Animating Your Text

You can add a little pizzazz to your documents by animating your text. What does that mean? Simply that you can make it wiggle, blink, shimmer, and shake on the screen. This formatting can be applied to any characters you desire by following these steps if you are using a version of Word prior to Word 2007:

1. Select the text you want to animate.
2. Choose Font from the Format menu. Word displays the Font dialog box.
3. Make sure the Text Effects tab is selected. (Click here to see a related figure.) (In Word 97 you select the Animation tab.)
4. In the Animations list, select the animation effect you want applied to your text. In the preview area of the dialog box you can see how your text will appear.
5. Click on OK.

You should note that the animation formatting is visible only on the screen. Animated text will not affect how your document is printed.

You should also note that the Text Effects tab of the Font dialog box is no longer available in Word 2007. This means that you cannot apply text animations in the latest version of Word. You can, however, display those animations if you open a document created in an earlier version of Word. You can also copy the formatting (including by using the Format Painter) in Word 2007; you just cannot apply it originally within the document.