Making Picture tool bars
Idea courtesy of Judy Sweeney
www.onionmountaintech.com
Pictures toolbars are a great idea for creating visual supports for students. They can be used to create daily schedules quickly, provide visual supports for new vocabulary words or choice making as well as other curriculum material. You can even have a toolbar with friends’ pictures.
Take digital pictures of students scheduled activities and place them in a one folder so that you can easily locate them later. (Examples of pictures; Speech class, OT, PE, Math book, Music class…). Judy Sweeney suggests that clipped photos be used. Clipped photos are pictures of items with the background removed such as those in the program “Picture This”. You can also find some in the Google Image search.
Open a Word Document
Create the toolbar
Step 1
- Drag down the View Menu to Toolbars and then down to Customize
- Be sure you are on the Toolbar tab and choose the “New” option
- Name the toolbar and click OK
- A small toolbar will appear on your document
- Click the Close button to close the window
Selecting Pictures
Step 2
If using digital photos;
1. Once the pictures are stored in one location open a new Word document
2. Drag down the Insert Menu to Picture
3. Choose “From File”
4. Resize the picture by using the resizing “handles” around the edge of the picture. Do NOT text wrap (Use a corner resizing handle and drag towards the center of the picture to resize the picture proportionality)
5. Repeat the steps above until you have all your pictures in the document
If using Clip Art
1. Drag down the Insert Menu to Picture and choose Clip Art (Or click on the red headed man [Insert Clip Art] in the drawing toolbar)
2. Resize the picture by using the resizing “handles” around the edge of the picture. Do NOT text wrap. (Use a corner resizing handle and drag towards the center of the picture to resize the picture proportionality)
3. Repeat the steps above until you have all your pictures in the document
Adding Pictures to AutoText
Step 3
1. Click on the picture to select it and then drag down the Tools menu to “AutoCorrect Options”
2. Click on the AutoText Tab
3. Type in the Name of the picture and click ADD. Be sure you type over the * symbol that is placed by default in the name box.
4. Repeat steps 1 and 6 until all the pictures for the desired toolbar have been entered into the AutoText tab
Adding the Picture to your toolbar
Step4
Once the new toolbar is created and the pictures have been converted to AutoText you are ready to add your pictures to the toolbar.
- Drag down the View menu to Toolbars and down to Customize
- Click on the Commands Tab
- Scroll down the Categories list and click on AutoText
- In the Commands section scroll down until you find the name of the desired picture
- Drag the name from the Command section to the small toolbar you created earlier. You will now see the name on the toolbar.
- Click Close
If you want the name and the picture you will need to go back and;
- Right click on the picture from the Word document and choose Copy
- Reopen the Customize option from the toolbars menu. While the customize window is still opened, right click on the name you drug onto the toolbar and choose “Paste Button Image” Now you will have not only the name but a very small image.
- Click Close when you are finished.
- You will need to repeat the steps until you have added all the pictures to your toolbar
Using the Picture Toolbar
Open a new Word document
Be sure the toolbar is showing (Drag down the View menu to Toolbars, click on the desired toolbar)
Type in your document. Whenever you want to use an item from your toolbar simply click on it from the toolbar and the picture will be automatically inserted.
Move the picture to the desired location by clicking in the center of the picture and dragging it to the desired location | 
