Word AutoShapes

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Is there a way to center text both horizontally and vertically in an autoshape box? I have tried using paragraph before/after spacing, but is there an easier way? Any thoughts are appreciated!

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Horizontal centering is done, of course, with the centering button on the toolbar. The best way I’ve found to center text vertically in a text box is to go to the Text Box tab in Format Text Box and set the Top and Bottom Internal Margins. A minor hassle but it gets the job done.
Hope this helps.

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Hi,

there are several solutions to your question. Not sure if any are “perfect” but here goes.

1. If your shape is an Text box, then add a 1-cell table into your Text box and make it as big as the box. Your text will go in the table but you can turn off the borders of the table so you don’t see it. You may also have to adjust the internal margins of the text box to almost 0 so that you can stretch the table to be as big as the box. For horizontal centering, use the toolbar as suggested. For vertical centering, open the Tables and Borders Toolbar (it has a button on the Std Toolbar) and choose the vertical centering.

2. If your shape is other than a text box, you’re in a bit of a pickle. Word does not (in 97; enhanced in 2000?) allow you to type in such a shape. On the otherhand, powerpoint 97 does. So here’s 2 alternatives based on ppt97:
– if Word 2000 has the same capabilities as ppt97 as far as other non-text box shapes, then you can type in the shape when it’s selected. R-click the shape and choose Format Autoshape. Choose the TextBox tab (yeah, this is not a text box but ppt treats the shape as having a virtual text box). At the top, there is a drop-down for Text Anchor point. This will allow you to do what you want in terms of alignment.
– If Word 2000 doesn’t have ppt97 capabilities, use ppt97 and select the shape and do all the things just mentioned. Then copy the shape to the clipbd and paste it into word. Be careful. You need to do a paste special and select either of the picture options. If you do a regular paste or paste special with MS Drawing Object, the text in the shape gets moved around (and even changed font on my PC). The drawback to this is that you can not edit the text in Word.

Hope some of this helps

Fred

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Thanks to both of you for your great suggestions!

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I second these thanks – the single table cell suggestion is so simple to do and it gave me just the look I wanted for my diagram boxes.

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Hi Peter:
Just an additional suggestion. Using space above to push the paragraph down is not very difficult. When you select the Autoshape, there are sizing handles on the right & left side of the object. They are exactly midway vertically. All you need to do is use space before to push the text down to the middle, then press Ctrl+E to center it.

Hope this helps.

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KT:

You’re absolutely right – sorry about that. I am so used to working in ppt on this. In ppt, you can just start typing once you’ve selected the shape. That’s what I tried to do in Word and, of course, could not. But the “Add Text” item is on the context-sensitive menu, as you stated. You still can’t define the text anchor point as you can in ppt so the original issue of alignment still remains.

You could still adapt the idea of adding a 1 cell table to the shape, once you’ve clicked Add Text, and do the alignment in the table. Of course, the visual alignment will depend on how closely you can fit the table to the shape.

Fred

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