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The purpose of this Microsoft Word Tips & Microsoft Word Help page is to introduce and publish "Photo Gallery Add-In" for Word.

The motivation for creating the add-in came after friend and Word MVP Graham Mayor shared  a document template that he had prepared for a client.  The template simplified the process of choosing and inserting a group of image files into a document image gallery.

Graham well knows how I like to tinker with code, both mine and his!  Seeing a lot of potential for expansion in Graham's template, I offered him some ideas and processes to incorporate into his template.  Graham finally came onboard with the idea for an add-in. He and I both have continued to develop and expand those processes in the add-in. 

Word provides some powerful tools that you can use to insert and format images into your documents.

Using these tools is time consuming, especially when you need to insert and format multiple images in a gallery layout.  First you have to create a gallery container (e.g., a table) and then you have to  insert and format the images one at a time.

Photo Gallery Add-In

Photo Gallery Add-In is intended make image gallery presentations in your documents as easy as typing text!

The gallery images are automatically captioned with their filenames (excluding the extension) with the option of adding prefix numbering and text.

Multiple galleries  may be included in the same document, and the galleries may be replaced, or added to, by re-running the function from its ribbon command, with the cursor located in the  appropriate gallery.

Set-up and Use

After loading the add-in, either manually or automatically from Word's start-up folder, a new Photo Gallery control group shown below appears on the ribbon insert tab.

Clicking the Gallery Control Panel control launches the add-in user interface.  On first use, and subsequently until you disable it using the provided checkbox, a disclaimer page is displayed.

Closing the disclaimer dialog displays the add-in userform interface.  The Preview\Select Images page is displayed first.  Your first step is to select and define the source folder where your image files are stored.

Clicking the Set Source Folder control launches a dialog which you can use to navigate to and select the folder containing your image files.  Here I've chosen a folder containing images of my newborn grandson.

After selecting a source folder and clicking OK, you are returned you to the Preview\Select Images page where all valid graphic image files contained in the source folder are listed.

Note:  If you select a folder (e.g., a removable disk drive) that is not available or doesn't contain any images files, the following dialog is displayed.  This same dialog appears if you subsequently remove the device or all images from the device set as your source folder.

You can click and preview images listed in the source folder by selecting the image with your mouse.  The Rename and Delete buttons can be used to rename or delete individually selected files.

Caution:  The "Rename" and "Delete" buttons rename and delete files both in the Source List and the source folder containing the images files.  They do what they say they do!!

Considering the permanent and irrevocable process using the Delete command, We've added a confirmation dialog shown below.  You can suppress the dialog during your current session using the add-in, but it is reset to display automatically when you start a new session

The Source List (and Publish List) are extended multi-select listboxes.  You can select single items using the mouse, contiguous items using Shift+mouse, or non-contiguous items using Ctrl+mouse. 

Note:  The last image selected in either list is the image displayed in the preview.

Images selected in the Source List are added to the Publish List using the Add>> button. Or you can use Add All>> to add all files listed in the Source List to the Publish List.

If you select and single item and click Add>> the item is added to the Publish List and the next item in the Source List is automatically selected and previewed.  By simply continuing to click the Add>> button you can add files to the Publish List in the listed sequence. 

The Publish List contains a list of all image files that you want to publish to a document image gallery.  Items are published in the document gallery in the order listed in the Publish List.

• You can preview a listed item by clicking it with your mouse.
• Using the controls on the right of the list, you can move and arrange single or contiguous selected items to the top of the list, up or down in the list, or to the bottom of the list.
• You can remove selected items or all items from the Publish list using the <<Remove or <<Remove all controls.

Note:  Only single items or items selected in a contiguous list can be moved in the list.

Should you need to publish images located in multiple different folders, you can simply define a new source folder using the Source List Set Source Folder. This will clear the existing items in the Source List and load the new items.

Once you have defined and arranged the images you want to publish, you can define the configuration settings for the gallery.  Clicking the Configuration & Formatting tab opens the dialog shown below. This dialog displays the default configuration and format settings for the document photo gallery.  Using the dialog, you can:

• Set the number of images in each gallery row from 1 to 6.
• Define the image border width and color.
• Define the image border width and color.
• Create a link to the image displayed in the gallery or create a link and save the image.
• Define caption text attributes including sequential numbering of the images.

Note:  The add-in will create a document table (gallery) using its configured settings. When using it for the first time, take a moment to review the default settings on the configuration page and make any changes to taste. If you don't like the results, put the cursor in the table and re-run the macro, choosing the option to replace the table. You can then make changes as required. Changes you make to the configuration will become the default settings, until changed again.

For the demonstration gallery shown below, I used the following configuration settings:

• Display images:  3 across
• Border width 1 pt., Border color blue
• Caption font: Calibri, Font size: 8 pt., Alignment: Centered   
• No prefix or numbering

The images are automatically sized to fit the Word table (gallery) created by the add-in.  Factors that determine the exact size of the gallery images are too numerous to try to handle in a general add-in.

Here are a few tips that you can employ when creating galleries:

• While my example gallery doesn't follow the rule, you can achieve the most consistent gallery layout if the images you use are either all portrait layout or all landscape layout.
• If you use a mixed layout as I have done, you may prefer the results when the first gallery image is a landscape image.  This is due to the fact that the first image sets the height of the gallery row.  This is illustrated below:

• The gallery width, and accordingly the height and width of the gallery images, is determined by the document margins.  If you want images to be larger and spread across a larger area of the page, you can insert a section break and apply narrower margins for that section.
• Inserting and sizing the images to the gallery is a complex process.  Hardly noticeable with just a few images, inserting large numbers of images can take several minutes and Word may even appear to freeze momentarily as the process is executed.  We have intentionally let the processing be visible so you won't give up hope!  

Note: Modern digital cameras can produce huge images both in dimensions and file size. Such large sizes are neither necessary nor desirable when reproducing in a Word document. The process can therefore be accelerated, and the document made more stable, by setting your camera to take smaller images or shrinking your existing images. There are plenty of software products, some of them free (such as Google's Picasa graphics manager) which will shrink the images to more manageable proportions in a batch process.

The add-in can be used repeatedly in your document to create additional galleries or append/replace existing galleries.

Auxiliary Controls

Auxiliary features of the add-in are the Format Painter and Save as PDF controls shown below.

Auto Paint Format

Auto Paint Format is a handy tool for applying advanced picture formatting to the gallery images.  The following steps describe the process:

• Select the first image in the gallery.  This displays the ribbon Picture Tools contextual tab.

• Select and apply one of the built-in picture styles.

• If necessary, select and resize the image with your mouse to fit the gallery cell.

• Click the Format Painter control.  This copies the formatting applied to the first image in the gallery to all other gallery images.

Note:  You can also apply manually formatting to the first image using Word's built-in picture formatting tools and copy your formatting to the remaining images with the Format Painter.

Selected Paint Format

Picture attributes, particularly borders, shadow and reflection, can significantly alter the size of the gallery image.  In mixed format galleries (i.e., galleries containing both portrait and landscape layout images), this can make it impossible to ensure a consistent gallery layout with the Auto Paint Format feature.  The Select Paint Format control allows you to select either a portrait or landscape image, size it appropriately, and apply the selected image format to all images with a similar layout.

Save as PDF

The Save as PDF control launches the following dialog you can use to save your documents with galleries as a PDF project.

Download the add-in here:  Photo Gallery Add-In Word 2007-2016

For more on template add-ins and how to load them, see: Organizing Your Macros/Template Add-ins at: Installing Macros

The development and testing of this template involved considerable time and intellectual effort.  Accordingly, I have not made the code modules containing the processes available for public viewing.  I was happy to do the work because I enjoy the challenge and I am pleased to share the add-in with the Word user community. However, I will not respond to requests to further refine or customize this project without demonstrated willingness from the requester to compensate me for the work.  Support donations are always appreciated!!

Should you desire further customization to meet a specific requirement then contact me or Graham Mayor.  We are usually available to perform this type of work.

This page was last updated on March 09, 2021

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