How to curve text within a paragraph text block that is a predefined shape.

Thanks Ben, both methods warp the text, and the text should not be 'warped' as such - just plain old text running along a curve in the normal paragraph fashion - the font should not be altered in any way.....soooo frustrating! 

Hi Sally,

one way to achieve what you are wanting to do is as follows:

1. draw an angled line marking the left alignment of where you text needs to run
2. duplicate that line and flip it horizontally by holding Ctrl and dragging the left centre handle to the right
3. you should now have what looks like a giant letter V
4. draw a small circle with its centre on the point of the V shape
5. press the + key on your numeric keypad and drag a corner handle on the new circle to increase its size to roughly the line spacing you require for your text
6. Press Ctrl+D several more times to repeat the process until you have more circles than you probably need
7. Use your preferred method (I used the Virutal Segment Delete tool) to crop way all of the circles where they fall outside of the V
8. delete the V. You should now have some concentric curved paths running where you wish your text to run.
9. select all of the curves and combine them (Ctrl+L)
10. I did a little experimenting for you and found the best results came from selecting all of the text and copying it to the clipboard and then placing my text cursor at the start of the outside curve until I got the text on path cursor. I then pasted the text onto the path.

Just make sure you have enough path to hold all of your text or you will have a fight with the program! Also, if you simply select the text box and tell it to fit to path - you get text running in the wrong direction and upside down. It is cleaner and simpler to follow my step 10 above.

Below is an image of my combined path with the V deleted and the text fitted.

Here is a video showing what I described in my last post. I cheated with the concentric circles and used a macro:

Brian

Have you tried Alt+Virtual Segment Delete tool ? enhancement since SP2.