I want to type vertical text in the margin of a word document.  In
other words, I want the name of the company to appear running up and
down the left hand margin on each page.  How do I do this?

joenamath-ga:

The comments from corwin02-ga and tappies-ga provide you with most of
what you need, allow me to summarize it in the form of instructions:

1. Open the document that you wish to add the text to;
2. View>Header and Footer
3. Click in the header area, then Insert>Text Box
4. Depending on your version of Word, an area may appear that says
"Create Drawing Here"; click OUTSIDE of this area and draw a text box
(you can reposition/size it later)

   (Note: if you do NOT draw the box outside the 'Drawing Area' then
you will indeed affect the size of the header)

5. Go to File>Page Setup and set the left margin so that there is
enough room between the left edge and the text-area to fit the text
box
6. Using your mouse, resize the text-box to suit your taste within the
left margin of the page
7. With the text box selected, go to Format>Text Direction, and select
the direction you want.

   (Note: if by "vertical text" you mean a vertical stack, then just
set the alignment to 'center' for the text box, and hit Enter after
each character)

8. Use Format>Text Box to access the dialog for changing the fill and
border colors of the text box.
9. Go to the Layout tab in that dialog, and change it from "In Front
Of Text" to "Behind Text" if that suits your tastes better; in either
case, if you have set your left margin properly there should not be
any text for the text box to be either behind or in front of!

Please note that whenever you want to edit this text sidebar, you will
need to View>Header and Footer to 'activate' the text box; otherwise,
during normal edit mode, the text box will be unselectable.

Hope this helps you!

aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher

You can change the text orientation in drawing objects, such as text
boxes, shapes, and callouts, or in table cells so that the text is
displayed vertically or horizontally.
Click the drawing object or table cell that contains the text you want to change. 
On the Format menu, click Text Direction. 
Click the orientation you want.

I appreciate your comment, but I'm going more for a header/footer that
will run lengthwise down the side of the page.  I work in a law firm
and I want the firm name to apear on each page of a legal document.

Header/footers run only along the top and bottom. You won't be able to
get a header/footer to run top to bottom. You'll need to insert some
other type of element into the document for that.

I did this in a bit crooked way. I opened a new document and reduced
the left margin to the minimum. Then I drew a text box on the left
most edge and Typed in my company's name in big letters, text
direction as vertical. Then I changed the view to full screen, and
took a screen shot of it. I saved the image as jpg with medium details
to reduce the size. Then I opened the template that I wanted the
vertical text in, and inserted the saved image as a printed watermark
in background(Format->Background->Printed Watermark->Picture
watermark). I had to adjust the image size a few times (used adobe
photoshop to edit)to make it fit at the perfect place in perfect size
and all. Things you need to remember: adjust the margines so that when
you use the template, the text wont be placed over the watermark (Move
the left margine to the left and move the firstline and hanging indend
to the right, giving space for the watermark). Requires some time to
do the trial-and-error though!

Thanks!
Gopu

ps: Note that the watermark mechanism fades the picture color, so opt
darker color when you make the image, if you select light color, the
watermark may not be visible.

You can actually just insert a text box in the header and size it to
span the entire left edge of the page.

Adding a text box in header will extend the header field till the end
of the textbox. I.E., the body text can be added below the text box
only. If the text field spans the entire length of the page, you can
not write anything on it!

If you change the 'Layout' type for the text box, it will not affect
the size of the header or footer, and will appear on every page that
the header or footer appears on. This is the method previously
prescribed for creating watermarks in Word documents, before MS and
various printer manufacturers addressed watermarks directly.