Rotating Texting in a Frame

[pgt]

I downloaded a template for labels by Avery. The template in .pdf format opens fine in Affinity Publisher giving an array of rectangular shapes corresponding to the labels. Using them as text frames should allow me to nicely populate the labels with text or other data.

This seems promising. But for some labels I need the text to align perpendicular to the normal orientation, so it flows from left to right in each frame (instead of top to bottom). I thought there would be a simple option for this in—say—the text frame studio panel. But, I'm not finding it.

This and other online help sources address a lot of related issues, but I haven't found a simple, robust solution to this basic task (remember there are 30 or more labels per sheet in these templates). Hopefully, there's a new option for this hiding someplace.

Alternatively, I see there is an option to rotate text in the cell of a table, which might work OK. I don't suppose there's a way to convert a array of frames into a table of cells? It rather not spend time recreating the templates from scratch.

[Alfred]

Unless I’ve misunderstood what you’re trying to achieve, there’s no need to resort to fancy tricks with table cells. You can simply use ordinary text frames and rotate them as desired.

[MikeTO]

I think you're saying you don't want rotated text but that you want the text to flow from top to bottom and then from left to right. Is that correct? Unfortunately, Publisher doesn't support vertical text.

I think the easiest thing you could do is to create one frame the way you want it and then to replicate it for the sheet of labels. This isn't hard with the latest version of Publisher. Just create one and position it correctly and then select it with the Move tool and press Return. That will open the Move/Duplicate window. Click Duplicate and enter how many copies you want to create horizontally with the horizontal offset. After duplicating those, select them all and press Return again. This time enter the number of vertical copies and vertical offset.

Many years ago I wrote a script to generate sheets of labels for the entire Avery catalog for another application, eliminating the need for templates. Perhaps I'll do that again when scripting becomes available but labels aren't used as frequently these days so there isn't much demand for it.

[pgt]

Thanks guys. Making duplicates with the move tool was key. With that, I was able to replicate the matrix of labels using a text frame arranged the way I want. It didn't take long at all. I had no idea the move tool was that powerful.