pictures > This Device
This will let you search through local folders and select custom images to import into any presentation.
I hope you found these steps on how to insert clip art helpful! Let me know if you have any other PowerPoint questions.
