Have you ever drawn a text box and suddenly there is a border on it?
Or bought a template and can’t figure out how to change the fill color of the text box? Or turn it off altogether?
Let’s look at how you can create a colored background on your text boxes and or a stroke around your text box as well. And if for some reason you’re seeing a stroke around your text box that you didn’t want there, I’ll show you how to turn it off as well.
Adding & Removing Borders and Fills to Text Boxes:
So let’s start at the beginning. Where do you find the options for this? One would think it would be under the text menu.
I’m not finding it under Text. The only place I’m finding it under View–>Studio–> Text Frame. So click on that.
Here you will find a box to change the color of the fill and stroke of your text frame.
The line weight options will change the stroke weight of your border.
Once you adjust the fill and stroke colors, as well as stroke weights, additional text boxes you create will also have these applied.
To turn them off, go back to the text frame options and change the color to the white circle with the red line through it.
Alternately, to remove a stroke, turn the stroke line weight down to 0.
A word about insets:
One thing I want to show you that’s relative to creating an outlined text box is as you make your stroke thicker/heavier it will start to overlap your text.
Insets are how far from the edges of the text frame the text is placed.
By default the insets are set to zero, which means it’s right up against the edge of the borders of the text box. Insets have a relationship with justification options. When I am left justified and my insets are set to zero, the text will be right up against the left border line.
Likewise, when my vertical alignment is set to top align, text would be right up against the top.
You can adjust these distances by increasing the inset value.
With the little chain link clicked (to the right of your inset boxes) it will adjust all four dimensions at the same time. Click on the arrows for any one of them and it will move text both down and over simultaneously (remember, your justification settings will influence this).
If you want to control it from a single dimension, just unclick the little chain symbol and you will be able to control each inset value independently.
There are obviously more options to explore in the text frame settings, but these three (color, stroke weight, and insets) are the main options that you will use the most.
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