Microsoft Publisher Tutorials: Adding and Connecting Text Boxes

Even if you start from a premade template or existing file, you may find yourself needing to add and connect additional text boxes in your Microsoft Publisher publication. In this tutorial, we will discuss how to perform these tasks. The file that we are using for the examples in this tutorial can be found in the Bright Hub Windows Platform Media Gallery. Feel free to download this file and make any modifications you wish.

We will begin by working with a sample flyer that was created in the 2007 version of Microsoft Publisher. The screenshot in Figure 1 shows the appearance of our flyer before any changes have been made. Figure 2 gives a close-up version of just the publication portion of the screen.

To modify an existing text box, simply click on the text box, use the cursor to highlight the text that you want to modify, and begin typing your new information. See Figure 3 for a screenshot of this action.

If you would like to change any of the other attributes of the text such as font, color, or spacing, simply highlight the text you wish to change with your cursor. Then right-click with your mouse and navigate to the Change Text option on the pop-up toolbar as seen in Figure 4. We will talk more about all the options for modifying text in a later tutorial.

Right now our flyer is still pretty bland and we’d like to add a text box so that we can expand on our information about the subject. There are several ways to do this, but the most general is to choose Text Box from the Insert menu on the Publisher toolbar as shown in Figure 5. Then position your cursor on the screen where you want the upper left-hand corner of your new text box to appear, hold down the left mouse button, and increase the area of the text box to your desired size.

We’ll go ahead and add a new text box in the sample file directly under our image as demonstrated in Figure 6. After doing this, you can click on the text box and add your new text just as you did in the previous section.

A lot of times, you’ll have more content than will fit in your text box and there just isn’t room to expand the item in the current location. Rather than rearrange your entire publication, you can choose to create a new text box and connect the two boxes together so that when you run out of room in the first, your content will flow into the second.

To perform this task, click on the first text box that you would like to link. Then click on the Create Text Box Link button on the Publisher toolbar as shown in Figure 7. If you have trouble finding this button, the graphic on it looks like a linked chain. Next, click on the second text box that you want linked. For the sample file that we are using, we have linked the two text boxes seen in the screenshot in Figure 8.

Return to the first text box and begin to type additional content. As you begin to run out of space, watch how Publisher automatically shifts to the second text box, continuing your content there. Take a look at Figure 9 for a demonstration.

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