PowerPoint.Advanced.Presentation.Techniques [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Sizing and Positioning a Text Box

You're probably already familiar with the drag-and-drop methods of sizing and positioning objects in PowerPoint, and they work just fine for text boxes. However, there are a few quirks, and some alternative methods involving dialog boxes and precise settings, so check out the following sections if you're interested in the finer points.

Sizing

All text boxes can be resized; just drag their selection handles (the white circles around the border). However, the type of text box and the amount of content it contains make a difference in these ways:

By default, a text placeholder box will AutoFit the text if you make the box smaller, such that the text no longer will fit. If you turn AutoFit off for it (see the following note), the text will run out the bottom of the box. AutoFit is not available in manual text boxes.

By default, a manual text box has the Resize AutoShape to Fit Text option turned on, which causes the following behaviors:

You cannot decrease its height if it would mean that the text would no longer fit.

You cannot expand its height beyond what is necessary to hold the current text within it.

To turn those behaviors off, double-click the text box's border and deselect the Resize AutoShape to Fit Text checkbox on the Text Box tab. You can then resize the text box vertically as desired. That feature is turned off by default for text placeholder boxes, but you can turn it on for them in the same way.

For more precise resizing, you might want to use the Format dialog box. (Its exact name varies depending on the type of text box.) To do this, follow these steps:

Double-click the text box's border. Its Format dialog box appears (Format Placeholder for a placeholder box or Format Text Box for a text box).

Click the Size tab (see Figure 5-4).

Enter a precise Height and Width in the boxes provided. Measurements are in inches.

Click OK.

Figure 5-4: Specify a precise height and width for a text box on the Size tab of its Format dialog box.

Moving

To move a text box, select it and then drag the border with the mouse. Don't drag on a selection handle (white circle), but anywhere else on the border is fair game.

There is also a dialog box method for moving, useful when precise positioning is important (for example, to position the same item on multiple slides in exactly the same spot on each).

For the dialog box method, follow these steps:

Double-click the text box's border. Its Format dialog box appears (Format Placeholder for a placeholder box or Format Text Box for a text box).

Click the Position tab (see Figure 5-5).

Enter a precise position measurement for vertical and horizontal positioning. Use the associated drop-down list for each to specify where the measurement begins: Top-Left Corner or Center.

Click OK.

Figure 5-5: Specify a precise position for the text box, either in relation to its top-left corner or in relation to its center.

Rotating

Text boxes can be rotated to create tilted text. The text inside rotates as the box itself rotates. (There are other ways of tilting text, such as creating WordArt, but let's assume for the moment that you want a real rotated text box.) This can be useful for whimsical or artsy special effects, but I wouldn't recommend it for the bulk of your presentation-unless you want the audience to be watching you with their heads cocked to the side, that is!

Dragging a rotation handle is useful when you want to rotate by "eyeballing it." To rotate a manual text box, drag its rotation handle. That's the green circle at its top when it is selected (see Figure 5-6).

Figure 5-6: Rotate a manual text box by dragging its rotation handle.

A text placeholder box does not have a rotation handle, but you can still rotate it with drag-and-drop. Do the following:

Select the text placeholder box.

On the Drawing toolbar, choose Draw⇨Rotate or Flip⇨Free Rotate. Green circles replace the white circles in the corners of the text box.

Position the mouse pointer over any of the green circles and drag to rotate the box (see Figure 5-7).

Press Esc or click elsewhere on the slide to cancel the rotation mode when finished.

Figure 5-7: Rotate a text placeholder box by entering Free Rotate mode and then dragging a corner.

You might have noticed on the Draw menu in step 2 that there are other rotation commands: Rotate Left and Rotate Right. These rotate by 90 degrees in the specified direction, and are useful if you want the object to be exactly perpendicular to its current position, or exactly upside down (in which case, you would rotate it twice in the same direction).

You can also rotate a precise amount via a dialog box method. This is useful when creating a graphic that must be rotated exactly the same as another graphic, for example. Here are the steps for the dialog box method:

Double-click the text box's border. Its Format dialog box appears (Format Placeholder for a placeholder box or Format Text Box for a text box).

Click the Size tab (which you saw back in Figure 5-4).

Enter a number in the Rotation text box (or use the up/down increment buttons to change the value).

Click OK.

Flipping

Flipping an object creates a mirror image of it. You can flip either vertically or horizontally. However, flipping a text box does not exactly create a mirror image of it, in that the text does not appear backwards the way it would if you held it up to real mirror. The text continues to appear in normal left-to-right orientation, and all the letters appear normally.

So what does flipping do, then?

For a text box in its default rotation setting (that is, the text is straight across), horizontal flipping does nothing. If you think about it, it makes sense. The mirror image from side-to-side of a text box would be an identical text box except the text would be backwards, but since PowerPoint doesn't allow the text to be backward, so there's no change.

Vertical flipping turns the box upside down, so that the letters are upside down, as shown in Figure 5-8. Notice that the text still runs normally, but you have to stand on your head to read it. (In this example, I've made a copy and flipped the copy so you can see the original at the same time.)

Figure 5-8: The result of flipping a text box vertically.

To flip a text box, follow these steps:

Select the text box.

On the Drawing toolbar, choose Draw⇨Rotate or Flip⇨Flip Vertical or Flip Horizontal.

If you have rotated the text box, the result of flipping horizontally changes a bit. Again, if you think about it, it makes sense; a text box that angles 45 degrees to the left, when flipped, should angle 45 degrees to the right...right? Figure 5-9 shows the result of flipping such a text box horizontally.

Figure 5-9: The result of flipping a rotated text box horizontally.

Notice in Figure 5-9 that the copy has a rotation handle and the original does not. The original was a text placeholder box, but when I copied it, the copy was a manual text box. Remember, you cannot create text placeholder boxes; they come only from slide layouts. A copy of a placeholder is "created," so it is a manual text box by definition.