How To Freely move Text In Word?

Anonymous
2015-04-30T21:38:14+00:00

Hi I am currently attempting to align words to a legal pad with lines but the formatting for word is throwing me off. Is there a way I can freely move the words on Microsoft word? What I mean by this is Drag a piece of text and move it to any part of the document I want?(I dont really want to use a text box because I don't want the white background to be behind it since the paper color is yellow with lines)

If not then are there any programs that anyone here knows where I can do that?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 322.1K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2015-05-01T00:10:18+00:00

    You can control the vertical position by using the space before\after paragraphs and the horizontal position by either indenting or using tab stops.

    You can however also use a text box with the text wrapping set to In front of text and the Shape fill set to No fill

    Both methods are however really klunky.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-05-01T00:48:28+00:00

    You can control the vertical position by using the space before\after paragraphs and the horizontal position by either indenting or using tab stops.

    You can however also use a text box with the text wrapping set to In front of text and the Shape fill set to No fill

    Both methods are however really klunky.

    Do you know of any methods or programs I can use that can be used for what I am saying? 

    I literally want to be able to pick up and drop a piece of text anywhere on the document I want.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-05-01T06:43:41+00:00

    To do this you need a page layout application. Publisher may work for you, but it is equally clunky?

    You also asked this question at http://www.msofficeforums.com/word/26094-how-do-i-freely-move-text-word.html :( See my comments there.

    Please cross post correctly to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort.

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  4. Suzanne S Barnhill 275K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2015-05-01T12:47:06+00:00

    To reinforce what Doug has said, while you can drag and drop text in Word, you cannot position it exactly as you can pieces of text (treated as art) in a page layout application. What you can do in Word to put text on the lines of your legal pad background is to experiment until you find the line spacing that spaces text evenly between the lines and then set the top margin (or Spacing Before) so that the first line of text is sitting on the first line of the background. This requires a little trial and error but is the most satisfactory solution, at least for small quantities of uniform text. If you need to add Headings that will have a different font size, line spacing, and Spacing Before/After setting, then it will be much more difficult.

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  5. John Korchok 224.4K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2015-05-01T14:02:12+00:00

    Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator can do this.

    6 people found this answer helpful.
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