Jazz up documents with transparent shapes
Jazz up documents with transparent shapes
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Tip Microsoft Word 97's new AutoShape tools are a great way to enhance your documents. For example, they let you surround text with a border in almost any shape. But these shapes aren't designed by default to be transparent, and making them transparent takes a little trickery. Here's how to draw a filled shape around existing text, then let that text show through: 1. Set up your document with the text you want to highlight in its final location. 2. If the Drawing toolbar isn't visible, select View--Toolbars--Drawing to display it. 3. Click the AutoShapes button on the toolbar, pick one of the basic shape types from the menu, and click the shape you want in the resulting box. 4. Back in the document, click and drag to draw and position the shape over the text you want to emphasise. Your text will be covered by the shape and won't be visible. 5. Select the shape (you'll see selection handles around it) and then right-click it. Select Format AutoShape from the pop-up menu. Click the Colors and Lines tab in the Format AutoShape dialogue box, then go to the drop-down Color list in the Fill section and select No Fill. You can also set the colour and thickness of the lines. 6. To force the shape to move with the underlying text if you make changes, click the Position tab and make sure Move object with text is selected. Click OK to close the dialogue box, and the underlying text will be visible through the shape. Once the shape is transparent, it's a little harder to select it to change its size or other attributes. To select the shape, move the pointer over the shape until it changes to a four-way arrow and then click. - George Campbell
| Category: Word processing Issue: Jul 1997 Pages: 174 |
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