TUTORIAL Open Drawing Toolbar Open AutoShapes or click on Text Box icon Select basic shapes- for example- rectangleand click on it Then click anywhere on blank document At first you will see a tiny cross click - and then you will get a small rectangle Right click on it- then left click on Add Text There will now be a fuzzy border You need to have this fuzzy border visible to make any changes whatsoever Resize the box- by pulling out from the corner tiny circles You will now see a headed arrow- this is for enlarging or shrinking a text box If you want to move the box- left click on the outer fuzzy border until you see a crossnow drag the box anywhere you like Lift up from left click when you have found a suitable place for the box I am a plain practice box Getting rid of annoying things The snap objects to grid will drive you mad To get rid of “snap object to grid”click on Draw next to AutoShapes Click on Grid Unclick snap object to grid and display gridlines on screen Then go to Tools Options General tab unclick automatically create drawing canvas when inserting AutoShapes Now you can go to town Line Color Outer line color- nice to put a colored line around the text box Click on outer line so it becomes fuzzy Then click on the marker on the Drawing Toolbar You can choose a color shown or go to more line colors You may think nothing happened as you can barely see the color So click on the bunch of lines and select a thicker one You can also choose a dashed or dotted line Experiment You can use a combination in every worksheet Text Box Color On Drawing Toolbar click on tiny brush and bucket That is your fill You have options – no fill- removes the white color of the document and leaves only the words You can choose color or you can choose fill effects On fill effects color, colors, or preset Once you have chosen let’s say a combination of colors- you can choose the direction you’d like the colors to be color colors sky blue + white Diagonal up Font Color On Drawing Toolbar click on giant letter A Open it and see available colors and More Line Colors Highlight the words you want to change the font color- then select a color You might want to make the word bold also Trick # Warning about Clip Art Do not put clip art into text boxes! They will go crazy and become huge Work on your clip art on another document or the 3rd or 4th page of your worksheet (then delete those extra pages) Your clip art must have those little circles around it to be able to work with it (See clip art tutorial.) REMOVE EXTERIOR LINE Right click on outer edge Choose Format AutoShape Color and Lines tab Line Color No Line Gone! Even though you remove the outside line from a text box, you can still move the box around Clicking on the edge of it will bring up those fuzzy lines again When you click again- voila! They are gone When you want the convenience of text boxesbut you don’t want the look of boxes all over the worksheet (like here ) Solution to no Background color in thumbnail Perhaps you have noticed that your background color doesn’t show up on worksheets that you have uploaded to iSLCollective Even patterned colored backgrounds not show They will appear when downloaders print them, though You can work around this by making a gigantic text box that covers the entire or almost Trick # Remove white fill from text box I want to write on the blackboard, but it’s not possible to write directly on clip art I am seethrough I can write on the blackboard So I make another text box Write my message on it Put it in front of blackboard Now I remove the fill – right click on box – Format AutoShape Colors and Lines Fill No Fill Then I go to Format Auto-Shape Colors and Lines Lines No Lines Cool! You can write on any clip art using this trick Oh - and here change font color to white You can see fuzzy line box if you click on it the entire document You can put a nice “border” around it so that it looks more finished, using line color Then you can place smaller text boxes and clip art on top of the giant text box Sounds crazybut it really works This is a basic explanation about text boxes You can make your boxes 3-D evenit’s on the Drawing Tool There are lots of AutoShapes to experiment with Have fun! Extra Notes When creating a worksheet with text boxes open or or even pages at the beginning Again for some strange reason it’s very difficult to add additional pages once a page is filled with text boxes You might want to create a black and white version and an answer sheet And you need a blank page to work on your clip art You can delete the extras If you want to copy the boxes for a second or third page, hold down shift and click on the boxes and right click on Group Then right click on Copy and on the new page Paste Be careful- the boxes that you copied will be grouped If you want to move them around- as they will move in unison now- right click on a box and under Group click Ungroup You can group them again once you are satisfied with their position Click on a box and under Group click on Regroup Also when you are positioning clip art it’s easier when the document is at 50% When you want to the final details, enlarge the document to 150% Always check Print Preview to see how the document will look Sometimes words and clip art don’t appear in their entirety - as they are too near the edge How to add a border Under the View menu click on Header and Footer Copy the border (that you have Saved as) and paste it into the dotted Header box Then click on the little dog on the Drawing Toolbar and click on Behind Text Now you can fit the border properly into the document- by using the double arrows and the little circles Usually once this is done- the border will “fade out.” Not to worry When printed, the border will appear properly It just stays hidden so that it won’t be disturbed- while you are working on the text Note: You can find borders at Microsoft Office These are not the borders in Microsoft Word Free and Fun Fonts www.dafont.com/ http://www.fontspace.com