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Upside-Down Printing

For some printing jobs, you may have a need to print text both rightside-up and upside-down on the same piece of paper. Unfortunately, Word doesn't have a way to easily do this, instead only allowing you to rotate text 90 degrees left or right. (To print something upside down you need to rotate it 180 degrees.)

There are several workarounds you can try, however. First, if the information you have to print upside down is fairly short, you could use WordArt. Your text is actually saved in your document as a graphics object, which Word allows you to rotate freely on the page. The only drawback to this is that WordArt doesn't give you the range of text control that Word does, and it was never meant to handle large selections of text, such as a quarter page or a half page of information.

Another option is to create your text in a different application and then insert it into Word as an object. (This is very similar to the WordArt approach, as you are dealing with non-Word objects within Word.) For instance, you could create a fully rotated text object within PowerPoint and then insert it in your Word document.

If you have access to a graphics program, such as Paint Shop Pro, you could also try these steps:

  1. Within Word, type and format your text as you want it.
  2. Select the paragraphs you want to ultimately be upside down.
  3. Press Ctrl+C to copy the paragraphs to the Clipboard.
  4. Switch to Paint Shop Pro and press Ctrl+V. The Meta Picture Import dialog box appears.
  5. Click on OK. Your text now appears as a graphic image within PSP.
  6. Press Ctrl+R to display the Rotate dialog box.
  7. In the dialog box, choose 180.
  8. Click on OK. Your text is now upside down.
  9. Press Ctrl+C. This copies the graphic image back to the Clipboard.
  10. Switch to Word and press Ctrl+V. The graphic image (which is your text) appears in the Word document.

Now you can position your upside-down text anywhere you want. Of course, if you want to make changes to the upside-down text, you can't do so without redoing all these steps. Why? Because the upside-down information is not really text, but a graphic image. These same general steps will work with most other graphics programs as well (such as Paint).

As mentioned earlier, Word allows you to rotate text 90 degrees either left or right. This capability can be utilized to achieve the look that is wanted. Try these general steps:

  1. Create a document using landscape orientation.
  2. Put a two-cell table in the document.
  3. In the left cell, place the text you want to be rightside-up.
  4. In the right cell, place the text you want to be upside-down.
  5. Rotate the text in the left cell by 90 degrees to the left.
  6. Rotate the text in the right cell by 90 degrees to the right.

The result, of course, is that you have text that is 180 degrees in relation to each other, which means it appears upside down when printed. Formatting text using this approach can be a bit challenging, but for some uses it may be an easy way to achieve the desired result.

Finally, perhaps the two easiest solutions don't even use Word at all. First, you could use a different program (such as Publisher) that supports upside-down text. Second, you could simply put your paper through the printer twice—once for the rightside-up text and once for the upside-down text. (Of course, you would have to rotate the paper by 180 degrees for each printing pass.)

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (8341) applies to MS Word versions: 2007 | 2010

You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Upside-Down Printing.

Related Tips:

Create and Merge! Using Word's mail merge tool you can quickly and easily combine data from a variety of data sources to create great individualized documents that incorporate your data in ways that you control. WordTips: Mail Merge Magic is an invaluable source for learning how to harness the full power of Word's mail merging capabilities. Check out WordTips: Mail Merge Magic today!

 

Comments for this tip:

Harold Atkinson    06 Sep 2012, 03:32
I am interested in using mail merge and a database to print my students names and id numbers on labels.
The labels are then attached to the edge of a folder to mark them showing their names and student ID. This means that ideally I want to be able to mail merge from the database to the label maker with students details printing to the label twice one opposite or upside down.

I think your idea of 180 degree rotation may best be the solution allowing for reverse printing of the fields and then reorienting the page to landscape mode (If I can) It probably means a massive readjustment of the labels be customising.

Any suggestions howeve would be much appreciated
Thanks

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