rotating text boxes

[Mindy]

Hi, I'm fairly familiar with Word and I could have Sworn there was a way to
rotate text boxes, but I cannot figure out how to. if someone could help me
out, I would really appreciate it.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You can rotate text in a text box 90 degrees right or left (Format | Text
Direction), but you can't rotate the text box itself. You can free-rotate
WordArt objects if they're not inline.

 

[Jezebel]

Copy the textbox, then use PasteSpecial to paste it as a picture. You can
now rotate it freely, but the text is no longer editable. Graphic quality is
sometimes dubious and for reasons I don't understood the font sometimes
changes also.

If you need good results, find a copy of a graphics application like
PhotoShop or Corel. It doesn't need to be a recent version for this purpose.

 

[Mindy]

I tried inserting it as a picture, but it still won't rotate.

 

[Keith Howell]

See

http://homepages.tesco.net/keithhowell/500dwp14.hm

(part of www.drawingwithword.com)

 

[Keith Howell]

Sorry, the older I get the worse my typing gets

http://homepages.tesco.net/keithhowell/500dwp14.htm

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You'll need to change the text wrapping style on the picture from In Line
With Text to some other style.

 

[Mindy]

Keith, I got it to working but it didn't keep the lucinda handwriting font.
I know I have done this before and kept the lucinda handwriting font. Would
it matter if it was office XP or office 2003?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The font is called Lucida Handwriting. Do you have this font installed on
the machine you're using?

 

[Jezebel]

There is a sequence of events that causes a textbox, when copying then using
PasteSpecial, to appear with all fonts as Times New Roman regardless of the
fonts used in the original textbox. I've not been able to duplicate the
problem consistently; it appears to be affected by whether the font is a
style setting or manually applied, and whether the original and/or pasted
textbox is inline or floating.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Thanks for the follow-up, Jezebel. I know that when you create graphics in
CorelDRAW and paste them into Word, ISTR you have a choice of pasting the
fonts as fonts or as graphics; the latter is probably more reliable. I've
had odd font effects pasting from Publisher into Word, too, where text fit
into a text box perfectly in Publisher but was truncated in Word unless I
made the text box slightly larger in Publisher.