Formatting Text

Quick reference

• 00:04 This video is all about inserting and typing text into objects within PowerPoint and formatting, and this can be such a big topic and we
• 00:10 certainly can’t cover everything. Now I’ve already got some text on the clipboard so notice that if I click within this title placeholder and go CTRL V,
• 00:18 and that’s the keyboard shortcut to paste, and then we go to the home tab the font is Century Gothic at 32 points in size, and there’s no other
• 00:25 formatting applied such as Bold or Italics, but with this little smart tag button, when we drop it down, it shows us that the text was pasted in
• 00:34 set to follow the destination theme, so this result is exactly what would happen if we were to type the text in manually within the title
• 00:42 placeholder. Century Gothic is indeed the default font used for the title placeholder of the active theme. If we use the same smart tag button to
• 00:51 keep the source formatting, the text is in fact Kalinga font and 16 point. And that’s the format that it was first placed on the clipboard
• 01:00 originally. We can also use the smart tag to paste as a picture, and the text pops out of the placeholder and winds up on the slide as a
• 01:07 picture. We go CTRL Z, paste again as non-formatted text and in this case it’s just the same as the default attributes inherited from the
• 01:17 theme. If we paste the same text lower down in this content placeholder, the result is different again because the destination theme has set
• 01:24 the formatting on this placeholder to Century Gothic, 18 point font, and so that’s what’s applied to our text. Now note that these paste
• 01:33 format rules also apply to any inserted word art that we paste into. Now the ribbon contains various editing options within various groups and
• 01:41 within the font group, are buttons to change the font, the font size, so to increase or decrease it, and a button with an eraser on it to clear all of
• 01:50 the formatting so that we can reset the text back to what it was. Also bold, italic, underline, double strike through, and so on. We can add a
• 02:01 text shadow and sometimes that’s something that people see in PowerPoint on a particular text and wonder why there’s a fuzzy outline
• 02:09 around it. Now make sure anything that you change to do with fonts that you do so to the whole paragraph and not just a specific line. It’s
• 02:16 much better to select the actual boundary of a text box or a placeholder and not just some text within or it will go wonky. No that’s Glen’s way
• 02:23 of saying that your changes should be applied to the whole amount of text as part of that box or placeholder and not just a special line, unless
• 02:32 you’ve got a specific reason to do so. So let’s have a look at the font and paragraph dialog launchers. In the font dialog box are similar
• 02:40 options to those found on the ribbon, plus lots more. Latin texts fonts, the drop down lets you choose between a theme font such as a heading
• 02:48 or body, or any of the other fonts installed on your system. All text is where you change the font color, the underline style, or the underline
• 02:57 color. Effects includes items such as strike through, superscript and capitalization; also the equalize character height check box. Try this on
• 03:07 some text yourself and see what occurs. On the character spacing tab you can change the spacing between text characters from normal to
• 03:14 expanded. The text will then be more loosely fit and you can change the numbers from 0 to beyond 200, you’re better off staying between
• 03:22 0 and 10. Condensed is the opposite of expanded so the characters will be placed close to each other. Again try experimenting with this
• 03:31 option and see the result. Kerning is where the space between particular letters is adjusted to take into account the width of the character, so
• 03:38 for example, characters on the either side of the capital letter I would be brought closer together so the letters don’t look unnaturally spaced.
• 03:46 From the paragraph group we find options to change bullets and numbering, promote, demote, text alignment such as left or justified,
• 03:55 line spacing and text direction and so on. This paragraph dialog launcher also gives us access to more advanced options. We find it gives us
• 04:04 general alignment, indentation, spacing options, as well as tabs. Another thing well worth knowing is this little ribbon that is called the
• 04:12 mini toolbar. It gives you options of fonts, text size, bullets and numbering, formatting, and if you can’t see it the quickest way to make it pop
• 04:21 up is to right click within some text. So in summary, getting text into PowerPoint is very easy, as is formatting it; you have a range of
• 04:29 options to work with on the ribbon, within dialog boxes that are triggered from dialog launchers and the mini toolbar. It’s worth your time
• 04:36 exploring them because text in PowerPoint, even though sometimes a bit overused, is still very important.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.