Apply a Text Effect

If you really want to get fancy with your text, apply a text effect. Text effects come in 15 styles, and you can create new styles or modify existing styles by adding an outline, shadow, reflection, or glow to your text.

• When adding outlines, you can choose the color, weight, and style of your outline.
• When adding shadows, you can have an outer shadow or inner shadow, and you can change the perspective of your shadow.
• When adding reflections, you can have several variations, such as tight reflection, half reflection, or full refection.
• When adding glows, you can choose the color of the glow.

If you do not like any of the outline, shadow, reflection, or glow options offered to you, select Options at the bottom of their respective menus to open a pane where you can fine-tune the effects.

The best way to become familiar with text effects is to experiment. In live preview, you can see the effect of your changes before they are applied. Text effects usually show up better if you use a large font size.

Apply a Text Effect

1. Select the text you that want to have a text effect. Word highlights the text.
2. Click the Text Effect button  in the Font group.
3. Click the effect you want. Word applies the effect you selected.
4. Click in the text area. The highlighting disappears.

Apply an Outline Color

1. Select the text you want to outline. Word highlights the text.
2. Click the Text Effect button  in the Font group.
3. Click Outline.
4. Click a color. Word outlines the text with the color you selected.
5. Click in the text area. The highlighting disappears.

Apply an Outline Weight

1. Select the text you want to outline. Word highlights the text.
2. Click the Text Effect button  in the Font group.
3. Click Outline.
4. Place your mouse pointer over Weight and then click a weight.
5. Click in the text area. The highlighting disappears.

Apply an Outline Style

1. Select the text you want to outline. Word highlights the text.
2. Click the Text Effect button in the Font group.
3. Click Outline.
4. Place the mouse pointer over Dashes; then click a line style.
5. Click in the text area. The highlighting disappears.

Apply a Shadow, Reflection, or Glow

1. Select the text to which you want to apply a text effect.
2. Click the Text Effect button  in the Font group.
3. Click Shadow, Reflection, or Glow.
4. Click the effect you want to apply.

Note: To remove an effect, click No Shadow, No Reflection or No Glow.

5. Click in the text area. Word removes the highlighting it created when you selected the text.

Tip

After creating a text effect, you may want to change the space between characters. 1) Click the dialog box launcher  in the Font group. 2) The Font dialog box opens. 3) Choose the Advanced tab. 4) Click the down-arrow next to the Spacing field, and then click Expanded to increase the space between characters or Condensed to decrease the space between characters. 5) In the By field that is located next to the Spacing field, type the amount you want to increase or decrease the space in points. 6) Click OK. Word closes the Font dialog box and changes the spacing between characters.