Fill Out Paper Forms with MS Word

Are you filling out a lot of very similar forms? Is your handwriting barely legible? There are a number of instances in life when you need to fill out a large number of paper forms with information that is ALMOST the same. For instance, you might be applying for a number of government clerk positions. You could just while away the hours with pen and paper, or....

Steps

1. Scan the form. Put a piece of blank white paper behind the original in order to minimize the degree to which the reverse of the form shows on the front.
2. You should use 300 or 400 dpi, no more or less. Select the "Reduce Moire" option. Ensure the scan is very straight and very clean.
3. Open Word. Select Insert, Picture, From file, and navigate to the scan file, highlight that file and click OK.
4. Resize the picture so that it fills the entire page. You can do this by left-clicking on the picture. This will enable "handles" on the sides and corners of the picture. Drag the corner handles to the far corner of the page.
5. You need to "zoom" into the work now, as the work will get tedious and close from here on in. From the pulldown main menus, select View, Zoom, and select 200%. Click on OK.
6. Use your mouse to move to the first spot on the page you want to write text.
7. Click on "Insert" tab on Slightly to the left of center,
8. Click on the "Insert Text Box" button. Your cursor will turn into a vertical cross. Use the mouse to draw a text box from upper left to lower right corner, by dragging the mouse.
9. Right click the text box and select Format Text Box from the popup menu. On the Colors and Lines tab, I recommend you select Color: No Fill, and Line Color: No Line. On the Text Box tab, try setting all Internal Margins to their minimums and enabling the Word Wrap Text in AutoShape.
10. Type in some dummy text, and experiment with the text attributes (font, size, etc). Then delete the dummy text and leave the settings.
11. Now, you can fill out the form, and just print it out in color. Save it for later reference or re-use.

Tips

• Bold fonts do not work well.
• Use a font that has VERY small sizes. Forms look best with 6 or 8 point font sizes.
• This is a little easier if you enable the Drawing toolbar. From the pulldown main menus, select Tools, Customize, then select the Toolbars tab. Click on the Drawing checkbox (which should now show a check in the checkbox), then select Close. Then you can create text boxes by clicking on the Create Text Box button.
• Copy and paste text boxes once you have gotten one right. Then you can drag the new box into place, and stretch it into its new shape. The text attributes will stay the same.
• The text boxes tend to "snap" into inappropriate locations. That is, they don't kern well. Patience and compromise is useful, because begging, pleading and threatening don't work.

Warnings

• Save your work often!
• Take lots of breaks.
• Use Zoom.

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See also

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• Make a Dash in Microsoft Word on Android
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• Use the Thesaurus in Microsoft Word
• Add Backgrounds in Word
• Turn a Scanned Document Into Microsoft Word Document
• Add Columns in Microsoft Word
• Download Microsoft Word

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What links here

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