Text Boxes in Microsoft Publisher 2013

Publisher is a page layout program to help you create complex and

professional-looking publications.That is why they give you so many tools
that help you insert and arrange artwork and images. But let's face it -- the
most important part of any publication is the text. The pictures and graphics
are only supposed to highlight and enhance it.

The way Publisher handles text is what separates it from simple word
processing programs like Microsoft Word. That isn't to say that Word isn't
complex, or that you can't create impressive, visually interesting
publications with it. You can. But because Publisher is typically used to
deliver professional-quality publications to commercial printers, it offers
slightly more sophisticated tools for typesetting. For instance, tracking and
kerning options are more complex in Publisher than in Word. (Tracking
refers to the spacing between letters in entire blocks of text, while "kerning"
refers to the spacing between two individual letters. We'll talk more about
this later in this article.)

About Text Boxes

Any time you enter text into a publication, you must enter it into a text box.
Sometimes Publisher automatically creates a text box for you. You can, for
example, open a blank publication and just start typing. In this case,
Publisher automatically creates a text box that fits within the margins of the
currently selected page.

A text box is an object. You can re-size these objects, move them, delete
them, and even stack them on top of each other like you can other objects.

Let's look at a simple text box:

As you can see in the illustration above, the text box is identical in nearly
every way to any other object box. It's got the handle at the top, which you
can drag right or left to rotate it; it's got the circles at the corners, which
you can use to easily expand or contract it, and the boxes in between the
corners to drag the sides out. What's more, you can even change the box's
border.

Formatting Text Boxes

You can format text boxes with color or special effects. To do so, double-
click on a text box. Go to the Shape Styles group in the drawing tools
Format tab.

The Shape Styles gallery has different formats you can use for your text
boxes:

Or you can format your own:

Use Shape Fill to add a fill color. Use Shape Outline to add an outline color.
You can use Shape Effects in the same way you added effects to images.

Deleting a Text Box

Deleting a text box is as easy as selecting the box, right clicking on it, and
choosing Delete Object, or Cut.

Text Box Properties

 Whenever you select a text box or create a new one, the Text Box Tools and
Drawing Tools become available to you. You will see these new tabs in the
ribbon, as in the following example.

You should already be familiar with the Drawing Tools Format tab. As we
learned earlier, from there you can change the border of your box, add a fill
and 3-D effects, and wrap other text around it.

So in this section, we're going to focus on the options in the Text Box Tools
tab.

The first button on the far left is called the Text Fit button.This tells Publisher
how you want text to fit into the selected text box. Let's look at the options
and explain them. To gain access to them, click the Text Fit button. A drop-
down menu will appear.

 Best Fit -- This option allows Publisher to determine how to

fit the text. It takes into account the size of the text box
and tries to guess what your intentions were. For instance,
if you were to draw a large text box, type something into it,
and then choose this button, the text would expand to fill
the entire text box. If you were to then type even more text
into the box, the text would shrink until all of it could fit
inside.
 Shrink Text On Overflow -- This option is almost the
same as best fit, except its focus is on shrinking the text so
it stays inside the text box. Unlike the Best Fit button, it will
only expand text back to the original font size when
overflow text is deleted.
 Grow Text Box to Fit -- Instead of shrinking the text to fit
inside the box, this button makes the box bigger to fit all of
the text. The size of the text, itself, never changes.
 Do Not Autofit --This option does not adjust either the
text or its box. Overflow text, which is text that doesn't fit
inside of the box, is simply unseen. Instead, red buttons
will appear in the border around the text box, telling you
that overflow text exists. An ellipses also appeared in a box
near the bottom right corner of the text box, which you can
click on in order to "thread" the text to another text box.
We'll talk more about that later in this article. You can also
drag the box to a bigger size by yourself in order to fit all of
the text.

The next button as we move right on the ribbon is the Text Direction button.

The button itself is self-explanatory. It takes horizontal text in a text box

and makes it vertical.

As you can see, it's really not much different than rotating an ordinary text
box.

Moving right on the ribbon, we find the Hyphenation button.

This button allows Publisher to automatically hyphenate the text in the

selected text box. You might use the hyphenation button to better fit each
line of text. Below is the Hyphenation window, which allows you to turn
automatic hyphenation on or off, and to configure the hyphenation zone. In
this example, the hyphenation is set to .25" of the right margin. That means
if the syllable ends within .25" of the right margin, Publisher will hyphenate
the word.

Want to learn more? Take an online course in Microsoft Publisher 2013.

Now let's skip over the Font group in the ribbon, because we're going to talk
about those buttons in the next section, and look at the alignment group
instead.

You can use the nine buttons on the right to change the text alignment
within the selected text box. The options in the first line include (reading
from left to right): left margin flush, centered text, and right margin flush.
In the next row, the same options are available for text that is centered
vertically within the box, and the final row shows text situated against the
bottom margin of the text box.

Use the Columns button to break the text into columns. Clicking the down
arrow at the bottom of the button gives you the following options:

As you can see, your options are one column, two columns, or three
columns. To add even more columns, or to configure the white space
between each column, click the More Columns button at the bottom. You can
have up to 63 columns within a single text box. In the illustration below,
we've selected two columns with a spacing between each column of .08
inches. Click OK when finished.

The Margins button refers ONLY to the margins inside the text box. That is,
the white space between the edge of text to the border of the text box. It is
NOT the same as your page margins, which we talked about in an earlier
article.

Clicking the arrow at the bottom of the Margins button gives us a bunch of
quick configurations.

If any one of these are adequate, click on it to apply it to the text box. If
you'd like to create a custom margin, click the Custom Margins button at the
bottom. This opens a window.

Here you can enter your own values and click OK when finished.

Format Text

To type text into a text box, click on the box to activate (select) it. Once
activated, the cursor will appear, and you can start typing.

Formatting the text you type is nearly identical to Microsoft Word, except
there are two ways to access the tools. In Publisher, you can go to either the
Home tab or the Text Box Tools Format tab. From either of these locations,
you can change all of the attributes of your text, from the font style, to
character size, to color.

Let's look at some of those tools.

The box above that says "Calibri" is where you will go to change the font.
You have access to every font installed on your computer, but you should be
aware that not all fonts can be embedded into the publication.
Calibri is a type of font. But when you click that box, a drop-down window
opens, allowing scrolling through and even previewing each of the fonts
installed on your computer. Select the style you want.

To the right of the font style box, is the font size box. You can click the box
and type in a custom value, or use the arrow button to the right to select a
pre-set. The smaller the number, the smaller the font, and vice versa.

Alternatively, you can click the button to increase the font size by one

value, and the button to decrease the font by one value.

You can change the color of the font by clicking the . The font color of the
text in the text box or selected text appears on the button below the A.

The button clears all character level formatting from the text box.

You may want to select boldface, italicize, or, underline a section of text
within a text box. The boldface command in MS Publisher is represented by
an uppercase, boldfaced B. Italics are represented by an uppercase,
italicized 'I', and underline by an uppercase U with a line under it. These
buttons are located directly below the font type window in the Font group.

To add italics, boldfaced, or underlining to any portion of a text within a

publication, select the desired text, then click the appropriate button (B for
boldfaced, I for italic, or U for underline.)

To the right of these three commands, you'll see two buttons with X's on
them.

The buttons adds a superscript character--that is a character appears

above the baseline. The button adds a subscript character--or one that
appears below the baseline. Both of these characters are usually significantly
smaller than the normal font size. E=MC2 is an example of when you would
use a subscript character.

To the right of the super- and subscript character buttons we see the
Change Case button. Click it and you'll see a selection of case options.

Tracking and Kerning

Tracking refers to the amount of space between all of the letters of a

selection of text. It is usually done to text to change the overall appearance
and make it easier to read.

Kerning refers to the amount of space between two individual letters and is
mostly commonly adjusted in headlines. Why? Because some combinations
of letters may look awkward together, such as AW or VA, and may affect the
flow of the eye over the text.

As we mentioned earlier, Publisher gives you some tools to change these

values. They can be found in the Font group. When you click the character

spacing button , you will be presented with a series of quick options, as

illustrated below.

If you'd like a little more control over the character spacing, click the More
Spacing button at the bottom of this menu. It launches a window.

From here you can shrink or stretch the selected text, or change the tracking
options. You can also fine-tune the spacing between two characters with the
Kerning options. A preview appears in the Sample box. When you are
satisfied with your selections, click Apply, then OK.
Adding Drop Caps
A drop cap is a simple embellishment that, if used correctly, can make your
publications look more interesting and professional. Basically, all it is a letter
at the beginning of a section or paragraph that is larger than the text that
follows it, but instead of extending upward (which is what it would do if you
just tried to increase the font size for a single letter) it drops a few lines
down:

Creating a drop cap in Publisher 2013 is incredibly easy. Just go to the Text

Box Tools Format tab and click the Drop Cap button in the Typography
section of the ribbon. The cursor should be positioned in the paragraph you'd
like to add the drop cap to, but it doesn't necessarily have to be in front of
the letter you want to add the effect to.

Choose the drop cap style you like.

You can choose to place the drop cap within the paragraph, or in the
margins. To exercise a little more control over it, click Custom Drop Cap.
You'll then see a dialog box that looks like this:

You can have the letter drop as many lines as you'd like, and even choose
how much space to put between it and the text that follows.

Text Flow and Connection of Text Boxes

We mentioned overflow text earlier. That is the text that simply doesn't fit
inside of a single text box. We also told you text boxes that have unseen
overflow text will have red buttons in the border and a bold ellipses in a box
in the lower right edge of the text box.

Clicking that ellipses "loads" the cursor with the overflow text. When a
cursor is loaded like that, it turns into what looks like a coffee cup with some
sparkly, magical substance spilling out of it.

Once the cursor is loaded, you can click on another text box to thread the
two text boxes together. That means all of the overflow text from the
original text box will automatically fill the new text box. Whenever a text box
is threaded, the border around it changes. You will see a black arrow in the
upper left edge of it, and another one in the lower right edge of it, as in the
next illustration.

Clicking on the left arrow will take you to the text box earlier in the thread,
and the arrow on the right will take you to a text box later in the thread – if
there is one. It should be noted, though, that either of these arrows might
be absent if there are no text boxes before it, or after it. For example, if it is
the first text box in the chain, the left arrow will be absent. If it's the last
text box in the chain, the right arrow will be absent.

Text Effects and WordArt

Just as you can add special effects to images and text boxes, you can also
add special effects to text.

To do this, go to the Text Box Tools Format tab and look at the WordArt
group.
You'll see the WordArt gallery to the left in the snapshot above. By selecting
the drop-down arrow, you'll see the various formats of WordArt you can
easily apply to selected text.

If you see a style you like, click on it to select it.

You can also create your own text special effects.

To the right of the WordArt gallery, you'll see these three choices:

Text fill allows you to choose a fill color for your text.

Text Outline lets you choose an outline color for your text.

Text Effects lets you apply special effects, such as shadow, reflection, glow,
or bevel – just as you can with images. You can turn the word Lorem Ipsum
in Calibri font into:

Or you can turn it into:

Text effects are fun to add to spice up a publication. They also come in
handy if you're designing a newsletter, brochure, or flyer in Publisher.

Take time to play with text effects and WordArt styles. Get familiar with how
they can change the look and feel of text in your publication.

The Format Painter

The Format Painter tool is located under the Home tab in the Clipboard

group. It looks like this: . The Format Painter looks like a broom, but it
acts more like a paintbrush. Using it, you can "borrow" the formatting from
text and apply the same formatting somewhere else in your publication. It
operates a lot like the "copy" function in Word, except instead of copying
text, you're copying formatting.

To use the Format Painter, place your mouse cursor in the middle of the text
that has the formatting you want to copy.

Now, click the Format Painter button. You'll notice the cursor changes to a
paintbrush.

Next, select the text you want to change, to paint it with the borrowed
format.

You can also use the Format Painter for objects. Simply click the Format
Painter button, select the object you want to borrow formatting from, then
brush it over the object you want to share the formatting with the brush
(cursor).