PowerPoint: Text Basics

Working with text in PowerPoint is easy. It’s
similar to working in a word processing program like Microsoft Word, so the experience should
be pretty familiar to you. All you have to do is insert a text box, or click an existing
placeholder … and your cursor will appear inside. Now you can type anything you want. You can use the space bar on your keyboard
to add spaces… and if you want to start a new line, just press Enter. If you make a mistake like I did, that’s okay.
You can press backspace or delete to fix it. You can also use your keyboard’s arrow keys
to move the insertion point left, right, down or up. This is useful if you only need to
move a few spaces or lines at a time, but you can also jump over entire words at a time. Hold the Control key and press the left or
right arrow keys to jump over one word at a time. There may come a time when you need to work
with text in your presentation, maybe to copy and paste it, or to move it to a different
location. To do that, you need to know how to select text first. Just click and drag your mouse over the text,
then let go. See how it’s highlighted gray? That means the text is selected. You can click and drag up or down to select
as many lines as you want. To select all of the text on an entire slide,
go to the Select command on the Home tab… And choose Select All… Pressing the Control
key and A key on your keyboard at the same time will also select all text. Now that we know how to select text, let’s
try copy and paste. Just click the Copy command on the ribbon… choose where you want the
text to go… then click Paste. You can also get to these commands by right-clicking
in the document. For example, to cut and paste, start by selecting your text … then right-click…
and choose Cut. The original text will disappear, and now we can paste it anywhere we want by
right-clicking again. If you want to move a selection of text from
one place to another, you can use the drag and drop method. Let’s skip to the end of
this presentation so I can show you how it works. First select the text you want to move. Now
click and drag where you want it to go. If you make a mistake or change your mind,
you can use the Undo button on the toolbar to undo the last action. To the right is the
redo button. This allows you to reverse the last undo Next, I’d like to take a look at formatting
options like font color, size, and alignment, all of which can have a big affect on your
presentation. For instance, if we added just a little extra
formatting here, I think we could really make this slide stand out. To format text in PowerPoint, you can select
just the text you want… or you can select the entire text box… and format everything
inside at once. You might want to start with the options in
the Font group, where you’ll find lots of different features that you can play around
with. In this example, I’m going to choose a different font color… a different font…
and a slightly bigger size. I’m also going to format the text in italics.
See what a difference all these changes can make? If you want to change the placement (or alignment)
of your text, take a look at the commands in the Paragraph group. Your options include
left, center, right, and justified, which can be used to align paragraphs. I think centered
looks the best. Also in this group, you can change the vertical
alignment… the text direction… or add or remove bullets from your text box. These are all great ways to customize your
text, so your slide looks exactly the way you want. I think I’m happy with my choices,
so I’m going to leave my text the way it is. Now you know the basics, including find and
replace; cut, copy, and paste; undo and redo; and even some formatting techniques. That
should be everything you need to know to work with text in PowerPoint.