Adding Text to Drawings

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A picture may be worth a thousand words, but you'll often find that you want to add text to your drawings. You can add text as a separate element by drawing a text box, or you can enter text directly into an existing object. For example, you might want to insert text into a star shape or a banner. To add text to drawings, use one of the following methods:

• Add text box properties to an existing shape. To enter text directly in an object, right-click the object, and choose Add Text from the shortcut menu. The shape will become a text box, with an insertion point inside. You simply type and format the text you want to appear in the shape.

• Create a text box. To create a freestanding text box, click Text Box on the Drawing toolbar and draw a text box in the drawing canvas. After you draw a text box, you simply type text in the box. Text boxes can be treated as shapes, which means that they can be resized and formatted in many of the same ways shapes are formatted, including modifying fills, borders, shadow, and 3-D effects.

In addition to entering text in text boxes and objects, you can add WordArt to your drawings as described in "Working with WordArt".

Inside Out: Adding text to freehand drawings

When you create a freehand drawing, you can't right-click the drawing and choose Add Text. To work around this limitation, you can click Text Box on the Drawing toolbar, and draw a text box on top of your freehand drawing. Then type and format text in the text box. If you want to ensure that the text and drawing aren't separated or layered incorrectly in the future, choose the shape and the text box (by pressing Shift as you click the objects), and then click Draw on the Drawing toolbar and choose Group from the menu to group the two objects together.

Tip 

Create Web page buttons  By combining basic objects and text boxes, you can create custom buttons for Web pages. To make these custom buttons active hyperlinks, you simply add hyperlink properties to your drawing objects, as described in Chapter 26, "Creating Professional Web Sites."

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