Wednesday, 20 June 2012

Design a Form with Microsoft Word

In this section, we're going to design a form. The form we're going to design has areas for things like name, address, and National Insurance Number (this is the British equivalent of Social Security Number, if you're in the States. Other countries will have their own variations).


The form will have lots of text boxes, which you will be drawing yourself and placing into position. The form you'll design will look like this one below:


The Form you'll design in Word


For this project, you'll need the Drawing tools. To ensure that they are displayed, click on View > Toolbars > Drawing. You've met the drawing toolbar before. It's the one with the AutoShapes on.


OK, let's make a start on our form.


  • Open a new Word document


  • Click on File from the menu bar


  • From the drop down menu, click on Page Setup


  • On the margins tab strip, enter the following values:




Top 2 cm
Bottom 2 cm
Left 1.5 cm
Right 1.5 cm

Those margins will give us a nice wide page to work on. A good idea now is to give ourselves the space we need down the page. To do this all that's required is to hit your Enter key on your keyboard. Keep hitting it until the cursor is about half way down the page.

When your cursor is half way down the page, position it back up to the top, so that it's flashing on the very first line.






  • Type in “Personal Details


  • Highlight the entire line


  • Add a Shade to the background (You did this in an earlier section. Click on Format > Borders and Shading. From the dialogue box, click the Shading tab strip. Select a Fill colour for your background)


  • With the text highlighted, choose a font, and a font size


  • Centre your text


  • Your should now have something like the green title at the top of this page



It's a good idea to add the text first, before you start adding boxes. That way, you can line the boxes up with the text, and not the other way around. To do this, we'll set up some Tab stops.




  • Click on Format from the menu bar

  • From the drop down menu select Tabs

  • Enter the following tab stop positions:


1.5 cm
5.5 cm
12 cm


Click OK when you've set your Tab positions. Now for the text:






  • Tab across to the first tab stop position by hitting the Tab key on your keyboard


  • Type in “Title


  • Hit the tab key again to jump to the second tab stop position


  • Type in “First Name


  • Hit the tab key again to jump to the third tab stop position


  • Type in “Surname


  • Make the text bold


When you're done, your work should look something like this:


What your form should look like now


Now

In this section, we're going to design a form. The form we're going to design has areas for things like name, address, and National Insurance Number (this is the British equivalent of Social Security Number, if you're in the States. Other countries will have their own variations).


The form will have lots of text boxes, which you will be drawing yourself and placing into position. The form you'll design will look like this one below:


The Form you'll design in Word


For this project, you'll need the Drawing tools. To ensure that they are displayed, click on View > Toolbars > Drawing. You've met the drawing toolbar before. It's the one with the AutoShapes on.


OK, let's make a start on our form.


  • Open a new Word document


  • Click on File from the menu bar


  • From the drop down menu, click on Page Setup


  • On the margins tab strip, enter the following values:




Top 2 cm
Bottom 2 cm
Left 1.5 cm
Right 1.5 cm

Those margins will give us a nice wide page to work on. A good idea now is to give ourselves the space we need down the page. To do this all that's required is to hit your Enter key on your keyboard. Keep hitting it until the cursor is about half way down the page.

When your cursor is half way down the page, position it back up to the top, so that it's flashing on the very first line.






  • Type in “Personal Details


  • Highlight the entire line


  • Add a Shade to the background (You did this in an earlier section. Click on Format > Borders and Shading. From the dialogue box, click the Shading tab strip. Select a Fill colour for your background)


  • With the text highlighted, choose a font, and a font size


  • Centre your text


  • Your should now have something like the green title at the top of this page



It's a good idea to add the text first, before you start adding boxes. That way, you can line the boxes up with the text, and not the other way around. To do this, we'll set up some Tab stops.




  • Click on Format from the menu bar

  • From the drop down menu select Tabs

  • Enter the following tab stop positions:


1.5 cm
5.5 cm
12 cm


Click OK when you've set your Tab positions. Now for the text:






  • Tab across to the first tab stop position by hitting the Tab key on your keyboard


  • Type in “Title


  • Hit the tab key again to jump to the second tab stop position


  • Type in “First Name


  • Hit the tab key again to jump to the third tab stop position


  • Type in “Surname


  • Make the text bold


When you're done, your work should look something like this:


What your form should look like now


we're going to add the address box to our form. So far, yours should look like this:

Your form so far



The address box is made of five separate rectangles which have been grouped together. To make an address box, do the following:





  • Draw a rectangle about the same size as the First Name or Surname rectangle


  • With the new rectangle selected, hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard


  • Keep the Ctrl key held down and press the "C" key once. This will copy the rectangle


  • With the Ctrl key still held down press the "V" key once. This will paste the rectangle


  • A new rectangle is pasted to your form


  • Keep the Ctrl key held down and tap your "V" key another three times


  • You should have five rectangles on your page, looking like this:



Five rectangles


Only the bottom rectangle is selected.






  • Move the selected rectangle across a bit


  • Click on another rectangle


  • Move one rectangle below the other



One rectangle stacked on top of another


As you can see, one rectangle is stacked on top of another. Of the three rectangles on the left, the bottom one is selected. Move these three rectangles and position on top of the two you have already done. When you're finished, it should look like this:


All five rectangles are now stacked


The problem now is that you have five individual rectangles. If you wanted to move them, you'd have to move all five separately. A bit of a chore. The solution is to group all five rectangles together. After you have grouped them, the five are treated as one rectangle. You can move this one rectangle about quite easily.


To group your five rectangles, then, do the following:




  • Hold down the Shift key on your keyboard


  • Keep the shift key held down and click on a rectangle with your left mouse button


  • With the Shift key held down, keep clicking your rectangles until all five are selected and have the white squares around them


  • Your rectangles should now look like this:



All five rectangles are selected


Once the rectangles are all selected, they can now be grouped. To group your rectangles, do the following






  • Click on any of the rectangles, but click with your right mouse button


  • A menu appears


  • Move your mouse up to Grouping


  • A sub menu appears


  • Click Group with your left mouse button



Click Grouping > Group


When you click "Group", the menu disappears and the five rectangles will be grouped as one. It will look like the one below:


The five rectangles can now be moved as one


Before you move the address box, it's better to type your text for the entire line.






  • Set tab positions for this line to 1.5 cm and 10 cm


  • Tab across to the first tab stop position and then type in "Address"


  • Tab across to the second tab stop position and type in "Telephone"


Once the text is in place, then move your new address box into position. If the address box is too big, you can resize it.

Draw another box for the Telephone number and move it into position.

Add an Email box just below the Telephone one. Below the Email box add a Married category, with Yes and No boxes. Again, it's better to set your tab stop positions first, and then type in your text. Draw the boxes after you've done the text.

Add your National Insurance boxes ine xactly the same way you did for the Address box: draw the rectangles, move them into postion, select them all one by one, then Group them.

When you've done all that, your Form should now look like the finished one below:

Your finished form


 

And that's it for your Form. You have the entire thing designed!

No comments:

Post a Comment