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About this lesson
Format text in your presentation so that it is legible and perhaps even pleasant to look at!
Lesson versions
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Exercise files
Download the PowerPoint presentation used in the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Formatting Text.pptx41.1 KB
Quick reference
Topic
Inserting text and controlling its format.
When to use
To type or paste text into a presentation.
Instructions
Pasting text
- When text is to be pasted into a placeholder, the Smart Tag drop-down item can be used to:
- Use Destination Theme – the text will inherit its properties from those of the destination content placeholder.
- Keep Source Formatting – the text will inherit its properties from those of the source content placeholder.
- Picture – the text will be pasted to the slide as a picture.
- Keep Text Only – the text will be pasted as unformatted.
Dialog launchers on the ribbon
- The font dialog launcher on the ribbon allows you to work with:
- On the Font tab – the Latin text fonts, font color, underline styles, and various font effects.
- On the Character Spacing tab – character spacing of expanded, normal or condensed.
- Kerning for fonts – character spacing between letters of different widths.
The mini toolbar
- The toolbar appears close to where you are working with text and allows you to change font type, size and various font effects quickly. If it doesn’t appear, right-click anywhere within the text.
Also note:
It’s better to apply font formatting to the boundary of a text box or content placeholder rather than to individual text within those items.
Login to download- 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.
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