* Update 10 March 2016 – New info from Eudes Martins & free eBook from Vaclav Krejci. Thanks! 

Where are my Presets?

Office 2013/2016 generally improved the usability & productivity of Word, PowerPoint, etc. However, for some reason, WordArt wasn’t fully ported over in Word 2013/2016.

For example, when I wanted to create Rainbow text in Word 2007, I just “Insert -> WordArt” & select the Rainbox preset, but in Word 2013/2016, this is what we’ll all get.

Blah! All the effects are missing!

After some searching on MS Office forum, I found someone who suggested saving your document in Word 97-2003 format, then Insert WordArt & you’d get the usual WordArt that we’re all familiar with, like so…

Updated solution!

Thanks to Eudes Martins (his comments below), I now know that you can just go to File -> Convert and the WordArt effects will carry forward to the new DOCX format correctly after following the previous steps.

However, the port is not 100% compatible because when you click inside the Textbox, the rendered text looks different, like so.

Strangely, the rendered text shrank and it became a double-rainbow! 😀 Oh well at least it works! You can also see that the new Office 2013/2016 way of doing rainbow text is to use Text Fill -> Gradient Fill -> Add Gradient Stop 4 times, then choose Color for each Gradient Stop. Don’t you agree it is just a big hassle?

So here’s hoping the Microsoft Office Team adds more Quick Styles instead of the 15 bland and boring styles that we see now. Maybe they can sort out the imported WordArt from Word 97-2003 as well? 😉

Now I like how everything in Word 2013/2016 is a Live Preview, no more entering Text in dialog box business. But, they should quickly port over all these older Preset because, Yes, there’re still people using them a decade after they’re introduced. I have the number of hits this page gets to proof it! 🙂

Just a bit of fun to show how powerful the new Format Shape Gradient Fill feature is, check this out! I use “Gradient Fill” for both Shape Options AND Text Options. Yeah yeah, you wouldn’t see me using this in a professional report but I’m sure there’re many people who would find this useful!

Incidentally, have you checked out the AWESOME Free eBook on how to create the “7 Best Text Effects in Word” by Vaclav Krejci? It’s the first comment in this post!

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