Remove the Background of a Picture or Clipart in PowerPoint, Word or Excel

When adding a picture or clipart to your PowerPoint or Word document, you may run into a situation where you don’t want its background to appear. This happens most frequently to me when I place a logo or symbol onto a PowerPoint slide and its background is a different colour than the background of the slide.
There is no need for a fancy photo editing tool like Photoshop. In Word, PowerPoint and Excel 2010 and later versions you can use the Background Removal tool to easily remove a background from a picture. (Older versions of Office may have the more simplified option of selecting Format – Background – No Fill.) This is how the Background Removal tool works:
First, click on the picture that you want to remove the background from. Next, under Picture Tools, on the Format tab, click Background Removal. Drag the handles on the marquee lines so they contain just the portion of the picture that you wish to keep. The program will try to intuitively remove areas around the selected portion of your picture.
You can them manually customize what goes or stays by using Mark Areas to Keep or Mark Areas to Remove (click on one or the other and click on elements of your picture), or by drawing lines with your mouse to indicate the approximate area you’re interested in keeping or removing. Use Delete Mark to get rid of any drawn indicator lines you decide against or Discard All Changes to start over. When you have removed all the parts you don’t want, click Keep Changes to return to your document and see the results. If you don’t like the result, remember that Undo (Ctrl+Z) will undo your changes.
Tip: Expand your image before starting the Removal Tool to make it easier to see what you are selecting. This is especially helpful if your image has tiny details.