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

Comment Dates Updated Inappropriately

Using the comment capabilities of Word is a common occurrence when developing a document. What do you do, however, if the ...

Discover More

Relative References within Named Ranges

Excel is usually more flexible in what you can reference in formulas than is immediately apparent. This tip examines some ...

Discover More

Changing Kerning

When you need to adjust the space Word uses between characters, you need to adjust what is called “kerning.” This tip ...

Discover More

The First and Last Word on Word! Bestselling For Dummies author Dan Gookin puts his usual fun and friendly candor back to work to show you how to navigate Word 2013. Spend more time working and less time trying to figure it all out! Check out Word 2013 For Dummies today!

More WordTips (menu)

Underlining Quoted Text

Do you have a document in which you need to convert all the quoted text (text surrounded by quotes) to underlined text? ...

Discover More

Underlining Section References Automatically

If you have a document that has some sort of keyword within it (such as "Section") you may want to automatically format ...

Discover More

Underlining Tabs In Numbered Lists

When Word creates an automatically numbered list, it removes some of your formatting flexibility. One thing you can't ...

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 five more than 0?

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.