Insert text box

[Dudley]

I have unticked 'automatically create drawing canvas', but when I 'insert
text box' Word appears to change erratically between enabling me to draw a
box and inserting a large box. I cannot find how to turn off putting in the
large box. Any explanation/advice appreciated. I am using Word 2002.

Thanks
Dudley

 

[Stefan Blom]

Word inserts a text box if you click in the document. On the other hand, if
you drag (holding the left mouse button), you will be able to size the text
box yourself.

 

[Dudley]

Thanks for your help, but the problem comes before I click in the document.
Sometimes when I 'insert text box' I get a cross allowing me to draw a box,
but at other times a large box is inserted and the cross has arrows on the
end. This has only started happening recently, and possibly only when I
insert a text box on top of a picture - perhaps something has gone wrong with
my copy of Word?

Dudley

 

[Stefan Blom]

I couldn't reproduce this in a quick test (using Word 2007).

Can you reproduce this in another document, or is it document-specific?

 

[Dudley]

I just tried and I couldn't get the problem to come up at all, even though I
was getting it a couple of hours ago. It seems to be just erratic, though
maybe only an erratic problem when I try to put a text box on top of an
imported pdf in a document mail merging fields from Access.

Thanks very much for the trouble you are taking.

Regards
Dudley

 

[Stefan Blom]

You may want to recreate the document, just in case. You could try copying
the contents (except for the final paragraph mark, ¶) into a new file. (To
show/hide paragraph marks as well as other nonprinting marks, you can press
Ctrl+Shift+8.)

On the other hand, since this includes mail merge, perhaps you could get a
more knowledgeable reply from the microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields
group.

 

[Dudley]

Many thanks for your help. I will follow up your suggestions.

Dudley

 

[Fredrik E. Nilsen]

Thanks for your help, but the problem comes before I click in the document.
Sometimes when I 'insert text box' I get a cross allowing me to draw a box,
but at other times a large box is inserted and the cross has arrows on the
end.

This can happen if something in the document is selected when you
insert the text box.

 

[Dudley]

Thanks very much. I will try to 'un-select' next time I have the problem.

Dudley

 

[Stefan Blom]

Are you saying that it happens even if the selection is a picture (I know
that it happens with selected text)? Which version of Word?

 

[Fredrik E. Nilsen]

Are you saying that it happens even if the selection is a picture (I know
that it happens with selected text)? Which version of Word?

It happens if the selection is a picture in version 2003 and older.

 

[Stefan Blom]

I have to admit I have never noticed this. Thank you for the information.