Animating Your Text

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated March 22, 2016)

10

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:

  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. (See Figure 1.) (In Word 97 you select the Animation tab.)

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

  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.

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. ...

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Comments

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What is 5 + 2?

2017-11-30 00:35:24

Paul

Why use these "circus" functions?
When your writing is any good it will be red anyway.
When it's rubish, fancy formatting and animation won't make it better, only more anoying.

2017-10-17 15:15:12

Maritta

so how does one do this in Word 2016????

2017-01-31 11:39:11

jack

This doesn't work on newer versions of ms word. You must be using an old version.

2016-08-30 07:50:38

KULBIR

THANKS AND REGARDS

2016-04-04 09:37:53

allen@sharonparq.com

Robert: Note the very last paragraph of the tip: It doesn't affect how your document is printed.

-Allen

2016-04-04 09:09:32

Robert L Marshall

animated text fails to work in my printed Word 2000 document

2015-09-22 20:02:31

George

Be sure that animations are enabled under TOOLS, OPTIONS, VIEW. Word 2003.

2014-12-31 20:41:26

Andreas Rejbrand

@Ellen: No need for that. Select the text you want to animate. Press Alt+F11 to open the Visual Basic editor. Press Ctrl+G to open the 'Immediate' window. Type "Selection.Font.Animation = wdAnimationShimmer" and press Enter. You can get a popup menu with all the animation constants there is.

2014-11-26 20:37:27

Meir

The described function doesn't exist in WORD 2010, I intend to upgrade to Word 2013. Does the animation tab exist in Word 2013 ?

2014-02-25 13:56:56

Ellen McKay

I am looking for a sample word document with animation in the text so I can use it for a 2007 word document. Can you assist me?

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