# 8.3. Setting the Properties for a Frame/Formatting Frames

For each frame in your document, you can determine how:

- How Kword handles full text frames

- How text wraps on overlapping frames

- You can determine the frames exact size

- You can establish margins within a frame.

All of these settings can be determined in the "Frame Properties" dialog box.

In order to adjust the properties of any frame, you must be in "Frame Edit Mode".

If you are not currently in frame edit mode, you can change to Frame Edit Mode, in one of three ways.:

- Select Tools->Edit Frames from the Menu bar

- You can use the keyboard shortcut: F5

- or by clicking on the toolbar.

Once you are in frame edit mode, the cursor will change to an arrow. Place this arrow inside the frame you want to modify, and click once with the left button. You have now designated that frame as the "current" frame.

You can now edit the properties one of two ways:

- Select Format->Frame/Frameset from the Menu bar

- Place the cursor inside the "current frame", and click once with the right mouse button. A small menu will appear. Select "Properties".

The Properties dialog consists of one dialog box, with three index tabs labled "Frameset", "Text Frame", and "Geometry".

It is a common situation. You define a frame, and begin to type. There is too much text to fit within the current bounds of the frame.

KWord has two solutions to this problem. Using this dialog, you can determine which method it uses.

If you choose "Create automatically a new frame", whenever a frameset becomes full, KWord automatically creates a new page. On this new page, it creates a new frame, of the same size and position. It also sets the frame so that your text automatically flows into the new frame

If you choose "Resize automatically last frame", whenever a frameset becomes full, KWord automatically extends the bottom border of the text frame to accomidate the new text. It will continue to expand as new text is added.

| Remember this only applies to a full frameset. If there is already another window for text to flow into, this will supersede any settings in this dialog box.

To adjust how text flows around overlapping frames, click the tab labled "Text Frame".

When you overlay two text frames, and text from both frames is competing for the same space on the page, KWord can (at your option), make sure that text from two frames does not overlap.

As you can see from the options in the dialog box, there are three possible choices.

"Run through other frames"

  By selecting this option, you are telling KWord to ignore all other frames when it displays the text in this frame.

"Run around the Bounding Rectangle of other frames"

  By selecting this option, you are telling KWord to wrap the text of this frame around other overlapping frames.

"Don't run around other frames"

  By selecting this option, you are telling KWord to not wrap any text around the edges of other frames, but instead, to skip down below the other frames before continuing to display text in this frame..

You can also determine how close your frames appear by setting the "Runaround Gap" in the textbox provided. Increasing the size of the runaround gap will create a white border between the text in the two text frames.

One common problem people have, when setting the text wrap features, is that they set both paragraphs to the same setting (Run around the bounding Rectangle of other frames). When they do this, they end up with two paragraphs that look like this:

As you can see, both Frame 1 and Frame 2 are wrapping around each other. This leaves a blank space where the two frames overlap. You can eliminate this space, and produce a cleaner look by changing either Frame 1 or Frame 2 to "Run through other frames".

You can adjust the size, position and margins of your frame by clicking on the tab labled "Geometry"

This dialog box allows you to specify exactly where the frame goes and how large it is.

You can locate your frame on the page by first entering the top and left measurements. This determines where the top left corner of the frame will be. All measurements are from the top left corner of the page.

You can also determine the exact size of the frame by entering its height and width in the text boxes provided. These two measurements are relative to the top left corner of the frame you specified above.

You can also use this dialog box to specify margins for your frame. The margins of the frame are similar to margins on a page. By entering a margin into the text boxes, you can have KWord automatically set aside a border of whitespace around the text in this frame. This will ensure that the text will not be located too closely to other frames or margins.

It is important to understand the difference between setting the margins here, and setting the "Runaround Gap" (see above).

KWord only applies the Runaround Gap when two frames overlap. If two frames are placed right next to each other, the runaround gap does not affect the final output.

When you set a margin for a frame, however, the whitspace is set aside reguardless of what other frames may be overlapping.