Join Maria Langer for an in-depth discussion in this video Inserting and formatting a text box, part of Word for Mac 2011 Essential Training.
A Text Box is similar to a graphic element with Text Wrap enabled in that it sits in its own layer in the Word document and text wraps around it. Text boxes are often used to call up bits of text in the document. You'll see them used in magazines and newspapers as well as in corporate communications. What I have here is a document laid out with a two-column section in the middle. I explained how to set up multiple column text in the Page and Section Formatting chapter. What I want to do here is put a text box in the middle of the page and repeats some of the document text in it for emphasis.
Although you can do this with single column text, I think it works best when you set the text box between two columns. Now in the Home Ribbon, you want to click the text box button, which is this one here. The mouse pointer turns into a text box pointer. What we want to do is drag a box about 2 inches wide in the middle of the document. As you drag, you'll see some measurements up here. When you have got about 2 inches of width release the mouse button. Now if you don't get the text box exactly in the middle, don't worry about it.
I will show you how to move it later on. An insertion point should appear inside the text box. If it doesn't you can click inside the text box to place it there. You can then type in any text you like/ But instead of typing, we want to copy and paste some text into the box. In the document, we are going to select from where it says 5% of our sales. That's right over here, to the end of the paragraph. So just select all that until the end of the paragraphs. Now, we want to copy that text, so we will press Command+C, that will put in the clipboard, then we click inside the text box, make sure the insertion point is blinking in there.
There it is and then I'll press Command+V to paste it in there and there's the text. Now let's format that text. We want a bigger font in italics with bigger line spacing. We also want it centered in the box, and we can make all those changes on the Home Ribbon. So let's start off by selecting that text and making the changes here. We'll make it a 16-point font, we will also make italic and we will also change the line spacing to 1.5 and finally we will make it Centered.
Now we can resize the text box by dragging one of its selection handles. As you can see the box isn't quite big enough the way I drew it, so I can just drag this down and that will I'll resize the box. You want the text box to be relatively snug around the text. You can move the box into position on the page by dragging one of its borders. Make sure you don't drag a handle. If you do you'll resize the box. So I am going to drag this little bit to the left and maybe a little bit down and that'll put it in the middle.
Now we can use the Format Ribbon to format the Text Box. So I'll click the Format button here and I've got some options I can use to format that text box. There are number of shape styles I can use. Just click this little button here and you get a menu of different styles. So you could choose something plain with a colored border or you can choose something shaded. Maybe I will go with something like this one here. It's got like a gradient in it. If I don't like the way that looks, I could choose something else. Maybe I'll go little bit plainer. If you prefer to format it manually, you can use the Fill menu and the Line menu to set fill colors and also line colors.
You can also use the Effects menu to add features like a Shadow or Reflection or Glow, anything you like. I might put a drop shadow around this, so I can choose this one here. It adds little bit of a shadow to it. As you can see, it's pretty easy to get a professionally looking text box that you can use to emphasize important points in your documents. If you think of a text box as it's own little word processing document, all you need to do is to insert it into text and format it so it meets your needs.
Author
Released
10/28/2010- Navigating the interface
- Using the Document Gallery
- Inserting, deleting, moving, and copying text
- Finding and replacing text
- Undoing and repeating actions
- Setting paragraph alignment, line spacing, and indentation
- Working with cell and tab tables
- Applying styles and themes
- Adding headers and footers
- Inserting images in a document
- Building outlines
- Tracking changes
- Printing documents, envelopes, and labels
Skill Level Beginner
Duration
Views
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Introduction
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Welcome1m 8s
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Word processing basics3m 9s
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1. Understanding the Word Interface
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The Ribbon2m 32s
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The Sidebar1m 42s
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Document views5m 24s
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2. Working with Files
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Using the Document Gallery4m 51s
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Creating documents1m 51s
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3. Learning the Basics of Text Entry
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Entering text5m 33s
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Inserting and deleting text2m 34s
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4. Learning the Basics of Text Editing
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Selecting and editing text6m 34s
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Copying and moving text7m 1s
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Using the Scrapbook4m 38s
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Finding and replacing text4m 39s
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5. Formatting Text Characters
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Applying font formatting7m 12s
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Using the Font dialog4m 35s
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6. Formatting Paragraphs
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Paragraph formatting basics9m 39s
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Indenting paragraphs4m 37s
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Using list formats5m 41s
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7. Working with Tab Tables
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Understanding tab tables4m 15s
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8. Using Styles
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Applying styles6m 32s
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Modifying styles4m 28s
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Creating and deleting styles4m 18s
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9. Using Other Text Formatting Techniques
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Revealing formatting4m 24s
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Using the Format Painter1m 38s
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Creating drop caps3m 34s
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Using AutoFormat on text3m 46s
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10. Formatting Documents and Sections
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Setting margins4m 3s
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Setting multiple columns8m 11s
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Inserting page numbers2m 47s
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11. Adding Headers and Footers
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12. Working with Cell Tables
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Creating a cell table3m 42s
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Modifying table structure5m 34s
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Using table styles2m 49s
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13. Using Borders and Shading
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Setting page borders4m 13s
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Applying shading4m 34s
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14. Working with Multimedia Elements
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Inserting media from a file2m 36s
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Formatting images4m 30s
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15. Using Automatic Text Features
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16. Working with Outlines
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Building an outline4m 26s
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Viewing outlines4m 9s
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Numbering outline headings5m 14s
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17. Using Word's Writing Tools
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Using reference tools4m 30s
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Using the Word Count feature2m 49s
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18. Working with Other Users in Word
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Adding comments2m 46s
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Tracking changes7m 45s
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19. Creating Letters, Envelopes, and Labels
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Using letter templates8m 5s
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Creating envelopes6m 22s
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Creating labels4m 26s
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20. Controlling Privacy and Security
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Using Privacy options3m 36s
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21. Printing Documents
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Setting Page Setup Options4m 12s
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Previewing a document2m 13s
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Printing to a printer4m 11s
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Printing to PDF3m 55s
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22. Using Macros
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Using Word's Macro Recorder9m 18s
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Understanding macro security1m 51s
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23. Customizing Word
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Customizing the Ribbon2m 50s
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Conclusion
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Goodbye42s
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Video: Inserting and formatting a text box