How to Fix Text box won’t resize in Word or Excel

It is possible to insert a pre-formatted text box, draw one, and adjust its size in Microsoft Word or Excel. This allows us to enter and type text anywhere in the document or sheet. Nonetheless, there have been reports of customers experiencing issues with text box resizing in Windows PC documents using Word or Excel. Text boxes can be added and moved, but they cannot be resized. Users cannot resize the text box because, among other things, the handles are greyed out and the white circles and squares also do not appear as in the figure below. This same problem affects other users too who cannot reposition the text box. If this is your problem, read the answers that have been provided in this post.

Why can't Word resize a text box easily?

This is liable to happen when we open a document with the *.doc extension in one of the recent versions of Microsoft Word, such as Office 2016 or Office 2019. When Word opens the DOC file in Compatibility Mode, the layout of the document remains the same, but all new or enhanced features are turned off. The opposite is the case when the aspect ratio of a text box is locked. You cannot independently change its height and width.

Word and Excel text boxes will not resize [Resolution]

If you are on a Windows 11 or 10 PC and Word or Excel is not allowing you to resize the text box, follow the steps provided below. First, update Excel or Word, insert a text box, and check whether the problem remains. In that case, try the following options:

Open the document in Compatibility Mode.

Switch from Word or Excel.

Edit outlines of the text box

Manually adjust the size of the text box.

Enable Layout

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We can check these answers.

1. First, open the document in Compatibility Mode.

When a document opens in Compatibility Mode, you will encounter issues when trying to utilize advanced features of Word or resizing text boxes, whether it is a DOC or DOCX file type. An Excel workbook is no exception. First and foremost, you will need to make sure that your document is not opening in Compatibility Mode. Here are a few ways you can do this:

In your Word document, you should see the title bar. You should notice that [Compatibility Mode] is directly next to the file name. That should ease your mind.

Click File > Info. If a Convert button is available, the document is opened in Compatibility Mode.

To open the preferences of Word, open the file and select File > More > Options. Scroll down the Advanced menu and find an area labeled "Compatibility options for". If there's a large list of options there, it means that the document is opened in Compatibility Mode.

2. Convert Excel spreadsheet or Word document

You can sort this by saving your Word document or Excel workbook in one of the newer file formats. Since you can tell that your document is opened in Compatibility Mode, you can safely proceed. It can be done in a variety of ways:

To convert, head to File > Info, then click the Convert button. Click OK on the dialog box that appears. By doing this, you will be eliminating the need to use Compatibility Mode and your document will be changed over to the current file format. That said, note that this option will not allow you to save in the more recent format. You must convert manually.

To save your work, open the File menu, then select Save As. In the Save As window, make sure that the Save as type is *.docx format, if it's not already. This will create a new copy of your work in the newer format and turn off or disable Word's Compatibility Mode. The same is true for Excel; you can turn off Compatibility Mode and save as an XLSX file.

The other way out is using free third-party conversion program, supporting DOC to DOCX and XLS to XLSX conversion, such as CloudConvert, FreeConvert, AVS Document Converter, etc.

3. Edit text box boundaries

If you cannot adjust the text box size using its handles, try to use its points instead. As for this:

Highlight the text field

Right-click its border to select all the text.

Go to the Edit Points menu and click on it.

Now, the small black squares or dots will appear. You can reshape the text box using those squares or by dragging any line.

Be very careful while dragging the lines or points as doing so might distort the shape of the text box.

4. Manually change the width and height of the text box.

To manually set the width and height of a text box in an Excel or Word document, do the following:

Highlight the text box

Go to the Shape Format on the Ribbon menu. When opening a DOC file in Compatibility Mode, the Shape Format menu will be converted to a Text Box menu.

The Size group is on the far right.

The options for the Shape Width and Shape Height are there. It is possible to change the text box size in real time with the help of adjusting numbers there.

5. Using Layout

With the use of Layout Options, one can lock or unlock aspect ratio of a form or picture, location, size, rotation, scaling and text wrapping style of an image. Besides images, also a text box can utilize these options. Layout Options can be helpful if you can't get a text box scaled correctly or if you cannot move or resize it via the text box handles or otherwise. Here's how it works:

Select a text box on your page.

Click the Shape Format menu button In a document that uses an earlier format, click the Text Box menu instead Click the Size group, then click the tiny arrow icon to open the dialog box.

You will open the Layout Options box, which contains the Size, Position, and Text Wrapping tabs with it. These tabs will allow you to lock or unlock the aspect ratio of the text box so that you can independently change the height and width, scale it, move it, and do a lot more with it.

There is no option to see the changes or preview the result in real time. So, to apply and save changes every time you use the customization options, you have to click OK.

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If the above solutions are not working for you, then it's time to repair Office.

We hope that this will help you solve the problem of the text box not resizing in Word or Excel, that's all, see you later.