Visio® 2007 For Dummies®

Chapter 5. Adding Text to Your Drawings

In This Chapter

• Understanding the role of text blocks

• Adding text to a drawing

• Manipulating text by editing, moving, resizing, and more

• Formatting margins and inserting tabs, bulleted lists, and numbered lists

• Altering the text style: color, font, and size

• Rotating text

Even though they say one picture is worth a thousand words, a little bit of explanation can often help! It's highly unlikely that you'll create all your drawings without any text, so read on to find out how to add freestanding text as well as text to shapes, and then format it the way you want.

Understanding Text Blocks

All text in a Visio drawing is contained in a text block. A text block is a special frame for holding text. Most Visio shapes have a text block attached to them. For example, every shape in a flowchart has an attached text box, where you enter data to describe the process or decision represented by the flowchart symbol.

A shape's attached text block goes wherever the shape goes. However, you normally won't see a text block unless you enter text in it — and even then, you see only the text itself. Visio doesn't outline text blocks with a visible frame until you start typing text in the text block.

You'll see text in certain cases when a shape or connection has default text associated with it, but they're an exception. For example, when creating a connection between two shapes in a UML diagram, Visio labels the endpoints. You also see text in some shapes, such as a class, ...