Animating Your Text

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated December 11, 2021)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

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:

Select the text you want to animate.
Choose Font from the Format menu. Word displays the Font dialog box.
Make sure the Text Effects tab is selected. (See Figure 1.) (In Word 97 you select the Animation tab.)

Figure 1. The Text Effects tab of the Font dialog box.

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.
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.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (613) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Changing Page Margins

Part of determining page layout is to specify the size of the margins that surround the text on a page. Word allows you ...

Discover More

Compound Page Numbering

Simple page numbering is easy to add to your documents. More complex numbering (such as two numbering schemes in the same ...

Discover More

Making VLOOKUP Case Sensitive

The VLOOKUP function, like other lookup functions in Excel, is not case sensitive. In other words, it doesn't matter ...

Discover More

Learning Made Easy! Quickly teach yourself how to format, publish, and share your content using Word 2013. With Step by Step, you set the pace, building and practicing the skills you need, just when you need them! Check out Microsoft Word 2013 Step by Step today!

More WordTips (menu)

Fonts Don't Work in Word on New System

When you upgrade from a system with an older version of Word to a system that has a newer version, your fonts may not ...

Discover More

Creating a Drop Cap

Drop caps can be a nice finishing touch for some types of documents. Word allows you to create three types of drop caps, ...

Discover More

Using Very Large Font Sizes

You can format your text to use some very, very large font sizes. The results you see from formatting with large fonts ...

Discover More

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

Notify me about new comments ONLY FOR THIS TIP

Notify me about new comments ANYWHERE ON THIS SITE

Hide my email address

What is two more than 7?

2022-02-28 06:17:18

Doppelbob

Not working in Word 2016

2022-02-24 17:39:28

Noel V.

Is there a Word feature where you can click on a subject line of text and the rest of the paragraph's text appears and disappears as you toggle?

This Site

Got a version of Word that uses the menu interface (Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, or Word 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.