Getting small graphics to stay in place

[Bruce]

Somebody in the office insists on using rectangular
checkboxes on some documents. He draws a rectangle and
inserts it amid text in a table cell. It looks OK on
screen and in print preview, but it prints about half a
line away from where it should be. I disabled "Move
object with text", but no help there. Perhaps word
wrapping could be forced into service, but I would prefer
inserting the rectangle in line with the text so that it
is treated as a character in the text layer. However,
drawing objects don't seem able to live in the text
layer. I can create a bitmap and save it as a .tif or
something like that, but it seems needlessly cumbersome.
Any ideas on creating a rectangle the height of the text
and two to three times wider than it is high, that doesn't
wander around? Thanks in advance.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I've got the perfect answer for you, because this is exactly the sort of
check box I personally prefer. What you need is an EQ field with the \x
(box) switch. You can read about this in Word's Help under "Field codes: Eq
(Equation) field." Basically, the EQ field with the \x switch puts a border
around the text specified in the field. If that text is spaces, as in the
following field:

{ EQ \x ( ) }

then you get an empty square or rectangle (depending on how many spaces you
use). You can achieve the same effect by selecting text and applying a
border to Text in Format | Borders and Shading, but this works for spaces
only if the last one is a nonbreaking space (Ctrl+Shift+Spacebar). You can
experiment with the number of spaces to use, and sometimes you'll want to
change the font size to make the box taller or shorter or use the Position
setting (Character Spacing tab of Format | Font) to raise or lower the box
to align better with text, but after you've got a box that suits you, you
can save it as an AutoText entry.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
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[Bruce]

Suzanne,
Thanks so much for your reply. I have found that applying
a text border to the spaces is the way to go. The person
who needs to do this is relatively inexperienced, and an
autotext entry would be the best for him. I discovered
that it helps to include a space with no border before and
after the bordered spaces in the autotext entry, as
otherwise any text that follows the box or that is later
inserted directly before the box in the same paragraph
wants to have a border. I know that the border can be
removed, but the less this particular user needs to
remember, the better.