4 Beautiful Microsoft Word Text Effects - Outline, Shadow, Reflection and Glow

You've seen them.

Dazzling Text Effects in Flyers. Brochures. Reports. And you want them.

Did you know you can easily recreate these effects yourself using Microsoft Word?

This Tutorial will show you how you can create 4 Beautiful Effects:

• Outline
• Shadow
• Reflection
• Glow

Let's Begin.

Type some text in your Microsoft Word document.

Select the Text by dragging your cursor over it.

In the Home Tab of the Ribbon, you need to find the A Icon that glows Blue. It's located in the Font Group. Select this Text Effects Icon. 

A drop down menu with pre-made Text Effects and Options for Outline, Shadow, Reflection and Glow appears.

Select a pre-made Text Effect, say the 3rd Effect on the 4th row. You'd get text that now has a Black Gradient Fill, a White Outline and an Outer Shadow. 

Cool and quick. Great right?

But what if you want to create your very own Text Effect? Not the same ones that everybody else is gonna have.

Here's a breakdown of each option below.

Outline

The Outline Menu gives options for Colors, having No Outline, More Outline Colors, Outline Weight, and Outline Dashes.

Colors

Colors are broken down into Theme and Standard Colors. Moving your cursor over any of these Colors allows you to see the effect in real time on the page. 

So if we were to select the color Red, the Text would then have a Red Outline.

No Outline

If you select No Outline, well the Text Outline will be removed.

More Outline Colors

More Outline Colors allows you to choose from two Tabs. 

Standard Colors gives you more choices for each particular color. After selecting a Color, click the OK button to see the change applied to the Text.

Custom Colors allows you to create your own custom colors by setting values for Red, Green and Blue. 

After the New Color is set, click the OK button to see the change applied to the Text.

So if you set Red to 255, Green to 78, and Blue to 49, you'd create a new color that's most likely not in the Theme or Standard Colors section. 

Weight

Weight allows you to set the thickness of the Outline. You can do this by selecting from the Weight Menu, e.g. 3pt. 

However, if you would like to set your own custom value, select More Lines at the bottom of this menu. 

This opens a Format Text Effects Window. In the Outline Style section, type in your value for Width. 

Here's an example of a Green Text Outline with a Width of 3pt.

Dashes

Dashes allows you to change the Dash Type of the Outline, be it Solid, Dash Dot, Long Dash, etc. Curious as to what this looks like, I certainly am.

Here is the Text with a Square Dot Outline. 

If you select More Lines, it will reopen the Format Text Effects Window. There you can also make changes to the Compound, Cap and Join Types.

Shadow

Shadow allows you to apply a Drop Shadow to your Text. When you select Shadow, you will see Preset Shadow Effects, that is, Outer, Inner, and Perspective Shadows. 

To create your own Custom Shadow, select Shadow Options from the bottom of the Shadow Menu. 

This opens the Format Text Effects Window where you can make adjustments to Presets, Color, Transparency, Size, Blur, Angle and Distance. 

In the Presets Menu if you select the 1st Shadow in the Outer section, Offset Diagonal Bottom Right, you'll immediately see the effect applied to the Text.

Reflection

Selecting Reflection will give you Preset Reflection Variations, namely Tight Reflection, Half Reflection and Full Reflection. 

If you want to create a Customized Reflection, select Reflection Options at the bottom of the menu. 

This opens the Format Text Effects Window where you can make adjustments to Presets, Transparency, Size, Distance, Blur. 

This Reflection is the Preset Tight Reflection, 8pt Offset.  

Glow

Glow adds a Colored Blur around the Text. Selecting Glow will give you Preset Glow Variations, More Glow Colors and Glow Options. 

To create your own Custom Glow, select Glow Options at the bottom of the Glow Menu. This opens the Format Text Effects Window where you can make adjustments to Glow Presets, Color, Size and Transparency. 

Here's an example of the Glow Variation - Red, 8pt Glow, Accent Color 2 applied to Text.

So what's the take away?

You can really get some beautiful Text with these Microsoft Word Text Effects.

Here are some examples of Flyers created with some of these Effects.

You can download these and many other Free Flyer Templates for Microsoft Word at FlyerTutor.com. 

And remember, don't overdo Text Effects in your documents as that would go against Basic Design Principles.

Have fun trying them out!