Many people find Word a better tool for typing text than PowerPoint, because Word is designed specifically for text whereas PowerPoint is more multi-purpose.
It's fairly easy to import text from a Word document into PowerPoint, but unless you format it correctly in Word beforehand, there will be lots of cleanup work to do after the import. The following sections explain how to prepare the text in Word, how to import it into PowerPoint, and how to check for and fix any problems afterward.
Technically, PowerPoint will take any text from any Word document, but it won't be pretty. Suppose, for example, you have a Word document consisting of a series of paragraphs. When you import it into PowerPoint, it might look something like Figure 4-1.
Figure 4-1: A paragraph-style Word document imported into PowerPoint as is.
Figure 4-1 is a prime example of what happens if you don't prepare a document in Word before you import it into PowerPoint. PowerPoint makes each heading a slide title, but the document shown in Figure 4-1 had only one heading. It then puts each paragraph on its own slide, but it doesn't fit them into the text placeholders. It tries to fit the numbered list on a single slide, but there isn't room. Pretty much a train wreck, isn't it? Figure 4-1 also illustrates an important point to remember: regular paragraph-style text does not work very well in PowerPoint. PowerPoint is all about short, snappy bulleted lists and headings.
A good Word document for PowerPoint importing uses heading styles consistently, with the top-level heading style (Heading 1) used for each line that should become a slide title and lower level heading styles (Heading 2, Heading 3, and so on) for each of the bullet points within each slide. There should not be any paragraph text (that is, text that does not have a Heading style). Figure 4-2 shows a document in Word that would import nicely into PowerPoint.
Figure 4-2: This Word document would import well into PowerPoint because of its consistent use of heading styles for the text.
The best way to generate a Word document comprised exclusively of headings is to work in Outline view (choose View⇨Outline). In Outline view, each heading level has a different amount of indent so you can clearly see the relationships among the headings. Figure 4-3 shows the document from Figure 4-2 in Outline view in Word. In fact, when PowerPoint imports from Word, it considers it a "Word Outline," indicating that it is interested primarily in the heading-based outline organization of the document.
Figure 4-3: In Outline view in Word it is easy to see the headings' relationships to one another.
To change a paragraph of text between outline levels in Outline view in Word, press Tab (to demote) or Shift+Tab (to promote) while the insertion point is anywhere within that paragraph. This also changes the style applied to that paragraph to the corresponding heading style.
Following are some other tips for preparing a Word document for PowerPoint import:
Stick with the basic styles only-just Heading 1, Heading 2, and so on.
Delete all blank lines above the first heading; if you don't, you will have blank slides at the beginning of your presentation.
Strip off as much manual formatting as possible from the text in Word, so that PowerPoint's design templates will be free to format the text consistently. To strip off formatting in Word, select the text and press Ctrl+spacebar.
Do not leave blank lines between paragraphs. These will translate into blank slides or blank bulleted items in PowerPoint.
Delete any graphic elements, such as clip art, pictures, charts, and so on. These will not transfer over to PowerPoint anyway and may confuse PowerPoint's Import utility.
The Word document can be saved in Word's native format or in Rich Text Format (*.rtf). Either works fine for importing text into PowerPoint. RTF is a very portable format, so it would be useful if you planned on importing this text not only into PowerPoint but also into some non-Microsoft and/or non-Windows applications.
| Tip |
You don't really need Word to create an outline for import into PowerPoint. A plain-text editor will work just fine, like Notepad, or any other word-processing program. Each line that should be a title slide should start at the left margin; first-level bullet paragraphs should be preceded by a single tab; second-level bullets should be preceded by two tabs; and so on.
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Now that your outline is prepared in Word, it's a snap to import it into PowerPoint. There are two ways to do it. You can use the Slides from Outline command to import the text into an existing presentation file, or you can open a Word or RTF document as a new presentation.
Use this method if you already have started the presentation and have some text or formatting settings you want to keep.
To import a Word outline, follow these steps:
Open the presentation into which you want to import.
Display the Outline pane (at the left) and click where you want the new slides to be imported.
Choose Insert⇨Slides from Outline. The Insert Outline dialog box appears (see Figure 4-4).
Select the document from which you want to import and click Import. The outline of the Word document is inserted into the outline of the presentation, with all Heading 1-styled paragraphs becoming slide titles.
Figure 4-4: Select the Word document (or other outline file format) and click Insert.
| Note |
You can also import tables from Word, and they become PowerPoint tables. However, they don't get imported when using the Slides from Outline command described here. See Chapter 6 for details about working with tables.
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Use this method if you want to start a new presentation based on a Word outline- that is, if you do not already have a presentation started.
To create a new presentation from a Word document, follow these steps:
Choose File⇨Open. The Open dialog box appears.
Change the Files of type drop-down list's setting to All Outlines.
Select the document and click Open. The outline becomes a PowerPoint presentation, with all Heading 1-styled paragraphs becoming slide titles.
| Caution |
PowerPoint can't open or insert your outline in PowerPoint if it is currently open in Word. This limitation is an issue only for Word files, not plain text or RTF format.
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After importing text from an outline, there will probably be a few minor corrections you need to make. Run through this checklist:
The first slide in the presentation may be a blank one. If it is, delete it.
The first slide in the presentation might not have the Title Slide layout applied to it; apply that layout, if needed (see Chapter 3).
There might not be a design template applied; choose one, if needed (see Chapter 2).
Some of the text might contain manual formatting that interferes with the formatting of the design template and makes for inconsistency. Remove any manual formatting that you notice. (One way to do this is to select all the text in the Outline pane by pressing Ctrl+A and then Ctrl+spacebar.)
If some of the text is too long to fit comfortably on the slide, change to a different slide layout, such as the two-column bulleted list, if needed. You might also split the content into two or more slides.
There might be some blank bullet points on some slides (if you missed deleting all the extra paragraph breaks in Word before the import). Delete them.