# Making set length text box

LaTex noob here. Im looking for a simple way to make a box in latex that won't expand to fit the text. I have been trying to use a minipage within a fbox but it keeps expanding. I have been trying to make a 3in by 5in box

• should it break the text? – percusse Mar 7 '16 at 0:17
• I looking for it so when it reaches the end of the box, it would start a new line, so i believe so. – Alex Mar 7 '16 at 0:30
• Parbox has three optional parameters the first [t,b,c] locates the baseline, the second specifies the height, and the third [t,b,c,s] locates the text inside the box. [s] stands for span which basically stretches the text to fill the box (requires at least something inside which stretches). – John Kormylo Mar 7 '16 at 2:21

The following code uses the fitting library of the tcolorbox package to create a 3in by 5in box with never expands this size. The text content is rescaled to fit into this box.

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\usepackage[fitting]{tcolorbox}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\newtcboxfit{\mybox}[1][]{%
fit algorithm=hybrid*,
width=3in,
height=5in,
sharp corners,
colframe=black,colback=white,
size=fbox,#1
}

\begin{document}

\mybox{Testbox}

\mybox{Testbox with some more text, more text, more text, more text, more text.}

\mybox{\lipsum[1]}

\mybox{\lipsum[1-2]}

\mybox{\lipsum[1-3]}

\mybox{\lipsum[1-4]}

\end{document}


This output for the last four boxes is: