PowerPoint – decomposing Clip Art

In Microsoft PowerPoint, you can add Clip Art to your presentation, by going to the “Insert” menu.  Some clip art is Windows Metafiles (.wmf) files.  The .wmf files are the cartoon-like images.

The nice thing about .wmf files is that you can decompose them into editable parts.  Let’s say you have an image of a woman with a briefcase, and you want to remove the briefcase from the picture.  It is very simple to do this.  Simply add the .wmf file to your slide.  Right click on the image, and go to Group > Ungroup.  PowerPoint will display the following message:  “This is an imported picture, not a group.  Do you want to convert it to a Microsoft Office Drawing Object?”  Click Yes.  Once again, right click on the image, and go to Group > Ungroup.  Simply click on the components you wish to delete and delete them.

When you are done editing the image, select all the components of the image, right-click and select Group > Group.  You have just edited a Windows Metafile!