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About this lesson
Format text in your presentation so that it is legible and perhaps even pleasant to look at!
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Exercise files
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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 content 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 – 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 placeholder rather than to individual text within those items.
- 00:03 This video is all about inserting and
- 00:05 typing text into objects within PowerPoint and formatting.
- 00:09 This can be such a big topic, and we certainly can't cover everything.
- 00:12 Now I've already got some text on the clipboards.
- 00:14 So notice that if click within this title place holder and go Ctrl+V, and
- 00:18 that's the keyboard shortcut to paste.
- 00:21 And then we go the the home tab, the font is Century Gothic at 32 points in size and
- 00:26 there's no other formatting applied, such as bold or italics.
- 00:29 Now, hold the press, because here's where we run into a little bit of a problem.
- 00:33 If you paste the text into that title place holder and
- 00:36 realize that it's 32 points, but it's still Kalinga font,
- 00:40 then you've run into a little problem in Powerpoint 2016.
- 00:44 The issue is that in this version when you paste,
- 00:47 it copies across the font size, but not the font type.
- 00:51 Now a work around for that until it's actually fixed by Microsoft is to then
- 00:55 right click on the slide, go reset slide, go back to the title place holder.
- 01:01 Put your mouse in there, and now it is Century Gothic.
- 01:04 So if you run into that problem, then it hasn't been updated by Microsoft,
- 01:08 just letting you know.
- 01:09 But with this little smart tag button, when we drop it down,
- 01:13 it shows us that the text was pasted in certify the destination theme.
- 01:18 So this result is exactly what would happen if we were to
- 01:20 type the text in manually within the title place holder.
- 01:24 Century Gothic is indeed the default font used for
- 01:26 the title place holder of the active theme.
- 01:29 If we use the same smart tech button to keep the source formatting,
- 01:34 the text is in fact Klinger font and 16 points.
- 01:37 And that's the format that it was first placed on the clip board originally.
- 01:42 We can also use the Smart Tag to paste as a picture, and
- 01:46 the text pops out of the placeholder and winds up on the slide as a picture.
- 01:50 So we go CTRL+Z, paste again as a non-formatted text, and in this case,
- 01:56 it's just the same as the default attributes inherited from the theme.
- 02:02 If we paste the syntax lower down in the content placeholder,
- 02:05 the result is different again, because the destination theme
- 02:08 has set the formatting on this placeholder to Century Gothic 18 point font.
- 02:12 And so that's what's applied to our text.
- 02:15 Now note that these paste format rules also apply to any inserted word art that
- 02:20 we paste into.
- 02:21 Now the ribbon contains various editing options within various groups.
- 02:25 And within the font group, buttons to change the font,
- 02:29 the font size, so to increase or decrease it.
- 02:33 And a button with an eraser on it to clear all of the formatting, so
- 02:37 that we can reset the text back to what it was.
- 02:40 Also bold Italic, underline, double strike through and so on.
- 02:47 We can add a text shadow, and sometimes, that's something that people see in
- 02:51 PowerPoint on a particular text and wonder why there's a fuzzy outline around it.
- 02:56 Now make sure anything that you change to do with fonts, that you do so
- 03:01 to the whole paragraph and not just to a specific line.
- 03:05 It's much better to select the actual boundary of a text box or
- 03:08 a placeholder, and not just some text within it, or it will go wonky.
- 03:12 Now that's Glen's way of saying that your changes should be applied to the whole
- 03:15 amount of the text as part of that box or placeholder.
- 03:19 And not just a special line unless you've got a specific reason to do so.
- 03:23 So let's have a look at the font and paragraph dialog launchers.
- 03:27 In this font dialog box are similar options to those found on the ribbon plus
- 03:31 lots more.
- 03:32 Latin text fonts.
- 03:34 The drop down lets you choose between a theme font such as a heading or body, or
- 03:39 any of the other fonts installed on your system.
- 03:42 All text is where you can change the font color, the under line style or
- 03:46 the underline color, effects, such as, item, such as,
- 03:50 strike through, superscript and capitalization.
- 03:53 Also the equalize character hight check box.
- 03:57 Try this on some of your text yourself and see what occurs.
- 04:00 On the character spacing tab you can change the spacing between text characters
- 04:05 from normal to expanded.
- 04:07 The text will then be more loosely fit and you can change the numbers from 0 to 200
- 04:11 and beyond, you're better of staying between 0 and 10.
- 04:15 Condensed is the opposite of expanded so
- 04:17 the characters will be placed close to each other.
- 04:20 Again, try experimenting with this option and see the result.
- 04:23 Kerning is when the space between the particular letters is adjusted to take
- 04:27 into account the width of the character.
- 04:30 So for example, the characters on either side of the capital letter I would
- 04:34 be brought closer together, so the letters don't look unnaturally placed.
- 04:38 From the paragraph group we find options to change bullets and numbering.
- 04:42 Promote, demote, text alignment such as left or justified,
- 04:47 line spacing, and text direction and so on.
- 04:51 This paragraph dialog launcher also gives us access to more advanced features.
- 04:56 We find it gives us general alignment, indentation, spacing options,
- 05:01 as well as tabs.
- 05:03 Another thing well worth knowing is this little ribbon that is called
- 05:06 the Mini Toolbar.
- 05:07 It gives you options of font, text size, bullets and numbering, and formatting.
- 05:14 And if you can't see it,
- 05:15 the quickest way to make it pop up is to right-click within some text.
- 05:19 So in summary, getting text into PowerPoint is very easy,
- 05:21 as is formatting it.
- 05:23 You have a range of options to work with on the ribbon, within dialogue
- 05:26 boxes that are triggered from dialogue launchers and the mini toolbar.
- 05:30 It's worth your time exploring them, because text in PowerPoint,
- 05:34 even though sometimes it's a bit overused, is still very important.
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