You have several meetings with some clients in the next few days and you have realized that you don’t have any business cards with you, without which you couldn’t leave your contact information for future contacts. So you thought of creating them yourself due to the limited time available and, for this reason, you are trying to find a way to make them with Word, the software you often use for your work.
Excuse me? You have no idea how to proceed? Don’t worry, because I’m here to help you. In today’s guide, in fact, I’ll show you how to make business cards in Word using all the latest versions of the software for Windows and macOS and, if you’re interested, even its mobile version for Android and iOS.
Are you looking forward to learning more about this topic? Well, then let’s not waste any more precious time and get right down to business! Sit down nice and comfy and pay close attention to the procedures that I will explain in the next chapters. Put into practice the instructions that you will find below and you will see that you will easily achieve your goal. Are you ready? Perfect, then let’s get started immediately! I just wish you a good reading and, above all, a good job!
Make business cards in Microsoft Word
Using Microsoft Word you can make business cards that can be printed directly on your printer. The procedure to follow only requires a bit of time and patience: here it is explained in detail.
Create and set up a table
When you start Microsoft Word, the first thing you have to do is create a new text document, using the Blank Document button. After you find yourself inside the blank page, you’ll have to start designing the workspace, creating a table that will contain the different business cards.
In case you didn’t know, a business card has a standard size of 8.5 x 5.5 cm. A Word sheet is usually A4 in size, measuring 21 x 29.7 cm. Taking these measurements and the presence of print margins into account, a maximum of eight business cards can fit on a vertical Word sheet, spread across a table.
If, on the other hand, you have a Word sheet in landscape orientation, you can create a table containing nine business cards, one more than the vertical orientation of the page.
Having said that, let’s consider the most convenient layout, i.e. the one that has the sheet in a horizontal position, so that you have more business cards per page. To do this, go to the Layout tab and press the Orientation button, choosing the Horizontal option in the box that appears.
Now, go to the Insert tab and click on the Table button. In the screen that appears, click Insert Table and set the number of columns and rows to 3. In the Fixed column width field, type the value 8.5 and press OK.
After the table has been automatically drawn on the sheet, move the mouse over its upper left margin, so that the mouse icon changes to one with a black downward arrow. Then select all three columns in order to highlight them.
After that, right-click on the highlighted area and select Table Properties from the context menu. On the Row tab, check the Specify height item, type the value 5.5 and set the value Exact in the Row height field. Then press the OK button to confirm. If you have followed the steps above to the letter, you will have created a 3×3 area containing nine boxes for business cards.
If you want to learn more about how to create a table in Microsoft Word, I recommend reading this guide of mine.
Insert logo
On a business card, it would be good to include a logo that immediately distinguishes one business card from another. If you don’t already have one, you can make one using the tips I’ve outlined in my guide on how to create a custom logo.
Remember: the area around the logo must be transparent so that you can place the logo on the business card cleanly, without smearing or color contrasts. The transparency can be removed directly in Word when you import the image. However, make sure that the background color is not contained within the logo itself, so that Word’s transparency tool can do its best work.
To import the logo, select the typing indicator outside the table and then go to the Insert tab. Then click on the Image button, search for the logo you want to insert into the business card and insert it into the Word document. Now resize the image using the indicators in the four corners of the grid and then drag it into a cell of the table.
From now on, the procedures will be performed only for one cell, but when you are satisfied with the result, you will have to copy and paste all the elements of one cell into the others, so that all business cards will look the same.
As you may have noticed, the logo will be placed in the upper left corner of the cell, as the formatting is set to left alignment. To detach the image from the text, click on the text and press the icon of a sheet with a bow inside, which you can find beside it, and select the option In front of text, in the box that appears. Now you can move the logo to any position in the cell without it interfering with the text you are going to type.
Change the background color
After performing the steps mentioned in the previous paragraphs, it’s time to give your business cards some color. Also, if the table margins are too marked, you can think about making them more opaque. All these operations can be reached through the Table Properties panel.
First of all, highlight the whole table by clicking on the four arrows icon in the upper left corner. Then right-click on the table and select Table Properties from the context menu.
At this point, on the screen that you see, go to the Table tab and click on the Borders and Background button to access the table customization settings. Now, on the Background tab, use the drop-down menu under the heading Fill to select any color for the business card.
Now, go to the Edges tab and select the type of line hatching. Then choose a light color (gray or white) and set the lowest thickness value. After that, press the OK button to confirm your changes to the table.
Format text
After setting up the business card graphically, it’s time to add the different information inside it. I do not recommend you to write directly into the cell, instead I suggest you add the text via Text Box. To do this, go to the Insert tab and press the Text Box button. In the box that appears, choose the Plain Text Box option to add it to the document.
In this way, you will have added a box where you can type the text you prefer. In case the color automatically set by the text box does not match the customization you did in the previous chapters, you can decide to disable its background color and border. To do that, click on the text box and move to the Format tab, which you can find at the top. Now choose the No color option from the Shape fill and Shape outline buttons. I remind you to de-color the text box, as I explained for images in this chapter.
To format your text, then move to the Home tab and choose all the tools you need, such as bold, italic, font, or font size. If you want to learn more about using Word’s text formatting tools, I recommend reading this guide of mine.
Adding decorative elements
We’re almost there – just a few finishing touches and your business card will be ready. For the different textual information you’ve added, such as phone number, email or office address, you can add icons.
You can definitely find several icons on the Web to import as images, but you can also add them via Unicode characters. Don’t worry: nothing difficult! To do this, just open the Windows emoji keyboard, using the combination Win + . (dot) or the macOS one (ctrl + command + space bar).
Once you see the emoji panel, click on the figure you want to insert next to the text, so you can add it in a flash. Also, know that you can add additional decorative elements to the text, which you can find in the Insert tab, using the geometric shapes that can be reached via the Shapes button.
When you are completely satisfied with your work, you can take care of printing business cards. On that note, I recommend reading my guide on how to print business cards.
Make business cards using templates
If you don’t have time to devote to designing a business card, you can rely on Word templates. After launching Microsoft Word, instead of choosing Blank Document, click on the heading Tickets, found under the search bar at the top.
After that, wait a few seconds for a list of business cards to appear that you can customize to your liking. When you’ve located the one that can suit you, double-click on its thumbnail, to open the document template in Word.
What’s left for you to do now is to personalize the card with your personal information, referring to what I have indicated in the previous chapters.
Note: Word is also available as an online service that can be used directly from the browser, however, in this “incarnation” (which is less feature-rich than the standard one for Windows and macOS) it does not support the sheet formatting options useful for creating business cards, nor the predefined templates for creating them in a few clicks. It is therefore unsuitable for the purpose.
Make business cards on smartphones and tablets
On smartphones and tablets, you can use the Microsoft Word app to create your own business cards, albeit with some limitations. Although Microsoft Word is free to download on Android, iOS, and Windows 10 Mobile (on devices with screens smaller than 10.1″), there is a subscription to Office 365 to unlock some additional features.
This subscription, which costs 7 Euros/month or 69 Euros/year, allows you, for example, to change the page orientation, set a background color for table cells or apply multiple colors for formatting and geometric shapes. For these reasons, you will only be able to make simple business cards due to the limitation of the free version.
In general, to create a business card, I suggest you follow the same steps I’ve outlined in this chapter. However, keep in mind that the tools I mentioned are present in the top bar if you’re using the Microsoft Word app on tablets; alternatively, on smartphones, you can access the Word tools via the drop-down menu accessible thanks to the ? (on Android) or ? (on iOS) icon, located at the bottom right.