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Positioning Text
Besides changing how the text looks (for example, formatting it), you can also change where it sits. There are lots of text-positioning settings in PowerPoint-some of them familiar, others perhaps not. The following sections describe them.
AutoFit Text
AutoFit Text shrinks the font size of the text, if needed, so that it continues to fit in the box. It kicks in whenever you type more text in the box than will fit at the default size.
One important thing to remember about AutoFit Text is that the font size has not really been changed for the text in a strict sense. The text box's content is all uniformly shrunk down to fit, and incidentally that has involved reducing the text size. If you delete some of the text in the text box, the text will enlarge itself to fill the newly available space, up to its original size. (It won't enlarge higher than its original size with AutoFit.)
To explore AutoFit, do the following:
Start a new Title and Text slide, and type eight bulleted paragraphs in it. (Each can have a single word in it; no need to get fancy.) Notice the font size reported on the Formatting toolbar.
Type two more bulleted paragraphs in the text box. Notice that AutoFit kicks in and makes all the text smaller. Notice also that an AutoFit icon appears in the bottom left corner of the text box.
Click the AutoFit icon to open its menu, as shown in Figure 5-20.
Click Stop Fitting Text to This Placeholder. The text returns to its default size and overflows the text box.
Click the AutoFit icon again and choose Change to Two-Column Layout. The change occurs.
Press Ctrl+Z to undo that last action, click the text box to select it again, and then click the AutoFit icon again and choose AutoFit Text to Placeholder. AutoFit turns back on again for that text box.
Click the AutoFit icon again and choose Control AutoCorrect Options. The AutoCorrect dialog box opens.
In the Apply as you Type section, notice the two AutoFit options for title and text placeholders (see Figure 5-21). If you don't like AutoFit and want to turn it off, clear these checkboxes; otherwise leave them marked.
Click OK.
Figure 5-20: AutoFit settings for a text placeholder box.
Figure 5-21: Turn AutoFit on/off in the AutoCorrect dialog box.
| Note | You can also access the AutoCorrect dialog box with the Tools⇨AutoCorrect Options menu command. |
Text Alignment
Each paragraph has its own horizontal alignment setting, such as Left, Right, Center, or Justify. You can choose these with the Alignment buttons on the Formatting toolbar (see Figure 5-22).
Figure 5-22: Buttons for horizontal text alignment on the Formatting toolbar.
| Note | Justify is an alignment in which the text aligns both with the right and left margins of the text box, and space is added between words and letters to make that happen. Many newspapers use this alignment. It works best for long lines of text where there is a lot of text in which to spread out the extra spacing. Most people don't use it in presentations because it makes the text a bit harder to read. |
You can also change the alignment from the Format menu by choosing Format⇨Alignment and then choosing an alignment from the submenu. The Justify alignment is not available by default from the Formatting toolbar, so you must use the menu method for it (or add it to the toolbar yourself, as explained in Chapter 18).
Internal Margins
A slide does not have any particular margins; content appears on the slide wherever you put it. However, each text box has its own internal margins-in other words, the amount of space between the edge of the text box and where the text starts.
To set the internal margins for a text box, follow these steps:
Double-click the border of the text box to open its Format dialog box.
Click the Text Box tab.
Enter margin settings in the Internal margin section (see Figure 5-23).
Click OK.
Figure 5-23: Change the internal margins for a text box on the Text Box tab.
Notice the three checkboxes at the bottom of the Text Box tab, shown in Figure 5-23. Why would they say "AutoShape?" It's because PowerPoint considers text boxes to be AutoShapes, much like the drawn shapes from the Drawing toolbar.
Here's what each of these checkboxes does:
Word wrap text in AutoShape: This setting is responsible for the text wrapping to the next line when it hits the right margin of the text box. If you turn it off, the text will extend past the right margin.
Resize AutoShape to fit text: This feature makes the text box exactly as tall as it needs to be for the text it contains. It's turned on by default for manual text boxes, and off by default for text placeholder boxes. When it is on, you will be unable to vertically resize the text box manually.
Rotate text within AutoShape by 90°: This setting makes the text appear turned on its side, running from bottom to top.
Vertical Alignment
You might have noticed in the preceding section that I skipped over one of the settings: Text Anchor Point. This is the vertical alignment setting for the text box. (Well, sort of.)
The text anchor point is the point where the text begins. The default is Top. Figure 5-24 shows some of the other possible settings.
Figure 5-24: Text anchor point settings.
Notice in Figure 5-24 the difference between Top and Top Centered (and each of the other pairs). Top Centered is not the same as a top vertical alignment and a centered horizontal alignment. If the text were centered horizontally, then each individual line would be centered. With the Top Centered setting, the longest line of text is centered within the text box, but all the other lines left-align with it (or conform to whatever the horizontal alignment setting is for that paragraph).
| Note | Text anchor point is an important setting if the text box is larger than it needs to be to accommodate the text, but not so important if the text box is sized such that the text exactly fits. The text boxes in Figure 5-24 are all larger than they need to be, so the extra space in the text box is positioned differently according to the text anchor point setting. But remember that in most manual text boxes, by default the Resize AutoShape to Fit Text setting is enabled (Text Box tab of Format Text Box dialog box), so that the vertical size of the text box is always adjusted for an exact fit. Therefore, in a box like that you will see no difference between, for example, Top and Bottom anchor points. |
| Note | About that default I mentioned in the previous note... it's actually a bit more complicated. If you click and drag when you create a manual text box, Resize AutoShape to Fit Text is indeed enabled, but if you click to create a default-sized text box when creating a manual one, it's not enabled by default. |
Line Spacing
There are three line spacing settings:
Paragraph: spacing between lines in a paragraph
Before: spacing before the first line of a paragraph
After: spacing after the last line of a paragraph
All of these are set from the Line Spacing dialog box (choose Format⇨Line Spacing), shown in Figure 5-25. You can set them in either lines or points. If you use the Lines unit of measurement, the actual amount of spacing is based on the font used in the paragraph. If you use the Points unit of measurement, it's a fixed amount regardless of the size of the text.
Figure 5-25: Adjust line spacing before, within, and after a paragraph.
Bullets and Numbering
To remove the bullet entirely from a paragraph, select the paragraph and click the Bullets button on the Formatting toolbar. This toggles the default bullet on/off.
To choose a different bullet character, choose Format⇨Bullets and Numbering and make your selection on the Bullets tab.
| XREF | Chapter 3 explained the process of selecting an alternate bullet character in detail, in the section Changing Bullet Characters. |
To type sub-bullets beneath a bulleted paragraph, press Enter to start a new paragraph and then press Tab; PowerPoint changes the bullet character and indents to the next level. See the next section for more information about indentation.
The same process applies for numbered lists. You can convert a bulleted or unbulleted paragraph to a numbered one by clicking the Numbering button on the Formatting toolbar. Or, choose Format⇨Bullets and Numbering and set up any advanced options on the Numbered tab (see Figure 5-26).
Figure 5-26: Use the Bullets and Numbering dialog box to set up custom bullet characters or different numbering styles.
Tabs and Indents
Tab stops and indents are very different in PowerPoint than in other applications you might have worked with before, like Word.
One big difference is that indent markers apply to the entire text box in PowerPoint, not to individual paragraphs. Another is that the text box can have multiple levels of indent markers-one set for each level of bulleted or numbered lists in that text box.
INDENT MARKERS
To understand how indent markers work, take a peek at the indent markers and tab stops in Slide Master view, as shown in Figure 5-27. In Slide Master view, we see all the indent markers at once.
Figure 5-27: Indent markers on the horizontal ruler in Slide Master view-one set for each bulleted list level.
Notice that for each bulleted list level, there are separate indent markers:
First line indent. This down-pointing triangle represents the positioning of the first line. If it's a bulleted paragraph, it represents the positioning of the bullet character. Drag it to the left or right to adjust it.
Hanging indent. This up-pointing triangle represents the positioning of the second and subsequent lines in a multi-line paragraph. There is sometimes a left-aligned tab stop at this same position as well, indicating where the first line's text will begin if a bullet character is placed at the first line indent location (see the preceding example). If it is a single-line paragraph and not bulleted (or numbered), this indent is ignored. Drag it to the left or right to adjust it.
| Tip | For more precise control while dragging indent markers, hold down the Ctrl key as you drag. |
Left indent. This rectangle controls both of the triangles as a single unit. If you want to move both triangles and maintain the spacing between them, you would drag this rectangle to the left or right.
When you press Tab at the beginning of a paragraph, PowerPoint changes the paragraph's status to the next-lesser outline level. For example, if it was a first-level bullet, it changes it to a second-level one.
TAB STOPS
Notice that there are faint gray lines every 1/2 inch under the ruler. These are the default tab stops. They are evenly spaced tab stops that are in effect for any paragraphs for which you do not set custom tab stops. You can drag one of those little gray lines to the left or right to change their interval.
| Note | The default tab stops in PowerPoint are left-aligned stops; you don't have a choice of alignments for them. If you need more complex alignment options, place a custom tab stop. |
To set a custom tab stop, click the ruler. By default, the tab stop is a left-aligned one, but you can click the tab indicator at the far left end of the ruler (looks like an L when it's set for the default of Left) to toggle through the available types and then click the ruler when it displays the type you want.
EXPERIMENTING WITH INDENTS AND TAB STOPS
From Slide Master view, try this experiment to familiarize yourself with tabs and indents. (It's a rather long experiment, but valuable, I promise.)
Click in the main text box (where the bullets are.) The indent markers appear on the ruler.
Position the mouse pointer over the third Left Indent marker (rectangle) on the ruler, and drag it two inches to the right. Notice that all the indent markers to its right move with it.
Now drag the same Left Indent marker back 1 inch to the left. Notice that the indent markers to its right do not move this time. This tells us that those indent markers that moved in step 1 were not tied to this set specifically; they just moved because they had to get out of the way.
Still working with the third (middle) set of indent markers, drag the First line indent marker (top triangle) to the right so that it lines up with the Hanging indent marker (bottom triangle).
Drag the Hanging indent marker (top triangle) 1/2 inch to the right, so that the First-line indent is once again offset from it.
Close Slide Master view, and display a blank slide that has the Title and Text layout. (Insert one, if needed.) Notice that you see only the first set of indent markers on the ruler when you click in the Text Placeholder.
Type a few words, and then press the Tab key. Notice below the ruler, to the right of the last indent marker, there are evenly spaced faint gray marks. Those are the tab default stops, and the insertion point has moved to the first available one after your typed text.
Point to the tab stop marker that the insertion point is aligned with, and drag it slightly to the left or right. The insertion point moves too.
Type a few more words. Then press Enter. PowerPoint begins a new bulleted paragraph.
Press the Tab key. The paragraph changes to a second-level bulleted item, and now there are two sets of indent markers on the ruler.
Press the Tab key again. The paragraph changes to a third-level bulleted item, and now there are three sets of indent markers. The text will be near the middle of the slide because of the indents.
Press Shift+Tab. The paragraph changes back to a second-level bulleted item, and the third set of indent markers on the ruler disappears, leaving only two.
Discard the presentation file when you're done with the experiment; there's no need to save it.
