15 March 2021

Three sources for an X in Word or PowerPoint

Peter Deegan Microsoft 365, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office for Mac, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Powerpoint, Microsoft Word, Office 2007, Office 2010, Office 2013, Office 2016, Office 2019, Office 365 Symbols & Emoji in Microsoft Office, Windows and Mac

Where can you find an X symbol to overlay (or go under) text as used in Three ways to overlay X on text in Word ?

As usual in modern Office, there’s plenty of choices available either within the product or from elsewhere.

Icons

Office 365 and Office 2019 apps have Icons, actually SVG graphics. They are simple to use, re-color, re-size and have a transparent ‘no fill’ background by default.

Insert | Icons then find an X by searching for ‘cross’.

Transparency

Icons / SVG graphics can be recolored and crucially for this application made partly transparent so the text below can be seen. Go to the formatting pane then Format Graphic | Picture Transparency then adjust the transparency setting to suit – we usually go for around 50-60%

Any graphic

Any graphic can work as the symbol overlay as long as it can be made partly transparent so the text shows through (if in front of text) or faint so the text appears over it (if Behind text).

Icons or other SVG graphics are the easiest to work with in Office.

Search the web for SVG graphics

Letter X

Any capital X in any font can work but, unlike an icon or SVG, there’s no transparency option for the letter. Using fainter color options is a partial workaround.

The upside is a lot more styles to choose from, here’s a few variations on the simple letter X we found in the Office font collection.