Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Rotating text in Word - fiddly

Today someone asked me how to rotate text in Word. Surprisingly, there isn't an easy way. Here is what I came up with using Microsoft Office 2004 (version 11.3.5) on my mac:
  1. create a text box
  2. type the text into the box and format (I centered it)
  3. remove any text box formatting you don't want such as a line (default in my program) - you do this by clicking format (pull down menu at top of screen) - colors and lines - line - no line
  4. Select the text box so that it can be copied (sometimes this takes two clicks)
  5. Cut the text box by using control X or edit cut, the text box will disappear and be placed on the clipboard
  6. click on Edit (putt down menu at top) - paste special - paste as picture - now it is an object that can be rotated
  7. make sure the 'drawing' toolbar is showing - if not go to View - Toolbars - Drawing
  8. select the text box, click on the rotate tool in the tool bar, mouse over a corner of the box, and rotate.

If you have WordArt installed you could try playing with that.

Good luck!

5 comments:

Brand_Dzine said...

That was a very accurate and easy method. Thanks! I had to paste as picture, not drawing object.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Much appreciated--thank you! This saved me a tremendous amount of time for an activity in my geometry class!

Anonymous said...

thank you so much!!! you have no idea how much this has helped me!!!

Anonymous said...

Thanks so much! This glitch was killing me. I still have Word 2008. I suppose the latest word allows one to do this.