- Working with Connectors and Text
- All About Connectors
- All About Glue
- Getting from One Glue Type to Another
- Gluing Connectors
- When Connectors Cross
- Automatically Laying Out Shapes
- Drawing Curved Connectors
- Adding Arrows, Points, or Other Line Ends to a Connector
- Working with Text
- Moving Text Blocks
- Resizing Text Blocks
- Aligning Text
- Setting Tab Stops
- Creating Bulleted Lists
- Creating Numbered Lists
- Formatting Paragraphs
- Spell-Checking Your Text
- Formatting Text
- Selecting Background Colors
- Rotating Your Text
- Resizing Text Blocks
- Giving Text Shapes Borders
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Formatting Text
Visio lets you format your text, changing your text's color, font, and style (such as italic). Formatting text lets you escape the defaults Visio has picked out for your text.
Formatting Text Using the Text Dialog
Formatting text is easy in Visio—just follow these steps:
- Select the Text tool in the Standard toolbar.
- In a text block or text shape, select the text you want to format. If you want to format all the text in the text block or text shape, just select the text block or shape.
- Select Format > Text or right-click and select Format Text. Visio opens the Text dialog with the Font tab selected, as shown in Figure 3.38.
Figure 3.38 The Text dialog.
Make the changes you want to make:
To alter the text style: Click the Style drop-down box and select from Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic.
To alter the text's font: Click the Font drop-down box and select a font, such as Times New Roman. All the fonts registered on your system are available.
To alter the text size: Click the Size drop-down box and select a point size for your font.
To alter the case of your text: Click the Case drop-down box and select from Normal, All Caps, Initial Caps, and Small Caps.
To alter the text position: Click the Position drop-down box and select from Normal, Superscript, and Subscript.
To underline the text: Click the Underline drop-down box and select from (none), Single, and Double.
To strike through your text: Click the Strikethrough drop-down box and select from (none), Single, and Double.
To alter your text's color: Click the Color drop-down box and select one of the displayed colors.
To alter the spell-checker's language: Click the Language drop-down box and select one of the displayed languages.
To alter your text's transparency: Drag the Transparency slider to your desired setting. Modifying text transparency and overlaying that text can make for some striking effects.
- Click OK. Visio closes the Text dialog.
)
As you can see, you can format your text in many ways using the Text dialog. You can see some sample text formatted in Figure 3.39, in which the text appears in a large red (black-and-white in the figure) font.
)
Figure 3.39 Formatted text.
Formatting Text Using the Format Painter
You can also use the Format Painter tool to copy formatting from one section of text to another, or from one text block to another. For example, take a look at Figure 3.40, which shows two text blocks—the block on the left contains specially formatted text, and the text block on the right uses default text settings.
)
Figure 3.40 A formatted text block.
How can you copy the format of the text block on the left to the one on the right? You can use the Format Painter tool. Here's how:
- Select the Text tool in the Standard toolbar.
- In a text block or text shape, select the text you want to copy the format from.
- Click the Format Painter tool in the Standard toolbar. This tool shows a paintbrush icon. The mouse pointer shows an arrow and a paintbrush.
- Click the target text to be formatted. Visio formats the target text the same as the source text.
You can see the results in Figure 3.41, in which each text block has the same formatting.
)
Figure 3.41 Two formatted text blocks.
After you click the target text, the cursor reverts to the Text Tool cursor, and the Format Painter becomes inactive. To make the Format Painter "sticky"—which means making it remain active after you've used it, so that you can use it on further text blocks—just double-click the Format Painter tool in the Standard toolbar instead of single-clicking it when you start using the Format Painter.
The Format Painter tool is one of the few that have only a toolbar button, without any corresponding menu item.