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Aligning Text and Graphics in Word
~~Linda F. Johnson, Linda's Computer Stop

While many documents work well with flow of text interrupted by the occasional graphic, sometimes it's handy to be able to make text flow beside or around a graphic.

The trick to controlling how a picture is aligned with the text is not to accept Word's default settings. Word versions 2000 through 2003 handle this process in pretty much the same manner. However, if you are still using an earlier version of Word, it is quite different. The instructions below show how to change these settings in all versions.

TIP:  Word 2002/03 uses something called a "drawing canvas" which allows you more options for aligning your graphics as a group, but for most people's needs, this canvas just gets in their way and is totally unnecessary.  To turn this feature off, go to Word's Tools menu and select Options. In there, click on the General tab and remove the check from the box that says "Automatically create drawing canvas when inserting AutoShapes".  I find I can keep this feature turned off for 90% of what I do and when I do need it, I can just turn it back on.  All of the examples below were done with this feature turned OFF.

Simple alignment of text beside or around a graphic.

When you insert a picture or clipart within a paragraph, by default Word puts it at the beginning of the paragraph and it looks like this in the later versions (the picture appears in line with the first row of text in the paragraph):

And it looks like this in the earlier versions (the picture will appear either below or above the paragraph):

When you try to drag the picture to another location, your text gets knocked out of whack and you have lots of white space around your picture, or it keeps bouncing back to where it was. This is because the default wrapping style is "In line with text" in the later versions and "Top and Bottom" in the earlier versions and the graphic is on the same layer as the text. In order to be able to control this better, you must change the wrapping style.

If you click on the picture to select it, you will see small black boxes on the edges in the later versions and small white boxes in the earlier versions, which let you resize it, but nothing more. While it is selected, if you click on the Draw button on your drawing toolbar (in the later versions) and select "Order", you will see all the layout options are grayed out. However, in the earlier versions, you see that the Order options are available. This is because the "Top and Bottom" alignment setting does let you change the Order, but the "In Line with Text" alignment does not. But, don't let this fool you: Just because you choose to Send the picture "To Back" does not mean you can put it behind the text unless you choose the correct layout style.

TIP:  If you don't see your Drawing toolbar (it's usually at the bottom of your screen), go to the View menu>Toolbars and click on Drawing.

With the picture still selected, go to the Format menu and choose Picture, or simply double click on the picture (in the later versions); or right click on the picture and choose "Format Picture"; each of these ways will get you to the Format Picture dialog box. Click on the Layout tab in the later versions, or the Wrapping tab in the earlier versions and you will see five wrapping styles: In the later versions, these are In line with text, Square, Tight, Behind text, and In front of text. In the earlier versions, these are Square, Tight, Through, None, and Top and Bottom.. You can see that the default is the one selected. Choosing a different wrapping style will give you access to the Order options in the Drawing Toolbar and each behaves differently.

Also, notice (in Word 2002/2003) that when you choose a different wrapping style, the square boxes around the picture are replaced with circles, and you have a green circle which allows you to freely rotate the picture to any angle you want. In the versions previous to 2002, this free rotation option was not available. In these versions, if you select the picture and go to the Draw button on the Drawing Toolbar and choose "Rotate or Flip", you will see everything is grayed out. The workaround for being able to free-rotate a picture in these versions, is to select the picture, go to the Draw button, select "Ungroup" and you will see LOTS of white boxes all over your picture, leave those boxes there and return to the Draw button and select "Group". (If Word warns you that you that this will change the file format, simply tell Word that is OK.)  Now you will see the Rotate or Flip options are no longer grayed out and you can choose Free Rotate, because ungrouping and regrouping the picture changes the format to one that can be freely rotated. This works fine for Microsoft Clip Art, but for some picture types, Ungroup will also be grayed out, so the hack to get this option is to "Cut" the picture, then use Edit>Paste Special to paste it back in as a "Microsoft Drawing Object" and you will then have the Ungroup option. And, if none of this works, then your only option is to paste the picture into a graphics program (PhotoShop, etc.) and rotate in there, then paste it back into Word.

Let's explore the differences in the other wrapping styles.

Square

When you choose Square as a wrapping style, you can now drag the picture into the center of the paragraph and have the text wrap around it on all four sides:

Tight

This is similar to Square, but instead of the text wrapping squarely around the picture, it more snugly fits the outline of the picture:

Behind text

This option lets you use the picture like a watermark with the text overlaying the picture:

In front of text

And this is just the opposite, positioning the picture on top of the text:

Also, notice in that dialog box, on the Layout tab (in the later versions), there is an Advanced button. Click on that and click on the Text Wrapping tab and notice you have two more wrapping styles: Through and Top and bottom, along with some other settings you can tweak manually.

Through

Here I chose "Through", with text wrapped on the right only, and 0" distance from text, both left and right. Then I simply dragged my picture to the left margin:

Top and bottom in two column text

This style is nice when you have formatted your text into multiple columns and want the picture to appear centered within the page with the two-column text above and below it. Here, I went to the Format menu and chose Columns and selected two columns, then changed my wrapping style to Top and bottom with 0.25" above and below the picture and got this effect:

Tables and mixed text alignments

You can also use tables in combination with wrapping styles to come up with interesting layouts which combine a variety of alignment and wrapping styles, because tables will allow you to align the text in different ways in each cell.  So, it doesn't look like it's a table, just select the whole table (Table menu>Select>Table) and go to Format>Borders and Shading and set the border style to "None" so your borders are invisible:

To get the full effect you want, you may have to use wrapping styles, advanced wrapping settings, columns, and tables, but if you take the time to see how each option affects the layout, you will soon come up with something that looks just the way you want.  I recommend you create a test document and try all of the different settings until you understand them, THEN try doing this in a real document.

Have fun!

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Linda Johnson is a college instructor of all of the Microsoft Office Programs, as well as Adobe PhotoShop and Windows. She also teaches online distance learning classes in Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, and Word at Eclectic Academy. She has worked helpdesk and teaches and lectures at many local businesses and tech schools in her area. Support this newsletter by checking out Linda's eBooks, MS Word MAGIC!, Book I: Fonts, Fun & Formats and Book II: Table Wizardry, How To Get Started As a Software Trainer, and her newest series of MSOffice eBook Tutorials and CD