How to change a .doc to a .jpg?

[CanadienneBacon]

I DM online D&D games. I often need to post a thumbnail or a battlemap for each round of combat. I've had some success using MS Paint to draw relatively simple battle grids, but I recently switched to MS Word so that I could overlay an alpha-numeric grid on the map I create using Tables. Being an MS Word document, however, the finished product comes out as a .doc. The issue at hand is that not all players have access to MS Word, which is a somewhat expensive piece of software to just demand that players whip out and buy.

What I've been doing is printing out the MS Word map, then scanning it back into my computer and using photo editing software to edit it and make a .jpg out of it so that everyone can easily view the map. I'm quickly finding, however, that I'm burning through both paper and printer ink. I'm not computer savvy enough to know how I can electronically convert the .doc to a .jpg and cut out the middle step of printing and scanning. Does anyone know how to go about converting a .doc to a .jpg? Possibly a dumb question, I know, but I can't figure it out and I just can't believe that it's impossible.

 

[Meloncov]

The easiest way to do it would proably be to just take a screen shot. Their's proably a more elegant way to do it, but I don't know of one.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

I'm using Microsoft XP. How do I take a screen shot of a MS Word document?

 

[Meloncov]

Your keyboard should have a screenshot key in the upper right corner (directly above page up on my keyboard).

 

[Tharian]

I'm using Microsoft XP. How do I take a screen shot of a MS Word document?

The easiest way would probably be by using the Alt+PrtScr button combination. The print screen button is normally (on a full sized keyboard) near the top right of the keyboard, often in the same row as the F1-F12 keys.

Once you do that, you'll have the image on the clipboard and can open MS Paint. Copy in the image (Use Ctrl+V or find it under the edit(?) menu) and then trim it to fit. Since you are already familiar with Paint, you should be able to handle it from there.

Just keep in mind that you may not be able to see the whole table on your screen at once and the screen shot will reflect that.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

That's a good tip and one that I may be able to use in the future. Testing it out, though, I see that even when I can view the entire table in MS Word on my screen at 75% zoom, when I screen shot it and copy it to Paint, I'm still not getting the entire table to copy over because of the toolbar up top. A little frustrating, that. For a truly small table, this would probably work though.

I'll continue to look around to see what I can figure out regarding how to transform a .doc into a .jpg. If anyone else has some sage advice, that's be swell.

Thanks, all.

 

[xovu]

You can select all the objects (using the "select objects" tool), and paste them to paint. Simple.
(Then you save it as a jpg. in paint.)

I hope this helps...

 

[mps42]

how I did it

in the game I ran I had a issue similar to this and resolved it using PaintShopPro to great the grid, the layout on top of the grid (including Alpha-Numeric keying), place icons for the characters, baddies, etc AND was able to implement a "Fog of War" effect" by using different layers for the different things. bottom layer was the grid and key, 2nd layer was the "map", third layer was the character icons and forth (top) layer was the "fog". this worked really well and was easy to change because of the different layers.
I really recommend ditching Word in favor of a graphics program like paintshop, photoshop or the Gimp.

 

[Darrell]

If you can't just copy and paste from MSWord to MSPaint or something, try this...

There's a free program somewhere online called "CuteWriter" (try Googling it) that loads a printer driver that lets you convert a .doc to a .pdf file. You could try making a .pdf of the map, the use the "Seclect Image" function in Adobe Acrobat Reader to copy and paste the image into a program (like MSPaint or PaintShop) that will let you save it as a .jpg file.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

There is a program called SnagIt that might do the trick for you. Personally, when I need to do something like this, I select the whole item and copy to Photoshop - I imagine copying to the default Windows paint program would work too.

On the other hand - Microsoft does have a FREE Word viewer program, so you can send out the doc. They just won't be able to make changes.