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About this lesson

How to handle too much text and control the overflow to another text box.

Lesson versions

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2016, 2019/365.

Exercise files

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Newsletter, Soft Blue design.pub
584 KB Text box - Overflow Text.docx
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Quick reference

Textbox – Overflow Text

Become familiar with the text box signals and how to handle overflow text.

When to use

Anytime you run out of room in a text box, that's when you need to handle overflow text. Recognize the parts and elements of the text box and you will be able to solve the mystery of the vanishing overflow text!

Instructions

  • Begin by opening the corresponding Exercise File with this lesson, or to go File, New and find the Newsletter (Soft Blue design).
  • Observe the Navigation Pane and click into page 4. 

(To get the Nav Pane, click View, Page Navigation.)

Text Boxes

  • When you click into the story headlines, notice 2 new ribbons appear. These identify the headline as a Text Box and provide new tools for formatting.

Font Formats

  • Click and drag a word in a text box and observe the mini-bar that appears on the screen. This is the fastest way to get your font format tools beside your work area.

  • Using a round or square handle on the text box border, shrink the size of the text box until the outer handles turn red. This indicates there is text that cannot be seen inside the text box.

Overflow Text

  • When a text box is too small for the text length, red handles appear to warn you that some of the text is not viewable.     

  • By activating the tiny ellipsis button on the text box, you can “spill” the text into another textbox. Essentially creating overflow text to a new box.
  • To find where the original text came from, a new "arrow" on the overflow box will appear, and will highlight all corresponding text when clicked:
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  • 00:04 I need to show you something technical about using text box and
  • 00:07 it's really important to identify the parts of a text box and
  • 00:10 what's happening with it, because the little visual queues are telling you things.
  • 00:14 I need a file on my screen that has text boxes in that, so I'm going to go back to
  • 00:19 File > New, I'm going to click on the Newsletter Soft Designs.
  • 00:22 Just a template that comes with Microsoft.
  • 00:25 And we've also loaded it in these course files so you'll have it.
  • 00:29 And I'm going to zero into page
  • 00:31 four because there's two text boxes side-by-side right here.
  • 00:36 I'm going to try to zoom in so you can see it easier.
  • 00:38 So I've got a headline and a paragraph with text and
  • 00:41 a headline in a paragraph with text box.
  • 00:44 And I would rather have these vertical side by side.
  • 00:47 All right, so I'm going to realign these text boxes.
  • 00:50 First of all, I'm going to click on to the dashed line.
  • 00:53 So I'm just floating my mouse I haven't clicked.
  • 00:54 As soon as I click, you can see the handles and get your eyes up to the top,
  • 00:58 textbox tools, drawing tools because a textbox is also a square.
  • 01:03 And so you can click on that and you can format it and color the inside of that.
  • 01:07 I don't want that, so I'm going to Crtl+Z to undo that.
  • 01:11 But I am going to grab this corner circle handle, click and drag and
  • 01:15 make this a tall, vertical square.
  • 01:18 I'm going to grab that story headline, also a text box, if it was word art,
  • 01:22 it would say word art up there on my tool bars but it says text box, all right?
  • 01:26 Then we're going to do the same thing on this one,
  • 01:28 I'm going to grab the side handle and make that a tall, vertical line as well.
  • 01:32 All right, so let's check out the fonts.
  • 01:34 This is font Calibri, size eight. Notice I've got this on my quick access toolbar.
  • 01:39 If you need to know how to do that, please go back and
  • 01:41 review the lesson on setting up your Quick Access Toolbar.
  • 01:44 See, I don't have to click on my Home ribbon and just see the font.
  • 01:45 I'm looking at them.
  • 01:46 I'm going to make these fonts a little larger and I made them to a size 10.
  • 01:50 Check out the outside edge of my text box.
  • 01:53 Do you see the red squares and the red circles?
  • 01:55 That means it's not showing all the text.
  • 01:58 Like a red flag it's alerting me, alert, alert, alert, there is text you can't see.
  • 02:03 My goodness, well, how do I handle that?
  • 02:05 Well I have two choices.
  • 02:06 I can make the text box larger or I can shrink the font.
  • 02:09 Neither one is acceptable.
  • 02:11 Instead, I want to spill the leftover text that I can't see, into the box next to it.
  • 02:17 Well, how do I do that?
  • 02:18 Well, take a look right down here.
  • 02:20 I'm going to zoom in, see if you can see this tiny, little ellipsis.
  • 02:23 Now that is a dot, dot, dot.
  • 02:25 In grammar, it is called an ellipses.
  • 02:28 The dot dot dot means more and more and more, there's more information.
  • 02:32 So, here's what's going to happen.
  • 02:34 I'm going to click on this dot dot dot.
  • 02:35 Watch my mouse click.
  • 02:38 My mouse just turned into a little measuring cup full of letters.
  • 02:42 Now I'm not clicking anything.
  • 02:43 I'm going to move this mouse into the box next to it and look,
  • 02:47 it's spilling the letters like noodle soup, it's spilling the into the next text box.
  • 02:51 Click, it just dropped.
  • 02:53 As you can see, that much text was hiding down below and I just filled it in.
  • 02:58 Now notice this arrow that showed up.
  • 03:01 Now this is telling me that there is text connected to the previous one.
  • 03:06 Notice over here I've got more red bars and
  • 03:09 I've got another ellipsis, so I have a choice here.
  • 03:12 I can either shrink the font, I can redo something,
  • 03:14 but it's vital that you know what these little red circles and
  • 03:17 red squares mean and that what that ellipsis means.
  • 03:20 It's really important.
  • 03:21 We can't know everything all the time but just to have someone explain what
  • 03:26 those little red squares mean and what that little tiny ellipses means,
  • 03:29 I mean, even floating my mouse doesn't give me any indication.
  • 03:33 You just have to know that or look it up.
  • 03:34 So thank you for taking this course.
  • 03:35 You learned something new today and
  • 03:36 you're going to be smarter than the next person because of it.
  • 03:39 Watch the next video.
  • 03:40 We're going to talk about formatting these text boxes, vital information.

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