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About this lesson

Learn this creative text format often found on flyers, and a clever “rubber stamp” to use on documents.

Lesson versions

Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:

2013, 2016.

Exercise files

Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Word documents from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

Word Art .docx
262 KB Word Art - Solution.docx
259.1 KB

Quick reference

Word Art

Learn this creative text format often found on flyers.

When to use

Word Art is a fun and creative way to place a banner across a flyer and many other uses.  You can invent “rubber stamps” electronically and stamp an invoice.

Instructions

To begin, select the text:   Notice to All Employees!

  1. Click Insert and click the Word Art button:
  2. Choose from the gallery to begin a design.
  3. The Drawing Tools ribbon  opens at the top of your screen.
  4. Use the tools in the Word Art Styles group to change your design:

  1. Use the Text Effects, Transform button to apply curves to your design
  • 00:05 Hello.
  • 00:05 Microsoft Word has a feature called WordArt.
  • 00:08 It is on the Insert ribbon and way over here on the right,
  • 00:11 it's a little tiny A that's tipped to the right.
  • 00:14 When you float your mouse, it simply says, Insert WordArt.
  • 00:16 Add some artistic flair to your document.
  • 00:19 So please keep it reined in.
  • 00:22 You don't want to overuse this feature,
  • 00:26 because it simply is to make a nice banner over a flyer.
  • 00:30 It's not something that would be in a professional document.
  • 00:33 So let's go ahead and practice with it.
  • 00:35 On the file, well, in any document, you need to go ahead and just type some words
  • 00:38 to use, or you can open the accompanying this file with this lesson.
  • 00:42 Here we, have Notice to All Employees.
  • 00:44 So I'm actually gonna highlight what I want to put into the WordArt.
  • 00:48 And I'm going to click on the WordArt button, and I'm gonna go ahead and
  • 00:51 choose any one of these.
  • 00:52 I'm gonna choose this one right here.
  • 00:54 And there we have it.
  • 00:55 There is our WordArt button.
  • 00:56 Now, what happened is, it put it into a box.
  • 01:00 Now, the box is the shape of the WordArt container,
  • 01:03 but not the actual WordArt itself.
  • 01:05 Notice we have Drawing Tools and Format.
  • 01:07 So keep in mind, right over here, we have shape styles.
  • 01:10 Now, this refers to the box containing the WordArt.
  • 01:13 But then right next to it, we have WordArt Styles.
  • 01:16 This absolutely refers to the WordArt itself.
  • 01:19 So at any time, I can go ahead, come in here and change it.
  • 01:22 I actually kind of like that one, I'm gonna stick with this.
  • 01:24 But we have three other buttons.
  • 01:26 Now, this one is our text fill color.
  • 01:29 I can change the fill color to maybe green.
  • 01:32 And I can change the text outline color to orange.
  • 01:36 And I can change any kind of the shadow.
  • 01:39 So I can put a shadow effect on the WordArt.
  • 01:42 I can put a reflection on the WordArt.
  • 01:44 It is kind of fun to go through and see all the things you can do.
  • 01:47 But please keep in mind, one rule of thumb is, just because Microsoft Word
  • 01:52 will do it, doesn't mean that you should do it, okay?
  • 01:57 Sometimes some of these WordArt changes can look a little corny or
  • 02:03 just like someone was trying much too hard.
  • 02:06 Like this arch up, I'll go ahead and do this one.
  • 02:08 Cuz look at this nice banner that would be at the top of something, some flyer.
  • 02:13 But some of these transforms, honestly,
  • 02:18 you just shouldn't do some of these things.
  • 02:20 So just cuz Microsoft Word will do it, doesn't mean that you should do it.
  • 02:23 Now, if you went too far, just Ctrl+Z undo that, and
  • 02:27 then we have our Notice to All Employees.
  • 02:29 All right, now let me show you a professional reason to use WordArt.
  • 02:33 This is just a screen print off the Internet of an old-fashioned rubber stamp
  • 02:37 marked Paid in Full.
  • 02:38 And if you want to rubber stamp pieces of paper, you can do that.
  • 02:41 Well, a lot of our documents nowadays are electronic.
  • 02:44 I can't take a rubber stamp off my desk and stamp an electronic one.
  • 02:47 But I could put a Paid in Full mark made with WordArt on an invoice.
  • 02:52 So here we've got the script written right down here.
  • 02:54 So this would be your exercise, your homework.
  • 02:57 Go ahead and highlight that text, go to your Insert, go to WordArt, go ahead and
  • 03:02 choose any feature you want.
  • 03:04 And then change the color of it, possibly to red, and change the outline of it,
  • 03:10 maybe to black, and change, you know, put a little shadow effect on it.
  • 03:15 I actually am a fan of the shadow effects.
  • 03:17 It makes the text look raised off the page.
  • 03:20 So there you go.
  • 03:21 That would be the way to electronically stamp an invoice Paid in Full and
  • 03:25 then save it as a PDF and send it back to the client.
  • 03:28 So, awesome.
  • 03:29 Please go ahead and use that, but please never overuse WordArt.
  • 03:33 Thank you.

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