Text Box versus Frames in Microsoft Word

Both text boxes and frames are flexible containers for text; flexible in the sense you can reposition them and resize them. Frames historically were used when you wanted to wrap text around a graphic. These days you will probably use text boxes more often than frames. Use frames in special cases if you need to insert comments, footnotes, endnotes or fields like AUTONUM.  Text boxes can be converted to frames by clicking Format->Text Box->Convert Text Box to Frame (Alt-OOF).