MS-Excel / Excel 2003

Making a statement with WordArt

The WordArt button on the Drawing toolbar enables you to insert super fancy headings for your spreadsheets (often a little too fancy for my tastes). Keep the following points in mind when using the WordArt feature:

  • The WordArt text is really a graphic object that happens to have some text associated with it (meaning that you can't edit it directly as you can edit the text that you enter in a text box).
  • The WordArt styles are intended for really large font sizes (36 points being the default), and many don't work well with regular text font sizes (for example, those below about 24 points in size).

To insert a WordArt graphic object in your worksheet, follow these steps:

  1. Click the WordArt button on the Drawing toolbar.
    The WordArt Gallery dialog box appears. Here, you select the text style that you want to use. The WordArt Gallery contains a wide variety of styles at different angles with some styles that even run the text down in a vertical line.
  2. Select a WordArt style by clicking its picture in the WordArt Gallery dialog box and then click OK.
    Excel opens the Edit WordArt Text dialog box.
  3. Replace the dummy text Your Text Here with the words or phrase that you want presented in the WordArt style that you just selected in the Gallery dialog box.
  4. If you want to change the font and font size of the text that you enter, use the Font and Size drop-down list boxes. You can also use the Bold and Italic buttons to enhance the text that you enter by making it bold and/or italic.
  5. After you finish entering and enhancing your text in the Edit WordArt Text dialog box, click OK.
    Excel inserts your WordArt graphic object in the worksheet and, at the same time, displays the WordArt toolbar that you can use to further format or make changes to your WordArt masterpiece.
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