UMAX Scanners & Microsoft Word 97

This technical note covers the use of UMAX scanners and VistaScan to import images in to Microsoft Word 97 documents. A second technical note covers the links between the bundled Presto PageManager software and Word, including both images and OCR (recognised & converted) text documents.

Introduction
Microsoft Word 97 is one of the most popular word processing programs available for Windows, and is used by many scanner owners to combine text and images in a single, formatted document. There are two basic ways of adding scans to a Word document, importing them from disk or importing them directly from the scanner.

Using Scans Saved on Disk

If your scans are already saved on disk, importing images in to Word is very simple:

1. Place the cursor on the line where you want to insert an image.
2. From the Word 97 "Insert" menu, choose Picture, From File...

Your images must be saved in one of the formats recognised by Word - the most common options (installed by default) include TIFF, GIF, JPG (JPEG) and BMP (Windows Bitmap). Additional file format filters can be installed in the MS Office Setup program.

Word will show a special dialogue box in which you can search for and select the picture or scan you want to use - by only files in a supported format will be listed. For most common file formats you can view a file by clicking once on the file (eg Grab10 above) and checking the preview on the right.
If you are not familiar with Word's editing and page layout tools we suggest turning the "Float over text" option OFF - this means that your image will stay inserted at the line you selected, even if the amount or size of text above and below changes.

3. When you have selected the image you need click on Insert.

Tips: Once an image has been inserted in the Word document clicking on it once will show a "Picture" toolbar which includes basic editing tools - you can also resize the picture by dragging the picture's border. For advanced picture options right-click on the image and choose "Format Picture".

Scanning Directly in to Word 97

The default installation of Microsoft Office 97 does not include all of the files needed to scan directly in to Word - the program "Microsoft Photo Editor" must also be installed. You can check for Photo Editor in your Start menu, and if it is missing run the Office Setup program (from the Office CD) and choose to Add/Remove components. Select Office Tools and Change Option to view the list of Tools installed - select Photo Editor (see below), click OK and continue the installation (only the newly selected options will be installed).

custinst.gif (10680 bytes)

When Photo Editor is installed on your system an extra option appears in the Insert menu, Picture section - "From Scanner". Before scanning it is a good idea to save any changes in your Word document. To scan an image directly in to your Word document place the cursor in the correct location then select Insert, Picture, From Scanner:

insfromscanner.gif (5614 bytes)

Microsoft Word 97 will first launch Photo Editor, then aquire the default scanner driver on your PC - the VistaScan driver will be launched. Due to a minor bug in Photo Editor the driver may be hidden, so you may need to click on the VistaScan program on the menu bar at the bottom of the screen to bring it to the foreground.

VistaScan 3.1 shown launched from Word, using Photo Editor

There are a few limitations to the functions of VistaScan when used this way:
We recommend you use the Advanced mode, allowing you to select the scan mode, resolution and scaling (click on image above for full screen shot).

Only select a single image - the multiple-scan feature of VistaScan 3.x is not supported by Photo Editor.
Do not apply a Rotation to the image from within the VistaScan driver - this may cause Photo Editor and Word to crash.
Photo Editor only supports 8-bit (greyscale) and 24-bit (colour) images.

Once the scan is complete it will be displayed in Photo Editor, where you can make changes such as cropping, correct colours, apply effects and so on. When you are happy with the image in Photo Editor close the program and your image will be automatically inserted in to the Word document.

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	`F116B Date: 230599 Modified: NA Author: JD`