By default, a text box has no border and no fill. "No border" means that there is no line around the outside of the text box. "No fill" means that its background is transparent, so whatever is behind it shows through.
These defaults work well most of the time, because on a typical slide you want the text to appear to be floating over the background, without any obvious division between it and the rest of the slide. However, in the process of creating your own special effects and designs, you might decide that a border and/or fill is a good idea.
When using a border or fill, the size of the text box becomes more of an issue because the audience can clearly see where the text box's boundaries are. (When it's transparent and borderless, they can't tell, so it doesn't matter.) Therefore, you might want to change the size and/or positioning of the text box after applying a border or fill to it.
If you want the border or fill to appear on every slide in the presentation, make the changes described in the following sections to the Slide Master (see Chapter 3). If you want them on only an individual slide, work with the text boxes on just that slide.
| Tip |
If you want a border and/or fill to apply to multiple-but not all-text boxes on multiple slides, use Format Painter to copy the formatting from one box to another.
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A text box's border can have these attributes:
Line color: Choose one of the scheme colors (recommended) or a specific color or pattern. Your audience won't be able to notice a pattern unless the line is really thick, though; the line will simply look broken or dotted.
Line style: If chosen from the Line Style button on the Drawing toolbar, this includes both the type of line (single, double, and so on) and its weight (thickness). If chosen from the Format dialog box, style and weight are separately configurable settings.
Dash style: The default is a solid line, but you can choose a dashed or dotted line instead.
You can set a text box's border either using the buttons on the Drawing toolbar or using the Format dialog box for the text box.
If you use the toolbar, you must make three separate choices for the border. Select the text box and then do the following:
Open the Line Color button's menu and choose a color, as shown in Chapter 7.
Open the Line Style button's menu and choose a line style, as shown in Figure 5-11. Notice that line weights and line styles are all mixed together on this menu. If the combination you want doesn't appear, choose More Lines to open the Format dialog box (see the next section, Dialog Box Method).
Open the Dash Style button's menu and choose a dash style-or, skip this to stick with the solid line.
Figure 5-10: Choose a color for the border.
Figure 5-11: Choose a line style for the border.
The dialog box method's main advantage is that the line style and line weight are separate so you have more combinations to choose from. A default weight was assigned when you made your selection from the Style list, but you can change it. To set the text box border via dialog box, 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 Colors and Lines tab.
In the Line area, use the Color, Style, and Dash drop-down lists to make your selections for the border.
Increment the Weight setting up or down as needed to adjust the line weight.
Click OK.
| Tip |
To make your chosen border style the default, mark the Default for new objects checkbox. (This is also the case for the text box fill you choose, described in the following section.)
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The fill is the background color, pattern, or image for the text box. Each text box could have a different fill-in theory. However, that would be pretty ugly! For best results, stick with the same fill for the text boxes on every slide unless there is a compelling reason to make a change for an individual slide.
The same fill effects are available for text boxes as for backgrounds (discussed in Chapter 3, and again for objects in Chapter 7). These include solid color, gradient, pattern, texture, and picture. The "No Fill" setting, which is the default, is for the box to be transparent. (See Figure 5-12.)
Figure 5-12: Choose a fill color for the text box.
To fill a text box via toolbar, select the text box and then open the Fill Color button's menu (from the Drawing toolbar) and choose a color or effect. Same deal as with the line-scheme colors are best, if possible. Fill Effects opens the Fill Effects dialog box, where you can choose from among the special effects. I'll cover these effects more thoroughly in Chapter 7.
The dialog box method of filling a text box has one advantage: it allows you to set a transparency amount for the fill. A partially transparent fill allowsthe background to show through to some extent. A completely transparent fill is equivalent to having no fill at all. A completely opaque (non-transparent) fill is a complete fill with no background peeking through. Figure 5-13 shows the difference between a 0% fill, 50% fill, and 100% fill when placed on a picture background. At higher transparencies than 0%, the color appears as a semi-transparent "wash" over the background.
Figure 5-13: Examples of various fill transparency settings.
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 Colors and Lines tab.
In the Fill section, open the Color drop-down list and choose the desired fill color or effect.
Drag the Transparency slider or enter a transparency percentage in its text box (see Figure 5-14).
Click OK. If you don't like the results, do it over again. (You can also click Preview instead of OK to apply the change without closing the dialog box, as a bit of a timesaver if you're not sure what results you will get with a particular setting.)
Figure 5-14: Applying a fill color from the Format dialog box enables you to set a transparency amount as well as a fill.
Shadows and 3-D effects are mutually exclusive; you can choose one or the other but not both.
| Caution |
Both of these features make the text box look as if it were set apart from the slide background, and remember, earlier I said that it's actually relatively uncommon to want that; most of the time your text boxes will blend seamlessly into the slide background. So use these effects strategically and sparingly on text boxes.
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The Shadow button on the Drawing toolbar opens a menu; pick the direction that the shadow should extend from the object and select the length of the shadow. One of the little quirks (or, as Microsoft calls them," features") of a shadow is that if you apply it to a text box with no fill, the text within the text box receives the shadow. If the text box has a fill applied, however, the shadow applies to the outside of the text box. Figure 5-15 shows some examples, as well as the Shadow button's menu. For more options, choose Shadow Settings from the menu to display the Shadow Settings toolbar.
Figure 5-15: Shadows apply to the text in an unfilled text box or to the outside border in a filled text box.
| XREF |
The Shadow Settings toolbar is discussed in more detail in Chapter 7.
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3-D effects can be applied only to text boxes that have either a line or a fill (or both); when you select an unfilled, unbordered text box, the 3-D effects will not be available. Click the 3-D button on the Drawing toolbar and choose the angle and depth you want. (Or, choose 3-D Settings to display the 3-D Settings toolbar with more options, covered in Chapter 7.) See Figure 5-16.
Figure 5-16: A 3-D effect applied to a filled text box.
| Tip |
There is a way around that "filled/bordered only" rule. Choose a fill color for the text box, but then set its Transparency setting to 100%. (See the preceding section, Setting a Text Box Fill.) This makes the background of the 3-D object transparent, so it's almost like there's no fill. However, the sides of the 3-D effect are still solid and appear in the color that you chose for the fill (see Figure 5-17). Figure 5-17: A 3-D effect applied to a filled text box that has 100% transparency.
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