Microsoft Word 2016 Bootcamp - Zero to Hero Training

How to put text next to each other in Microsoft Word using a text box

Daniel Walter Scott || VIDEO: 6 of 52

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In this video we're going to look at adding text at the top here. The cool thing about it is that it's not being forced to be-- it can go anywhere it likes, that's the big thing, as I can say, be there, be there... be anywhere I like without having to play around with margins and columns, and all sorts of other nastiness. That's what we're going to do in this video. Let's go and do it.

First thing we need to do is, we need to insert something called a text box. That allows us to kind of stick text in it, and move it wherever we like, and we're going to stick in an image as well. 

First thing we need to do is, if you're at 'Home', jump to 'Insert', and along here you'll find eventually this one called 'Text Box'. Now what you might notice is that yours might be looking slightly different from mine in terms of this ribbon along the top. That might just be because you're using a smaller screen size. Look at the layout here, they're all kind of side by side, but if I minimize, can you see, it's kind of clever, and tries to get them all in still, but kind of reorganizes them into smaller icons. So you might be thinking you got a different version, or things are looking heap stuff, it's just that you might have a really small screen you're dealing with. This is a nice big HD screen-- So I'm going to go back up to this size. 'Text Box', there's some beautiful options, the first one is just the one we want. You can have a look through the other ones there. There are lots of different options you might have in terms of, like these random text box, pre-styled.

So, simple text box, and it just dumps wherever your cursor was. Your cursor might be at the top, it might be around, so don't worry too much about that. What we want to do is, a couple of things. There's two things we need to do, one is, there's this document, and there's the anchor. The anchor is like where he is connected to in the document, and we want to move him around. There's two things we need to do, one is, the anchor should probably be at the top here, at the beginning of your document, you can just drag it around. It stays at the side here, you can move him anywhere you like. We'll talk about the importance of that anchor a bit more in a second. 

In terms of this box, if you click on the edge of it, not the inside, just the edge of it, you get this little icon, that's the thing we need. Click on that guy. In your 'Layout Options' what we want to do is, we want to make sure it’s this one here-- so text is going to wrap around like we're doing here, but I want this one here that says 'Fix position on page', nothing really changes. I'm going to close this down, except now, I can move it around, whereas before, when it's stuck at the ''Move with text' option, you can only go as high as the margin. So let's go to 'Fix position', and move that up to wherever we want it for our details.

So we're going to put in our text, you can type yours in here. I'm going to go to 'File', 'Open, 'Browse', 'Desktop', I'm going to find my 'Word Exercise Files', and I'm going to open up my 'Business Address'. Click 'Open'. I'm going to select it all, go out to here, and go 'Copy'. Close this one down, then select the text in here, delete it, and then hit 'Paste'.

Now, I'm using 'Control C' and 'Control V'. We're going to use that more and more in the class, it's up to you though, you can use, up the top here, under 'Home' there is 'Copy' and 'Paste' up the top.

First thing we need to do is we need to right align it, because I just want it to be right aligned, no official rule, I just want it to look nicer. So I'm going to select it all, and we're going to be at 'Home', and you can see, along here, there's the different paragraph rules. I'm going to align mine to the right. Now we need to play around with the 'space after', because there's big spacing between all of this, and I know you can do it by yourself now, because you've done it in the earlier video, go forth, do it, if not, can't remember, go to 'Remove-- It's up here, this icon here, go to 'Remove Space After'.

Now if you've got a really long business name-- I've got the world's longest business name, 'Bring Your Own Laptop', but say it's 'Bring Your Own Laptop Bring Your Own Laptop', you can see it's kind of breaking the lines. You might have to adjust the box by grabbing this edge to make it a little bit bigger to fit everything in. You might have a big logo that's going in a second, you're going to adjust it that way, and you can do the same with the bottom part here. I'm going to 'undo' a couple of times. You can see, when I hover above, up there, it says 'Control Z', so I'm using that shortcut to go back. I'm going to undo it until I'm back to my regular address.

Last thing I'm going to do before we go is, there’s this black box that comes by default that I don't like around the outside, you might love it. You can click on the edge of it, not the center, the edge, and what you'll find is, can you see this thing that says 'Format', it wasn't there before, watch this. I click down here, gone, I click on the edge of this-- it's also called a contextually sensitive menu that appears only when I click on the edge here. It's going to give me extra options for formatting this box. Click on it. There's a bunch of ugly presets-- sorry, Word-- but I'm going to go through, and you could add a fill. Looking good! I'm going to say, 'No fill', and I'm going to say, the 'Shape Outline', I'm going to say 'No Outline', and that's what's going to give me just the nice simple box. I can still grab the edge and move it around, to the side, that's where I want it. Perfect.

Now the last thing I want to show you before we go, is that little anchor. We kind of mentioned it earlier. If I click in here, I'm going to click on the edge, you can see, this little anchor appears. So click on the edgy box, there's this anchor. Is he important? He's not as important now because we've done this option where we say 'Fix position on page'. We can move him anywhere we like. The trouble is that he needs to be there, it's kind of like, it's his home base, he knows he needs to be up, and right of that. 

Now, the problem is, if I go to where it says Daniel, and I hit 'delete', that's fine, now I start retyping it, but watch this, if I grab all of this and delete it, can you see, it kind of highlighted it, and it's also grabbed the anchor, and you can see, it's highlighted up there as well, so if I hit 'delete' now, oops, I do it all the time. There's no way of kind of like forcing it to stay there, and never delete, you just got to be careful of things you delete, it's probably because you've gone through and just deleted this.

Now, where is a good place for this anchor? Wherever you're likely to not change. So, maybe, you can change it, so this anchor point here, 'double click', click on the edge, there he is there, drag him down. He could be there, doesn’t really matter where he lives, but you can delete him just as easily. So just try to find a bit in your document where there's a little anchor, doesn't end up in a bad spot, or at least, try not to delete him, you probably will.

All right, let's move on to the next bit. We'll add an image up in this text boxes here. We'll look at images in general. All right, I’ll see you in the next video.