The new WordPad in Windows 7 makes inserting pictures quite easy. On the Home ribbon there is an Insert group:

Click on Insert – Picture and you get a Select Picture dialog that let’s you choose the picture just like in other applications.

The picture is inserted at the text insertion point – the flashing vertical cursor. It is placed at the left margin and, if it would exceed the text width, it is scaled to fit from margin to margin.

The other conventional modes of inserting work just as well. You can copy the file in Windows Explorer with Ctrl+C and paste it into the WordPad text with Ctrl+V. Similarly, right-clicking on the file in Windows Explorer has a Copy command in the menu, and right-clicking in WordPad, at the place you want the picture, presents a Paste option.

And for the dragsters among us, you can drag a file from Windows Explorer into WordPad. Just hold down the left mouse button over the file and drag it to the place in WordPad where you want the picture. While outside WordPad you will see the file image (as shown below).

Once you are over WordPad the pointer changes to the insertion pointer like here:

WordPad does not support text wrapping around a picture. If the picture is small you can set it left, centered, or to the right margin with the Paragraph controls or by right-clicking on the picture and selecting Paragraph. This last option also lets you set the picture at a specified distance from the margin with Indentation. You can also resize the picture, again by right-clicking on it of clicking the picture and clicking on the down arrow below Picture on the ribbon.

The other neat option in the Insert group on the Home ribbon is Paint drawing. Click on that and Paint opens.

This mode of Paint lets you do just about anything you can normally do in Paint. The New, Open, Save options will not show when you click the Paint button (but Paste from works if you really need to load some image). When you have created your image, just close Paint and the image is inserted into WordPad. You can then resize it and place it just like with other pictures.

The new WordPad has a lot of new and improved features. It is not a full-featured text editing program like Word but it does a respectable job. For simple documents it is quick and easy.