The new Icons feature in Office ProPlus

This is one of those things that was easy to overlook in all the new features in Office ProPlus (aka Office 2016), and that’s the new Icons feature in the Insert section of the Ribbon Bar. In fact, when it first rolled out, it really didn’t work very well as it was trying to pull the icons from a 3rd party site (or so it appeared), and I couldn’t get any of them to load. But now it’s working fine. Here’s how you can use them…

In Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook (in a new email), you can find the new Icons icon under Insert > Illustrations:

It’s a little more hidden in Excel, where you actually have to click on Insert AND Illustrations to show the Icons icon:

This displays a huge variety of new icons in an SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) format. To put the icon on your document, just click the icon and click Insert:

Here we have the cash icon in my Word document, along with the commands to be able to stretch and enlarge the graphic:

The cool thing about SVG images is that they can be expanded without any pixelation, so they look smooth at any size:

To take the goodness up another level… SVG images can be modified using the image design options. Here I right-clicked on the icon, and got the option for Style, Fill, and Outlines:

Using Style, I can turn the cash icon into a nice shade of blue:

I can also use the Fill option to make it look more dollar-like with the color green:

And to push my design skills to the very edge… I can stick a green Outline on the icon for a distinctive look:

These options certainly beat the tired old clipart options that have been overused for years, so give them a try next time you have some icon needs in your document, email, or slide deck.