Text box

A text box you add to a Document has the same settings as text on an Image or a Video, so a caption you know how to make in one place you can make in all three. Its words are rich text, so one box can mix sizes, weights and colours.

• Its Text tab is the same look band text has on an Image or a Video: a card at the right end shows the word Abc in the look the box wears, named for that look; press it to open a strip of looks in the settings' place, its search at the strip's start — Bold, Karaoke, Headline, Sunset, Highlight, Neon and Minimal, then the looks you have starred, none of them moving the words (Headline and Sunset differ only in their colours) — every card showing Abc in its look. Picking one sets the whole box's size, weight, capitals, colour and outline in one step (one Undo takes it all back) and leaves your font, alignment and shape alone. A box whose words mix sizes, weights or colours reads Custom until you pick a look; change any look setting afterwards and the card reads Custom again, and the star on the Starred row of that strip's search stars it as a look for text, captions and tables alike — the looks you star this way are also the ones a document's header, footer and body text can wear from their own look card. The star on the card itself stars the text box whole.
• Capitals sets the whole box in capitals. It is a display setting: the words keep the case you typed, and every export shows the capitals.
• Bullet list and Numbered list put markers in their own column down the left of your lines.
• Bubble, the choice of shapes across the border row, puts a shape behind the words: a plain Box, a chat bubble, a speech balloon, a thought cloud, a shout burst, or a bubble whose tail ends in an arrow. It wraps whatever you have typed and grows with the words; its Border and Fill colours join the colour row, and the border row splits into Bubble, Width and Padding — press one to open it — where Padding sets how much room it leaves around the words. Choose Box when you just want a coloured or outlined panel behind a paragraph.
• A selected bubble with a tail shows two small blue rings on the page whenever it is big enough on screen — drag the outer one to aim the tail, and the one on the bubble's edge to move where the tail leaves it.
• To change the words, select the text box and click it again (or press Enter): the cursor lands where you clicked. The first click only selects it.
• Bold dims and stops responding on a font that has no real bold weight of its own, so you can see at a glance which fonts offer one.
• Every colour has a ✕ to clear it — including the text's own, which leaves hollow lettering you can outline. Once the words have an outline colour, Outline width sets the thickness of the line you see round the letters.

A text box wearing an effect shows with the effect on it, and goes back to its plain words while you type in it; Word and PowerPoint receive such a box as a picture. Its spacing and capitals, its bubble, and its outline and a colour ramp over its words are the same settings a text's are, listed on the Text page and, for its colours and lines, the Shape page.

Where you can use a text box

• Document — Groups

What you can do with a text box you made

Star · Copy