Formatting Text

Quick reference

• 00:04 This video is all about inserting and
• 00:06 typing text into objects within PowerPoint, and formatting.
• 00:09 And this can be such a big topic and we certainly can't cover everything now.
• 00:14 Now I've already got some text on the clipboard.
• 00:15 So notice that if I click within this title placeholder and
• 00:19 go Ctrl+V, and that's a keyboard shortcut to paste.
• 00:22 And then we go to the Home tab, the font is Century Gothic at 32 points in size.
• 00:29 And there's no other formatting applied such as bold or italics.
• 00:33 But with this little smart tag button, when we drop it down,
• 00:36 it shows us that the text was pasted and set to follow the destination theme.
• 00:42 So the result is exactly what would happen if we were to type the text in manually
• 00:46 within the title placeholder.
• 00:49 Century Gothic is indeed the default font used for
• 00:52 the title placeholder of the active theme.
• 00:55 If we use the same smart tag button to keep the source formatting,
• 00:58 the text is Kalinga font.
• 01:01 And that's the format that was first placed on the clipboard
• 01:05 originally of that text.
• 01:06 We can also use the smart tag to paste as a picture.
• 01:10 And the text pops out of the placeholder and winds up on the slide as a picture.
• 01:14 Paste again as non-formatted text.
• 01:17 And in this case,
• 01:18 it's just the same as the default attributes inherited from the theme.
• 01:22 If we paste the same text lower down in this content placeholder,
• 01:26 the result is different again, because the destination theme has set the formatting
• 01:29 on this placeholder to Century Gothic, and so that's what's applied to our text.
• 01:34 Now the ribbon contains various editing options within various groups.
• 01:38 And within the font group, there are buttons to change the font,
• 01:43 the font size to increase or decrease it, and a button with an eraser on
• 01:48 it to clear all of the formatting so that we can reset the text to what it was.
• 01:53 Also bold, italic, underline and so on.
• 01:58 We can also add a text shadow,
• 02:00 and sometimes that's something that people see in PowerPoint on a particular text and
• 02:04 wonder why there's a fuzzy outline around it.
• 02:07 Now make sure that anything that you change, you do with fonts that you do so
• 02:12 with the whole paragraph and not just in a specific line.
• 02:16 It's much better to select the actual boundary of the text box with
• 02:19 a placeholder and not just some text within it or it might go wonky.
• 02:23 Now wonky is Glen's way of saying that changes should be applied to all
• 02:27 of the text and not just part it unless you've got a specific reason to do so.
• 02:31 So let's have a look at the font and paragraph dialog launchers.
• 02:35 In this font dialogue box are similar options to those found on the ribbon,
• 02:39 plus lots more.
• 02:40 Latin text, fonts, the drop-down lets you choose between a theme font such
• 02:44 as heading or body, or any of the other fonts installed on your system.
• 02:49 This area is where you change the font color, the underlined style, or
• 02:53 the underlined color.
• 02:56 Effects includes items such as strikethrough, superscript, and
• 02:59 capitalization, also the equalize character height check box.
• 03:04 Try this on some of your text yourself and see what occurs.
• 03:07 On the Character Spacing tab,
• 03:09 you can change the spacing between text characters from normal to expanded.
• 03:14 The text will then more loosely fit, and
• 03:16 you can change the numbers from 0 to 200 and so on.
• 03:21 You're better off staying with it 0 and 10, by the way.
• 03:24 Condensed is the opposite of expanded, so
• 03:26 the characters will be placed closer together.
• 03:29 Again, try experimenting with this option and see the result.
• 03:31 Kerning is where the space between particular letters is adjusted to
• 03:35 take into account the width of the character.
• 03:37 So for example, characters on either side of the letter I would be brought
• 03:41 closer together so that the letters don't look unnaturally spaced.
• 03:45 For the paragraph group, we find options to change bullets and numbering, promote,
• 03:50 demote, text alignment such as left or justified,
• 03:54 line spacing and text direction, and so on.
• 03:59 This paragraph dialogue launcher also gives us access to more advanced options.
• 04:05 We find it gives us general alignment, indentations,
• 04:08 spacing options, as well as tabs.
• 04:12 Another thing well worth knowing is this little ribbon
• 04:15 that is called the mini toolbar.
• 04:16 It gives you the options of fonts, text size, formatting.
• 04:20 And if you can't see it,
• 04:22 the quickest way to activate it is to right-click on some text.
• 04:26 Remember to highlight the text and
• 04:28 then right-click if you wanna apply to all of that particular text.
• 04:32 So in summary, getting text into PowerPoint is easy as is formatting it.
• 04:36 You've got a range of options to work with on the ribbon, within dialog
• 04:39 boxes that are triggered from dialog launchers, and the mini toolbar.
• 04:44 It's worth your time exploring them because text in PowerPoint,
• 04:47 even though it is very much overused, is still very important.

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