23 December 2022

Great Christmas images and clipart in Microsoft Office

Peter Deegan Email Essentials, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office for Mac, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Powerpoint, Microsoft Word, Office 2007, Office 2010, Office 2013, Office 2016, Office 2019, Office 2021 / Office LTSC, Office 365 Christmas

Looking for some Christmas images, pictures or graphics? Microsoft Office has some in-built Xmas options for the festive tide of Yule.

Add these images into Word documents, Outlook emails, PowerPoint slides or even Excel worksheets.

Unsubtle Hint: Christmas Cheer with Office has a collection of festive cards, letters, gift tags, emails ready to open, edit and use. BONUS: professional graphics made specially for the pack, not available anywhere else. </hint>.

Online Pictures

The old Office clipart library is long gone, these days the Office pictures are a Bing image search.

Insert | Online Pictures does an online image search.

The images come from other web sites, not Microsoft own Office collection. You’re responsible for ensuring the legal right to use any image. That’s why the default is ‘Creative Commons only’.

Click on the filter icon to narrow down the search by Size, Type, Layout and Color.

But the main way to narrow down a search is adding more words or changing words.

Compare this search for ‘Xmas’ with the results for ‘Christmas’ above. They are very different.

It’s worth checking both ‘Christmas’ and ‘Xmas’ variations.

Christmas Tree or Xmas Tree

Christmas Santa or Xmas Santa

Christmas Snow or Xmas snow

Christmas Holly or Xmas Holly

Inserting to document, email or slide

Online Pictures is available in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. More than one picture can be added at any time. Click on each image then the Insert button.

We choose a ‘short list’ of images, insert them all then delete the unwanted ones. That’s faster than returning to Online Pictures for each image.

The Online Pictures dialog box isn’t very good. It’s ‘modal’ so you can’t switch back to the document or any other open document while it’s open. The dialog doesn’t save recent searches, not even the last search, making users retype each time they open it.

After insertion, move, resize, recolor images just like any other picture.

Some images are inserted with origin and licencing information in a text box within the image. Click on the text box to change the text or remove the text box completely.

Stock Christmas Images

Office 365 for Windows / Mac, Office 2019 & Office 2021 Win/Mac also have Stock Images from Microsoft’s own collection.

Go to Insert | Pictures | Stock Images then type in a search like ‘Christmas’

Icon

There’s not much Christmasy in the Office Icons (available in Office 365 Win/Mac and Office for iPhone/iPad with a more limited collection in Office 2019 & 2021 Win/Mac). Insert | Icons and search for ‘Christmas’ to find slim-pickings for Microsoft 365 customers.

Check out …

Christmas Cheer with Office has a collection of festive cards, letters, gift tags, emails ready to open, edit and use. BONUS: professional graphics made specially for the pack, not available anywhere else.