PowerPoint without text looks a bit weird, doesn't it? Of course, you can have a slideshow with images and graphics and maybe even embed videos in your slides. But without text, your audience will probably be confused about what the presentation is about. On the other hand, too much text (or a text-based presentation) is also not a good idea. So what is the proper way to handle and work with text in PowerPoint? Keep reading because you will find out in this article!
The power of using text in PowerPoint
The written word was, and still is, a powerful means of communication. Even with the advent of modern technology, nothing can replace text. An oral message is powerful in itself. But when you write and people can see your words, your message becomes even more powerful.
An oral message can be misconstrued or misconstrued, a written message not so much. That's because, as humans, we are visual beings. When we see something with our own eyes, we tend to believe it and accept it as real.
That's why PowerPoint is such a powerful piece of software. Allows presenters to share a visual form of their message. In short, it is a visual aid. ANDTextit is one of the best elements you can use to enlighten and persuade your audience. With a single word, you can change the way others think and act around you. The message written on your slides can impact your audience in ways you may not have thought of.
However, there is a caveat with using text. Just because it's a powerful communication tool doesn't mean you should go overboard with your slides. The truth is, while text is helpful, it can also be detrimental if there's too much of it on your slides.
Who would want to see a presentation with nothing but text? Would you like to see 100 slides that look like the next slide? Or would you rather be doing something more productive somewhere else?
This is not the correct way to work with text in PowerPoint!
Slides that look like the screenshot above have given rise to the phenomenon known as "Death by PowerPoint." So if you don't want to ruin a potential speaking and presenting career, make sure you use the wording correctly.
Let's start with the basics of using text in PowerPoint.
In this section of the article, I'll show you some quick tips on how to add text and formatting to make your presentation livelier.
1. How to Add Text to Existing Text Placeholders
Fortunately, adding text to PowerPoint is a fairly straightforward process. When you first open PowerPoint on your computer, you'll probably see the title slide layout with its two text boxes:
To add text, all you have to do is follow the instructions on the slide: double tap to add a title or subtitle. All other layouts in the default PowerPoint theme have text boxes. Everyone except the onearchiveProvision.
2. Don't see a text box? How to add a text box to your slide
For example, if you are aarchivelayout for your slide, you'll first need to add a text box so you can, well, add some text. You can't just write something on the slide without adding a text box. Gonnainsertion>Text's box. You will notice that your normal selection cursor changes to a precision cursor. In this case, that means you can now draw your text box anywhere on the screen.
Once you've drawn your text box, you can start typing anywhere in the box. The default font in PowerPoint is Calibri. If you're not happy with that and want to use something else, you'll need to select something else from the font dropdown.
3. Preview what your text will look like
Viewing your text is easy. Just highlight the text you want to edit and go toHeim>fuentes.Click the Fonts dropdown menu (make sure the text is still highlighted). Hover over the different options and you will notice that the text changes its appearance. Here's an example:
In the screenshot above, I hovered my mouse over the Algerian font and my text on the slide automatically changed appearance.
The nice thing is that you don't have to click on a source to see it. Just move your mouse and you'll see which font goes well with your text! If you're happy with a specific look, click the font name to make the change official.
4. How to replace the font used in your slide
There are two ways to do this. You can (1) change the font before you write something or (2) write something and change it later. The good news is that either of these methods will result in a fresh (hopefully prettier) font in just a few clicks.
When choosing fonts, you're not limited to using what comes with your operating system. You don't have to stick to Calibri, Arial, or Times New Roman. You can download any font from the Internet and install it on your computer so that you can use it in PowerPoint.
For free fonts, I highly recommend using it.google fontsin your presentation. It's open source and has over 900 fonts to choose from! You can download your favorite fonts from Google manually or use a font manager app like Fontssky fountains.
However, be careful not to go overboard with the fonts. It is very easy to sacrifice the look of fonts. Before you know it, you will have wasted hours analyzing and comparing different sources. So keep it simple if you want to keep your sanity. Choose 2-3 fonts for the entire presentation to give it a more consistent and professional look.
5. Would you like to change the default font of your current presentation?
It can be very tedious to change the font for each individual slide. Imagine if you had to create 100 slides and change the font on each of those slides! Oh the terror! The fifth slide would probably have me pulling my hair out in frustration!
Fortunately, PowerPoint makes it easy to change the default font. To see how:
In betweento see>use masters>fuentes>customize fonts, so:
Clicking Customize Fonts will bring up this dialog to create new themed fonts on screen:
Choose the font for the title and the font for the body. Check out the sample to the right to see if the pair would look good on your slides. Once you find the right combination, give your new theme font a name and click the Save button. All of your slides will now use your new font pair. If you want to use a third font on some slides, you can do it manually. Note that this font pair is only saved in the current presentation. It does not automatically carry over to future submissions.
6. Change the default font for future presentations
If you want to use the same font pair over and over again in future presentations, save it as a PowerPoint template. This is the only way to avoid going back to Calibri and updating the fonts every time.
To save a presentation (and your preferred fonts) as a template, clickarchive>Save as. Navigate to yourDocumentspasta and pasta productsCustom office templates. Give your new template a name and make sure you have selected itPowerPoint Template (*.potx)in the drop down list. Finally press thesave not computerI like it.
Every time you open a new PowerPoint file, you'll see a new tab calledtypewhere your new template is saved. When you're in an open PowerPoint file, don't just press CTRL+N (or Command+N) on your keyboard, as this will immediately open a blank file. click insteadarchive>nuevo, and you will see something like this:
As you can see, my new template called Favorite Fonts Template is now one of my favorite templates every time I open a new PowerPoint presentation.
Text formatting options in PowerPoint
You've probably used Microsoft Word before. If so, you'll feel right at home with PowerPoint's font options. Let me give you a quick overview of what you can do to format your text. But first, here's a screenshot of what the title block looks like to help you progress through the tutorial:
(1) The font box options
Title block (top row from left to right):
- Fuente- Click the dropdown menu to choose a new font for your text. Alternatively, if you already know the font you want to use, you can type it directly in the font field.
- font size- Choose the font size for your text. For presentations, make sure the font size is appropriate, i. H. must be read by everyone in the room. That would be around a size 30 or larger.
- Increase font size- Make your text a bit bigger. keyboard shortcut isCONTROL+CAPA+>.
- decrease font size– Make your text a bit smaller. keyboard shortcut isCONTROL+CAPA+<.
- Clear all format- Click this button to remove all formatting from your text and return to the default formatting style.
Title block (bottom row from left to right):
- Clearly– Emphasize your text by making it bold (keyboard shortcut: CTRL+B).
- Italic– Italicize your text (keyboard shortcut: CTRL+I).
- underlined– Underline the text you want to highlight (keyboard shortcut: CTRL+U).
- in shade- Click the S button if you want to add a slight shadow behind the selected text.
- lined- If you want to emphasize that you should NOT do something, then the crossed out button is your friend.
- character spacing- Each font has default spacing, but you can override it in PowerPoint. These are the character spacing options: very tight, tight, normal, loose, very loose. There's also a custom spacing option so you can really position your text based on the look you're trying to achieve.
- moving case- Suppose you have written a lot of text on your slide and suddenly you need to change the case. No need to retype everything manually, you just need to change the case in PowerPoint. Options are: case, lowercase, UPPERCASE, capitalize each word, and UPPERCASE.
- text highlight color- Make your text stand out by highlighting it in a bright color.
- Font Color- Click this button to change the color of your text. You can choose from theme colors, default colors, and colors from a color wheel. There's even an eyedropper tool. So, for example, if you want to copy the color of an image onto your slide, you can use this tool to quickly edit the color of the text.
More font options (click the small arrow in the bottom right corner of the font panel)
If you need finer control over the appearance of the font, click the small arrow in the lower right corner of the font box. As you can see in the screenshot below, you can choose the underline style and color, duplicate strikethrough text, add superscripts and subscripts, and even match character heights. And in the next tab, you can access character spacing options for your text.
(2) Paragraph Box Options
In this section, we'll talk about the different paragraph options so you can sort and organize the text on your slides. Here's a screenshot of the paragraph box:
Paragraph box (top row from left to right):
- pellets- If you want to use a bulleted list on your slide, click this button. If you want to change the appearance of the marker, click the little white arrow next to the marker icon.
- numeration- It will help you create a numbered list on your slide. For more numbering options, click the white arrow next to the numbering icon.
- Decrease list level– This will reduce the indentation level.
- Increase list level– This will increase the bleed level.
- line spacing- The default line spacing (or space between lines of text) in PowerPoint is 1.0. Click this button to increase the space between lines and make your text more attractive.
- text direction– You don't have to limit yourself to the horizontal way of displaying the text. If you want variety, you can play with the direction of the text. You can change the text alignment to vertical. You can also stack your text and rotate it in the desired direction.
- aligned text- Change the alignment of your text in the text box. You can align it left, center, right, center left, center center, and center right.
Paragraph box (bottom row from left to right):
- linksbündig- Click this button to align your text to the left
- center- This will center your text in the middle of the text box
- to align to the right- This will align your text to the right
- Justify- This will distribute your text evenly within the bounds of the text box
- Add or remove columns– The default value for text is one column. If you want to add more, you can click this button.
- Convert to SmartArt graphic- Instantly transform your text into an attractive graphic. This is especially useful if you have a bulleted or numbered list on your slide. But try playing around with plain text and hover over the various SmartArt graphics to see what it will look like.
Top 10 Tips to Bring Your PowerPoint Text to Life
Now that you're familiar with the different text formatting options in PowerPoint, let me share some tips to make your text stand out.
1. Use WordArt to instantly transform your text
If you want to quickly style your text, you can use WordArt to do it. There are two ways to do this:
- You can highlight the text to which you want to apply WordArt effects. Then goinsertion>joband select the desired style. PowerPoint duplicates and applies the WordArt effect to the duplicated text.
- Click anywhere on the slide. then clickinsertion>word artand select the desired style. PowerPoint displays placeholder text on the screen that says "Your Text Here." Just insert the WordArt text box and you're done!
To further customize your WordArt effects, you can click on the text box to access it.shape formatMenu. Navigate to the WordArt Styles section and apply itquick styles, changetext paddingmitext schemeColors. EITHERtext effectsThe button gives you the ability to add shadows, reflections, glows, bevels, 3D rotations, convert your text to curved or circular WordArt, and much more!
Here's a screenshot of the WordArt Styles menu:
2. Animate your text
Animation is great for engaging your audience, but be sure to use it sparingly. A little text animation can go a long way. Highlight the text you want to animate and go to the Animations tab. You can choose from path-in, highlight, path-out, and motion animations in PowerPoint. to see howhow to put animations in powerpoint.
3. Adjust the direction of the text in the text box
Bored with horizontal text direction? Well, you can make your text rotate 90 degrees, 270 degrees, or stack it. To do this, you can right-click the text you want to edit and clickformat formPossibility. EITHERformat formpanel appears on the screen. GonnaText's boxsection and intext direction, select the desired address.
4. Wrap your text around a shape
If you want to give your slides a different look, try curving the text around the shapes. Of course, you don't have to do this for every shape, maybe once or twice on a few slides. Whether you have a circle, square, or other shape on your slide, it's relatively quick to curve the text around it. Check out this YouTube video for ideas on how to implement this design:
5. Use the Format Painter
There are many ways to format your text in PowerPoint. But did you know that you don't have to manually apply the same formatting to a new line of text? You can imagine how stressful it would be to apply the same text format to 20 or 50 other slides! To copy the format of a text, you must do the following:
- Highlight the formatted text you want to copy.
- click on itformat templateson buttonHeim>clipboardMenu.
- Click on another line of text to apply the format.
- If you want to copy the same format to several texts, easydouble clickon the Transfer Format button. Note that you can apply formatting to text on other slides as well. Press the Esc key on your keyboard to stop using Format Painter.
6. Duplicate text
Here's a cool PowerPoint text feature. This works similar to Format Painter, but with a difference. If you don't want to worry about having different text effects applied to the original text box, you can use the Duplicate Text feature. Basically, PowerPoint will duplicate the text, including the formatting. Now all you have to do is replace the text with something else and your formatting is in place.
This tutorial can help you better understand this feature:
7. Best font size and color to use
When it comes to presentations, the readability of your text is the key to success. He doesn't want to spend a lot of time trying to make his text look fancy but not be read by the people in the back of the room. Therefore, when working with text, keep the following in mind:
- the correct source- There are so many fonts to choose from. You can choose between free fonts and premium fonts. You can use whatever is installed on your computer. However, if you're looking for something new (and free), I highly recommend checking out Google Fonts. It's easy to download and install the fonts on your computer so you can use them in PowerPoint. If you're presenting on a different computer, be sure to embed your fonts into your presentation so it looks exactly the way you designed it.
- The correct font color– for visibility reasons, you want your text to stand out well against the background. That is, if you're using an image as the background for your text, choose a color that makes the foreground text stand out. Now don't even think about using green text on a red background (or vice versa). There may be some contrast between red and green, but for text, this is a big problem. Here is a tutorial on how to do it.how to choose the right colors for your next presentation.
- The correct font size– You don't want people to squint at your slides. It will only make her very angry. If you want people to take you seriously, you need to take care of your vision instead. Before you even design your slides, you need to know in advance where you'll be presenting. Armed with that knowledge, you can figure out the perfect font size so everyone can read what's on your slides.
8. Overlay Text on an Image
Images add a lot of value to presentations. This is because, as humans, we are highly visual beings. As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. But did you know that you can kill two birds with one stone simply by placing your text on top of an image? Here it isAs.
9. Use a drip cap
Give your text a dramatic look using the all caps technique. Basically, you make the first letter of the paragraph or section big enough to contain the rest of the text. While PowerPoint doesn't have this built-in feature, Word does. So if you don't want to manually place the drop cap on the slide, just copy the drop cap text from Word and paste it into PowerPoint.
(Image source:https://support.office.com/en-us/article/insert-a-drop-cap-817fd19f-40fe-4b73-95e8-f3c0f5e01278)
10. Check the Design Ideas tab.
The Design Ideas tab in PowerPoint has a lot of tricks up its sleeve. Go ahead and surprise yourself by writing some text and adding some images on your slide. Then goProject>design idea. Please note that you need an Office 365 subscription to use this feature in PowerPoint.
It's also important to mention that this feature doesn't work with shapes yet. So if you have shapes on your slide, you'll get a message that the shapes are not supported. But after removing the shape(s), you get a ton of PowerPoint ideas! Whether you use text and images or just text and images, Design Ideas will help you jumpstart your creativity. Give it a try and see how it can bring your text (and the rest of your slides) to life!
Final Thoughts on Working with Text in PowerPoint
Text is important in presentations. But you shouldn't just write your content on your slides. You don't want people to just read your slides and not pay attention to you. When used correctly, copy can amplify your message and make it easier for people to understand what you're saying. It can help to support images and other visual media on your slides. However, don't underestimate the power of copy and use it to your advantage in your next presentation.