Working with Text

Quite often you'll find yourself working with text in a two-step process: You'll add text for the information it provides and then later go back to style the text by choosing special fonts or colors. This section deals with the first step. For information on styling individual blocks of text, see Formatting Fields or Objects on page 203. To set database-wide text defaults, see To set formatting defaults on page 200.

To add text to a layout

1.	Make sure you're in Layout mode ( in Windows, on the Mac), then click the Text tool in the left-hand status area (Figure 13.1). Figure 13.1. Click on the Text tool in the Layout status area to add text.
2.	Click in the layout where you want the text and start typing. An I-beam cursor marks your progress (Figure 13.2). Figure 13.2. An I-beam cursor marks your text-insertion spot.

Tip

• Because creating a text label for a field has no effect on the actual field name, you can create different labels in different layouts for the same field. The sales force, for example, may have an in-house name for something that the accounting folks call something else entirely. By creating a sales layout and an accounting layouteach with its own labelseveryone's happy, even though the field's actual name remains the same.

To select text

1.	In either Layout mode ( in Windows, on the Mac) or Browse mode ( in Windows, on the Mac), click on the text you want to select. If you want to select an entire word, double-click. To select a full line of text, triple-click on it.
2.	Once you've selected the text, you can: Delete it (press ). Cut it for pasting elsewhere ( in Windows, on the Mac). Replace it with other text (type in the new text or paste selected text from elsewhere). Change its attributes, such as its font, size, or style (see following pages).