Inserting a Frame

Janelle uses Word on both a Mac (at home) and Windows (at work). On her Mac system she can easily insert a frame in a document by using a tool on the Developer tab of the ribbon. On her Windows system she cannot find, on any ribbon tab, a tool that allows her to insert frames. She wonders how she can insert frames when using Word on her Windows system.

Frames can come in handy for some uses in Word. You can think of a frame as a text box before text boxes. (Once text boxes were introduced in Word, frames generally fell out of favor.) If you want a great discussion on how frames and textboxes compare with each other, you'll find this helpful:

http://addbalance.com/word/frames_textboxes.htm

To add frames to your document, there are three different methods you can use. Since frames are designed to contain text, one very simple way is to define a style that includes a frame as part of its definition. Then, you can apply the style to any paragraph desired, and it is placed within a frame. (I won't go into how to create a style here, as I've covered it extensively in other WordTips.)

If you want to draw a frame, the tool to do so is available on the Developer tab of the ribbon. It is just a bit more buried on the tab than Janelle saw on the Mac. Follow these steps to get to it:

1. Display the Developer tab of the ribbon.
2. In the Controls group, click Legacy Tools. (This tool has an icon of a toolbox and blue wrench on it. You can see the name of the tool by hovering the mouse pointer over the tool for a few moments.) Word displays a drop-down palette of additional tools.
3. The fourth tool on the palette is the Insert Frame tool. (Again, you can see the name of the tool by hovering the mouse pointer over it.) Click the tool and the mouse pointer changes to a small plus sign.
4. Within your document, click and drag to draw your frame. When you release the mouse button, you have your desired frame.

The third method to insert a frame is to add the Insert Frame tool to the Quick Access Toolbar. Follow these steps:

1. Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2010 and later versions display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
2. Select the Customize option (Word 2007) or Quick Access Toolbar option (Word 2010 and later versions) at the left side of the dialog box.
3. Using the Choose Commands From drop-down list, choose Commands Not In the Ribbon. Word displays all the requested commands at the left side of the dialog box. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. Adding a command to the Quick Access Toolbar.

4. Scroll through the list of available commands and choose Insert Frame.
5. Click the Add button. The command is moved to the list at the right of the dialog box.
6. Click OK.

With the tool on the Quick Access Toolbar, you can click it to start drawing a frame, as already described. (It is the same tool that appears in the Legacy Tools palette on the Developer tab of the ribbon.)

I should note that in step 4 you could also choose the Horizontal Frame command instead of the Insert Frame command. They both seem to do the exact same thing. In fact, the only difference I can see is that the icons for the two commands are different—the Insert Frame command's icon is a blue dot and the Horizontal Frame command's icon is the same as the icon used in the Legacy Tools palette on the Developer tab of the ribbon.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (10024) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Word in Microsoft 365.