Microsoft programmers provided users of their products a fun little tool called WordArt. WordArt transforms your text into…well, works of art. If you use Microsoft Publisher, Word, PowerPoint, or even Excel and need to spruce up a document, learn to use WordArt. The headline on today’s tip is an example of WordArt. WordArt can be used as headlines in newsletters or headings for a chart in Excel and of course in PowerPoint presentations. One usability function that Microsoft has built into all their products over the years is the consistency in which general functions can be used from product to product. WordArt works the same in all the Microsoft Office products. Follow these steps in any Office software to get started with Word Art:

1. In your Office program, click one time in your document where you want to insert your WordArt
2. Click Insert from the menus
3. Click Picture
4. Click WordArt
5. Double-click on any of the pre-formatted options
6. A dialog box will pop-up with the giant letters; "Your Text Here". Replace that text with your own.
7. Change the font style if you would like and click OK.
8. The Office program will then insert the WordArt into your document.

Office programs treat WordArt items like a picture file so you can add a border to it, move it around and resize it to your heart’s content. If you really want to express your individuality, click one time on your WordArt to bring up the WordArt toolbar (see picture below). Use the tools it provides to change the color, orientation, fill effects and more. [inline:wordart3.gif] One other nice feature of WordArt is that your text is editable. In most cases, you don’t want to use more than four of five words when creating WordArt. More text than that and it becomes unwieldy. Take some time to learn and explore this fun and often times useful feature of Microsoft Office products. Here is another example of WordArt: [inline:wordart2.gif]

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Tags: Microsoft, Office, toolbar, Word, word processing

This entry was posted on Friday, December 30th, 2005 at 10:23 am and is filed under Application Tips. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.