Creating Forms with SmartDraw

HOW TO CREATE FORMS USING SMARTDRAW (cont'd)

How to Create a Single Text Entry Field
If you don't want to worry about formatting an entire table, you can create a single-cell text entry field and place it anywhere on your form.

Click on the Table button on the Insert Table menu and go down to Define. When the Add New Table dialog opens, set the number of rows and columns to one. Then select Text Entry Properties from the Shapes menu. Set the field to grow horizontally, and specify a minimum size for the text (10 point is a good readable minimum). Finally, choose a left-justified alignment from the Paragraph menu.

You now have an expandable field that will contain text and format it any way you specify.

How to Create a Text Entry Area with a Label
For illustration, let's assume you want to create a signature line on a form, i.e, a horizontal line with a label underneath and a text entry area above it. First, create a table containing two rows. To get rid of the outer box, select None for Thickness from the Line drop-down under Shape Style menu.

Place your label in the lower row and then lock it by choosing Do Not Allow Text Editing in the Text Entry Properties dialog box.

Select the text entry area, and set the alignment using the Alignment drop-down under the Paragraph menu. You can also specify the text color, weight, and size in the Font menu.

Similarly, you can create a text input field with the label at the left hand side. Just create a table with two columns and one row, and proceed as described above.

If you want to get rid of the grid line separating the label from the text entry area, click on it once to select it (this should turn the grid line green) and choose None for Thickness from the Line drop-down under Shape Style menu.

*Locking your labels is important because it prevents a person who is filling out the form from landing on the label when tabbing from field to field.