Hands on: Combine text and graphics in Microsoft Word

The layout tab allows you to change the text-wrapping options if you don’t want the default, but it’s the Advanced button that conceals the important stuff.

This produces another tabbed dialogue, while Text wrapping offers a few more options, such as how far the text is spaced from the picture.

Finally, Picture Position allows you to nail it in position. If you choose ‘Absolute Position’ for both horizontal and vertical, you’ll find you can fix the picture to a line, paragraph, column, margin or page.

Choose one of the last two and your picture will stay put – up to a point. The measurements in the dialogue box change automatically to preserve the current position.

Doing this clears the ‘Move object with text’ option, which is only applicable if the picture is anchored to a paragraph or line. When you close the dialogue box and select the picture again, you should see an anchor icon somewhere in the margin.

If you add one or more lines of text above the anchor, then it will move down although the picture will stay put; the exception is that if you add enough text to push the anchor off the page, the picture will jump to the corresponding position on the next page.

You can lessen the chance of this happening by dragging the anchor to the top of the page before adding text. The ‘Lock Anchor’ option doesn’t stop this behaviour, but does stop you moving the anchor manually. It’s principally designed for anchoring a graphic to a paragraph.

If you’re using Word 2007, the interface is rather different – no surprise there – but the principle is much the same. To get to the Advanced dialogue boxes, you need to select and right-click, choose Text Wrapping, then More Layout Options.

Sticking with 2003 and earlier, you can also get at these settings from the Picture Toolbar, which has a useful tool for cropping a picture. In 2007, you have the full majesty of the Picture Tools Format ribbon, which allows you to add all sorts of preset effects, such as fading edges, 3D rotation or changing the picture’s shape.

Some of this is possible in earlier versions. For example, let’s say that you have a normal rectangular image and you’d like to make it oval. Start with the oval – pick the Oval tool from the Drawing Toolbar (or any of the enclosed Autoshapes) and draw it to a suitable size and position. Next, right-click Format Autoshape and turn to the Colours and Lines tab.

From the Colour list, choose Fill Effects (you can also get here from the Fill button on the drawing toolbar), then turn to the Picture tab. Click ‘Select Picture’ and browse to the chosen image. Check the ‘Lock picture aspect ratio’ to avoid distortion if you change the oval’s proportions, then click OK twice and the chosen picture will appear inside the oval.