In this video, we're going to learn how to create a Crossword Puzzle using Microsoft Excel. So this crossword puzzle is, obviously, going to be
one that you can either e-mail to your friends and, if they have Microsoft Excel, they can fill it out on their computer or one that you can
have it formatted so that you can print it out on paper and
whether you're at a party or you just want to keep the kids busy or whatever event, you can fill it out with
pen or pencil. So, to get started the first thing I want to do is I want to go to the Page Layout tab.
So, I'm in the Home tab now, I'm moving over to the Page Layout.
And here, under Page Setup, we're going to set our margins. So, I'm clicking on Margins and I'm going choose the 1 inch margin with
the 1/2 inch Header, Footer. The reason for that is, if you want to print this later and, say you want to save it as a pdf file,
those are going to be the default margin settings when you save your Excel document as a pdf. So, we
do that. And when we do that, you see here these very light, dotted lines show up. So, those let you know where your margins are.
And as we scroll down, you see that those same margins show up here at the bottom.
So...so we have our space. So the next thing we want to do is format so that our cells look like squares. So, I've highlighted all
of the cells - just click up here or do Ctrl+A and that will highlight all of your cells.
And when you do that, you can put your cursor anywhere between the columns. So, like, for example, I'm here between E and F and,
you see those 2 little arrows side to side? That are pointing? So you can drag to the right, they're bigger, you can drag to the left, it makes
your cell, um, your cell width smaller.
So this is probably a good cell width right here,
that we've chosen. And then we can do the same by going to the left hand side, where the numbered rows are and, same thing, you can
put your cursor in any of them and the little arrows show up again - where now they're pointing up and down.
And we can drag down to make...whoops!...let me highlight it all again. We can drag down to make them bigger, we can drag up to make
them smaller. But we want to have something that kind of resembles a square. So, that looks more square-like.
So now that we've done that, the next thing we want to do is to create our shaded area for
the crossword puzzle. So I'm just scrolling over,
I am highlighting to
where our margin line is - that dotted margin. And then I'm going to scroll down to the bottom,
where the bottom margin is - or that dotted line is. But then I'm going to scroll up and leave some
space at the bottom. The reason for that is that's where we're going to write our clues later.
So we have this area chosen and everything is highlighted. You want to go back to the Home tab.
And here, first thing I want to do is I want to create my borders. So I'm going to do just All Borders.
And then I'm going to go to the Fill, the little paint can, that's your fill color. And, in this case, I'm going to choose black just because that's
the color of our borders and that way, um, we won't really see them.
So the next thing I want to do is, scroll right one more time, to that big A, and that's your font color. So, I want to choose white for this.
This way I can see what it is that I'm typing. So in this particular crossword, we're just going to have a random theme. And I'm going to use a
vacation theme. So to create the words, so we have here vacation,
think of a word within your theme that's fairly long,
but will still fit in your cross word. Once you have that word, you want to type it anywhere in the middle area of your cross word.
So, in this case, I'm going to just, right here,
um, column F, it's kind of in the middle, um,
from left to right. And I'm going to choose the word Vacation because that's pretty long. So, I'm going to type 1 letter in each cell
and I'm using all caps, but you don't have to. Obviously, you can do them lowercase, just all caps is sometimes easier to read.
So now that we have Vacation and it's in the middle, this gives us space around the word to
be able to create words to the side. So, let's say I want to come down here and create Suntan.
So,
if you're going to a beach, this is a great, um, theme to do. So we have Suntan and, let's say up here we want to do Coast.
And, you can keep going, um, with words as you have them. But, just to illustrate to you how this can be done we'll stop there. So, the
next thing we want to do is now we want to unhighlight where our words are.
So, now we highlight each word and we go back to our Fill Color and, this time, we're going to choose No Fill. Now you can choose
white, but the reason I like the No Fill is, let's say you do print this out and you're printing on beige colored paper,
you know you're not going to end up with white boxes on beige colored paper. So, you know, do as you wish, but I'm going to choose
the No Fill for that reason. So, you see that our letters disappear, but we're going to bring them back in just a minute. I'm just going to highlight
these and
get rid of the fill in those so they're no longer,
black-filled. So now that we've done that, we're going to highlight everything again. It's just easier that way. And choose your color. I'm
going to choose, um, black for the letters, but you can choose, obviously, whatever color you want for your theme.
So, when we do that
all of our letters come back.
So, something else you want to do and this'll be important if you want to
send this out electronically. We're going to highlight the area again where our words are. The crossword puzzle area. And we're going to
come up here to Alignment. Let's scroll back up so you can see what I'm doing. And this lets you align
vertically so now it's centered up and down or align horizontally
so that it's centered left to right. And when we do that, it moves each letter right to the middle of each cell.
So, the next thing we want to to do is we want to create numbers. Right, because when we put in the
clues we'll want to number these. So this can be 1 - Vacation will be number 1,
Coast will be 2 and this will be our third answer. So we just hope those 3 for this example.
So, we're going to go over from the Home tab and go to the Insert tab.
So we click on that and then we come over to Text and we want to insert a Text Box.
So we'll just draw one just out here anywhere to the side, we'll draw a little one.
And in that text box, we'll just type in number 1.
Drag this text box over and we place it here. And so that looks a little weird, right? Because it's
overlapping on the black background. So then we just format the text box -
right-click and we want to bring our Fill to No Fill and we want to get rid of the outlines. So we
don't want an outline. And then now we just have this one that's floating here.
So you just place it wherever you want, ideally, in the top left of each...
the first letter of each, um, answer. So we'll do that for the rest of them. So all I did here was just highlighted it and Ctrl+C to copy and
then, I'm going to paste and then I'm going to change that to 2. And I'm going to copy that.
for our other answer, we'll do a 3
and then we simply just drag it over. So Coast will be 2
and this will be 3.
And then, down here, you just come to the very bottom of it and you can type in
what you want your clues to be. So, 1 can be...it was Vacation, so it can be
"Activity where we all relax and have fun"
And then 2 was...what was number 2? Was Coast -
We can say "Borders the Ocean"
and 3 -
"What happens when you lay in the sun"
And you can keep doing that, with whatever, however many words you have and then, ideally, you want to make a copy of this
so you'll do...you can come down here to the tab, right-click, choose Move or Copy, Create Copy
and this will be your "Original."
And then you go back
to...we'll call this "Game."
And then
you simply go back on your board,
highlight everything and Delete.
Now you have a blank game that you can share with other people or you have your, you know...and you have your original so you don't
forget what the answers are if you need to go back to them. So if you want to go ahead and print this, you can also go back to your Page
Layout and do some Print Titles.
So, we chose Print Titles and then Header / Footer. We can go to Header and, let's say in the middle section, we want to say "Our
Vacation" will be our header. And remember we left that 1/2 inch margin for the Header, Footer? So we have a little
bit of space to play with. And we'll make the font a little bit bigger - we'll say 22 point font,
in italic,
See how it changed a little bit here? So now will go into Print Preview and this is what our puzzle, our crossword puzzle looks like.
So, hope you enjoyed making this cross word puzzle with me in and, uh, hope you have a lot of
fun. And, if you did like this, please make sure to give it a Like
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