Insert “AutoShapes”

“Word” provides us with multiple tools to insert objects in our “Document”.
One of them is the “Insert”(“Insert”) button in the menu bar.

Another is the “Draw” (“Draw”) toolbar.
To open it, we click on “View” (“View”) -“Toolbars” (“Toolbars”) – “Draw” in the menu bar.

The “Drawing toolbar” enables various objects such as lines, arrows, circles, rectangles, pictures etc. to be inserted in our document.

If you don’t see it take a look at the bottom of your “Document”.

Let us first look at the “AutoShapes” (“AutoShapes”).

All these further have their own submenus, from which we can make a choice.
Choose the shape you want, and click and drag it in your “Document” where you want the object.
In versions 2003 and XP there is a box added to your “Document”.
If you’re not going to use it you can remove it by selecting it and clicking the “Delete” button on your keyboard.

Also note that the top of a blue bar represents the submenu.
When we move our mouse pointer here, it changes into four arrows.
We then have the option to “tear off” this submenu, and put it where we want to in our “Document”.
This is useful when we want to draw multiple objects. So that we do not need to click the “AutoShapes” button and choose from the submenu each time.

Do not panic when this submenu is closed.
Just click again on the “AutoShapes”, and it will appear.

Once you have drawn the “AutoShape” in your “Document”, you can format it.
To do this, right-click the object and choose “Format AutoShape” (“Format AutoShape”).
In the dialog box that appears, we may enter our preferences in different tabs.

Inserting Lines, Arrows, Rectangles and Ovals

These objects can be included mutliple times.
Choose the shape you want, and click and drag it to your “Document” wherever you want it.
Again, you get a box that you can remove if you do not want it.

When you want to draw multiple objects of the same type, double-click the appropriate button.
The button stays selected. Click and drag to the desired position (s) in the “Document”. After your item(s) is inserted, click the button again from the drawing object to “de-select” it or press the ESC key on your keyboard.

To draw squares and circles, we keep the Shift key on our keyboard pressed.

Insert “WordArt”

We can use “WordArt” to create texts that need attention.
To insert “WordArt” in our “Document”, you guessed it, we click the “WordArt” button.
This opens the “WordArt Gallery” dialog box:

We choose a style and click OK.
In the next window we choose a font and size.
And click OK.

To format the “WordArt” object, we right-click on the object.

Add “Fill Color”, “Line Color” and “Text Color”

Besides the “Fill Color” button in the toolbar there is a black arrow. If we click on this then we can determine a color from the color palette that appears.
But under this color palette we have the option for “Fill Effects” (“Fill effects”).
When we click this, the “Fill Effects” (“Fill effects”) dialog box appears.
In this dialog we have four tabs which determine what we fill in our object.
The possibilities are enormous, you have to give them all a try.

Same goes for the “Line Color”. We can choose a color or we can choose the “Pattern Lines”option.
In the “Pattern Lines” we have one tab, which determines the pattern and color for background and foreground.

Clicking on the arrow next to the “Text color” button , gives us a color palette from which again we can choose color for the text.

Determine “Line Style”

Clicking on the following three buttons, “Line Style”, “Dash Style” and “Arrow Style” opens a menu from which we choose the style of the line.

“Shadow Effect”

The “Shadow effect” is another nice effect and even a better look to our object.
We can create a shadow for “WordArt”, some types of “AutoShapes’, basic shapes, lines, and all such objects .

First we draw our object in our “Document”.
Select the object, and press the “Shadow” button.
From the pop-up menu, click the shadow effect you want.
That’s it, your shadow is added to your item.

We can set the properties of the shadow effect.
Just click again on the “Shadow” button, and choose “Shadow Settings” (“Shadow Settings”) in the dropdown menu.
The “Shadow Settings” toolbar opens.
Here we have 6 buttons with which we can adjust the properties of the shadow.
shadow on / off

1. shadow on / off
2. Nudge shadow up
3. Nudge shadow down
4. Nudge shadow to the left
5. Nudge shadow to the right
6. shadow color

“3D effect”

The “3D effect” button is approximately same as the shadow button.
First, we select the object.
Then we click the “3D effects” button.
From the popup menu, we choose the type of “3D effect”.
We click again on the “3D effects” button and choose “3D Settings”.
This opens the “3D settings” toolbar.

In the “3D settings” toolbar, we have 10 buttons that we have for setting the 3D properties of the object.

1. 3D on / off
2. Tilt down
3. Tilt up
4. Tilt left
5. Tilt right
6. Depth
7. Direction
8. Lighting
9. Surface
10. 3-D Color

The description of the above buttons looks claer to me, and needs no further explanation.

The use of the “Draw” button

This button is to the far left on the “Drawing toolbar”.
When we click on it, a popup menu appears:

Insert text in objects

To place text in an object, right-click the mouse on the object, and select “Add Text” (“Add Text”).
In the text box that appears, type the text.

Obviously, you cannot insert text into lines, and arrows etc.

Insert Text Boxes

To add text boxes in our “Document”, we select the “Text Box” (“Text Box”) and click and drag in our “Document” to get the desired height and width for text.
When the edge of the box consists of slashes / / / / / /, we can type in text and format the text.
When the edge of the box displays small dots, it means that the text is selected, and we can format the text box.

Featured Courses

• Downloading iPad Apps
• Lesson 1: Introduction to Publisher
• Lesson 65: File Formats