Text in a Circle – Open Office

Open Office – Text in a Circle Shape

(This blog was written for versions of OpenOffice up to Version 3.4.0)

Open an Open Office Writer document

Go to > View > Toolbars > tick beside Fontwork (This opens a Fontwork Window at left top of page.)

The Fontwork Window has these options available -

Fontwork Gallery - adds another Fontwork object

Fontwork Shape - edits the shape

Fontwork Same Letter Heights - changes the height of characters

Fontwork Alignment - aligns the text

Fontwork Character Spacing - changes the character spacing and kerning

Click on frame with A in centre . This opens the Fontwork Gallery.

Choose a simple font (eg – use the second one in from top left – disregard the shape at this stage.)

Double Left Click on the chosen font. This will close the Fontwork Gallery window and copy 'Fontwork' to your document with green handles around it and a yellow dot.

From the Fontwork Window Click on Fontwork Shape to show the drop down box of shapes.

Choose the narrow circular shape (second bottom row and second from right end) by a double left click on it. The word 'Fontwork' will change shape..

Double-left click the word 'Fontwork' to enter text edit mode. This will bring a line of text reading 'Fontwork' in the middle with a flashing cursor to the end of it. (Cursor is not showing in image below)

Select the text in the middle by holding down the shift key and move the cursor back over the the word using the left arrow key so it is highlighted. Now type in new text (Happy Birthday). Double Left click in the word Fontwork. This will change your text and the shape it is.

Click the text in the shape so there are the small green handles around it. Move the cursor over a green handle until the cursor changes to a double ended arrow. Move the arrow to drag out to the circle shape.

With the green handles around the circle click on the text to get a cross with double ended arrows. Using these arrows with the cursor the shape and text can be moved around on the page.

At this stage the colour bar will be added at the top of the page -

which will allow the text colour to be change. The text can have a line colour around it or colour as

Invisible, Colour, Gradient, Hatching or Bitmat. Try the varitations that are here.

The font style can be changed – just double click and highlight the middle text as below and change the font, size, or colour (as above). Click away from the straight text in the centre and the text will return to circle shape.

To increase the gap between words (with the green handles on) hover you mouse over the yellow dot (near the centre dot on the left hand side above) and your pointer will turn into a hand. Click and drag the circle upwards slightly and that will create a bigger gap between the first and last words. Another method to give more space between words (with the text highlighted in the centre) is press the space bar to make a space before or between words.

The number of letters in the text being used and the size of the circle will determine the finished size of the text.

It may be a bit difficult to do some of the steps above at first attempt but persevere and experiment a little using more or less letters in the wording, add extra spaces between words, change the font being used, change colours and more.  Experiment with different shapes.  Have fun!

Once satisfied with the circle of text it can be copied to use in a card programme (if the one you use does not have this capability), to an e mail, or included in a slide show or text document etc.