Working with Text Boxes

Text boxes provide a great deal of flexibility in arranging text on a page. You can use them for sidebars, pull quotes in newspaper or magazine-style articles, and text labels in a drawing, among other things. In addition to formatting both the text boxes and the text they contain, you can also link text boxes together so that text flows from one text box into the next .

Formatting the Text in a Text Box

As you learned earlier in this hour , you can format a text box in the same way you can other drawing objectsapplying a fill color, border colors, and so on. You can also format the text in a text box with any standard font and paragraph option in the Formatting toolbar. This includes changing the font color with the Font Color button, which appears in both the Formatting toolbar and the Drawing toolbar (refer to Figure 17.9). Finally, you can change the text direction. When a text box is selected, a small Text Box toolbar appears. This toolbar contains a Change Text Direction button (refer to Figure 17.19). Click the button one or more times to change the orientation of your text.

Figure 17.19. When you see the special Text Box Link mouse pointer, click the text box to which you want to link.

If you don't see the Text Box toolbar, you can also choose Format, Text Direction. This menu command becomes active when a text box is selected.

Before issuing a command to format a text box, select the entire text box to format all the text it contains, or drag over a portion of the text to format just that amount.

You can select the text box itself by clicking anywhere on its border, or activate the area inside the text box by clicking anywhere inside it. When the text box itself is selected, the insertion point inside the text box disappears, and the borders of the text box are made up of tiny dots. When the area inside a text box is activated, an insertion point appears inside the text box, and the borders are made up of slash marks. Sometimes this distinction makes a difference. For example, if you want to move or copy a text box, you need to select the entire box before issuing the Cut or Copy command; otherwise , Word will think you want to cut or copy text within the box.

Linking Text Boxes

If you want text to flow from one text box to another, you can link them together. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Create at least the first two text boxes (you can add more later).

2. Select the first text box, and then click the Create Text Box Link button on the Text Box toolbar. (If you don't see the toolbar, choose View, Toolbars, Text Box.)

3. The mouse pointer changes to look like a measuring cup from which you "pour" text into the next text box (see Figure 17.19). Click the text box to which you want to create your link.

4. Type your text in the first text box. When the text box is full, the text spills into the second text box (see Figure 17.20).

   Figure 17.20. When text boxes are linked, text spills from one to the next.

   

5. To move from one linked text box to another, click the Previous Text Box and Next Text Box buttons on the Text Box toolbar.

6. If you want to break the link between two text boxes, select the first text box and then click the Break Forward Link button in the Text Box toolbar. All of the text returns to the first text box. If you break the links between text boxes and then go back and revise the text, it will no longer flow correctly from one text box to the next.

Formatting and linking text boxes works the same whether or not they are in a drawing canvas. In Figures 17.19 and 17.20, the text boxes were created without a drawing canvas.