Storyline 360: Text Box Formatting

This user guide covers the text box options on the Format Shape/Format Picture window. (Visit this user guide for ways to access the formatting window.)

Text box options are only available for text boxes, shapes, and captions. They're grayed out for other objects (pictures, screenshots, and characters).

Use these options to format text boxes:

Vertical Alignment
Text Direction
Margins
Autofit
Overflow Handling

Vertical Alignment

This drop-down lets you control how high or low the text sits in an object.

Text Direction

This drop-down lets you control the rotation of the text in an object.

Margins

These settings let you control the margins (padding) for text boxes, shapes, and captions. Enter values in pixels or use the arrows to adjust the values.

Autofit

The autofit property controls what happens when text is too big to fit within the text box, shape, or caption. You'll see different autofit options, depending on whether you've enabled text autofit improvements or not. Find definitions for old and new autofit options below.

If you haven't enabled text autofit improvements (they're disabled by default), you'll see the following autofit options:

Do not autofit	This option allows text to overflow its bounding box. If your text overflows its bounding box, learners will see a scroll bar in the published output when they turn on accessible text.
Shrink text on overflow	This shrinks text so it fits within its bounding box. This setting can result in small text that's hard to read, especially when the text box includes variable references. To create courses that are accessible to people with low vision, you should avoid shrinking text.
Resize shape to fit text	This increases or decreases the height of the text box to fit your text.
Wrap text	When you enable this option, text wraps within the text box, shape, or caption.
Upgrade Project Text	Click this button to use enhanced text autofit settings and improve accessibility. Text autofit improvements can't be turned off once enabled. However, you can import slides into a new project file to revert to legacy autofit settings if you prefer. Learn more about upgrading text.

If you have enabled text autofit improvements by upgrading your project text (in the May 2021 update or later), you'll see the following autofit options:

Expand width	This turns off text wrapping and allows the text box’s width to expand to accommodate text.
Expand height	This enables text wrapping and allows the text box’s height to expand to accommodate text. (The width of the text box is fixed.)
Fixed size	This locks a text box at a fixed size. When locked, you can add a scroll bar to text that doesn't fit or let it overflow, as described below.

Overflow Handling

Starting with the August 2021 update, the following overflow options are available for fixed-size objects in projects that use text autofit improvements:

Add scroll bars

This adds a scroll bar to text that doesn’t fit its bounding box.

We recommend enabling scroll bars to give all learners a better experience when they use accessible text.

Allow text to overflow

This lets text display past its bounding box.

To preserve legacy autofit behavior, this is the default for fixed-size objects when upgrading project text.

Text Entry

As of November 2023, an optional "multi-line" check box displays for text-entry fields in new and existing projects, regardless of whether you've enabled text autofit improvements. This setting controls what happens to entered text that doesn't fit its bounding box. When you mark the Multi-line box, text within the text-entry field wraps to multiple lines.

Published 9 years ago

Version 1.0