using text-box in word 2011

I can insert a text-box into my word document but as soon as i click outside of the box it disappears. What am i doing wrong?

Sometimes Word gets confused as to what it should show on top and hides the text in some of the textboxes, or it just disappears.
Undoing sometimes restores the correct view, sometimes not. The blank text boxes would not respond to Bring to front/Send to back.

Once a texbox becomes blank, or vanishes one cannot restore the proper view by changing individual parameters either, so conclusion is that such blank boxes, or the disappearing of them, are caused by the interaction of different text box settings.

The problem can be solved by making sure all text boxes have the same settings. To do this, Shift-click on all of them, then do Format > Object and apply identical wrapping styles (Tight, Through, whatever) and options (like Allow overlap) to all of them.

That should make them behave correctly.
Then try changing their individual options if you need to.

GL, Ibanezi

thanks

thanks for your advice - that works!

Here's a wrinkle on this now-you-see-it now-you-don't text box thing:

I am working on a project with several people. The document originated in the Windows version of MS Office Professional Plus 2010. In order to keep figures & textboxes together, several are inserted in a Drawing Canvas, in the Windows version of MS Word. When I open this up on my Mac, running MS Word for Mac 2011, everything appears OK except that textboxes in one canvas object are filled with text, all others on that page appear blank. Resizing the canvas with visible text makes the text disappear from all text boxes in that canvas, and the text in all text boxes of a different canvas become visible.

I tested this copying & pasting one whole canvas multiple times, so all would have identical settings. same thing happens. The figures were pasted in as enhanced metafiles (again, in a windows environment), and there are no problems whatsoever - they always appear and are movable, etc. Text boxes are editable, at least when text is visible.

However, if I move each canvas to its own page then text becomes visible. Apparently, only one canvas per page is allowed to have visible text on the Mac.

Windows version, no problems. Anyone have ANY ideas or suggestions?