Object view vs. text editing view
What is so interesting in a “PowerPoint” “Slide show”?
The answer is simple, almost everything.
We can do just about anything, add or remove text boxes, clip art, pictures, lines, borders and animations to the “Slides”. You name it, nothing was apparently too much for Bill and his family.
But let us begin at the beginning.
Adding text:
In ‘PowerPoint”, words and text can be added in text boxes or “Placeholders”.
The text boxes and “Placeholders” are actually objects that can be moved, copied, modified, etc.
The text in this object can also be copied, modified, etc.
So in “PowerPoint”, there are two ways to show the state of the “Placeholder” or text box.
1. the entire object (“Object formatting state”), or
2. the text in the object (“Text formatting state”).
When we are in the “Object formatting state” there are dots on the border of the object:
Now we click the “Delete” button on our keyboards, the whole box would be removed.
When we are in the “Text formatting state” there are lines on the border of the object:
Now we click the “Delete” button on our keyboards, only the selected text would be removed.
So if we want the to move, copy or format entire object, we choose the former.
If we want to format, delete the text in an object, we choose the later.
Text Placeholders vs. text boxes
But what exactly is the difference between a text box and a text “Placeholder”?
Actually there is no difference, both are “Text boxes” where you can enter text.
Text “Placeholders” is created when we choose “Slide Layout” (“Slide Layout“), remember Lesson 2 ?
Insert text boxes
We can use a “Text box” by clicking on the ” Insert” – “Text Box” from the menu bar.
Our mouse pointer turns into a small inverted cross.
Now this “Text box” will be added where we click on our “Slide”.
We can also click and drag with our mouse to resize the “Text box”.
We need to type in the text otherwise clicking elsewhere on the “Slide” makes it disappear.
Once you have entered the text, click anywhere on an empty spot in your “Slide”.
What strikes us is that the border around the “Text box” disappears, and this is a good thing because we do not want the edges in our “Presentation”, at least not if we do not need them.
If we want to format the text, we select the text in the “Text box” (“Text formatting state”) by double clicking on it.
If we want to format the textbox, we select the text (“Object formatting state”) by clicking on the border of the “Text box”.
When we make an entire object (in “Object formatting state”), we can format all the settings, such as size, layout and place and the format preserved is while copying it to another place or another “Slide”.
The only thing we need to do, is to change the text.
This is useful to get a uniformity in the “Presentation” of our “Slides”.
Move Text Boxes and Text Placeholders
When we want to move the “Text box”, click on the border and drag it to the desired location.
When we want to change the size of the object , we select the object, and click and drag on one of the eight white squares on the border, to the desired size.
Removing Text Boxes and Text Placeholders
When we need to remove a “Text box” or text “Placeholder”, we select the object and click the “Delete” button on our keyboards.
Formatting Text Placeholders
1. “Bullets”
When we want to apply numbering or enumeration to our “Presentation”, we click on the “Enumeration” button 
or “Numbering” button 
in the “Formatting toolbar”.
If we want to change the “Bullets”, we click “Format” – ” Bullets and Numbering” from the menu bar.
2. Align “Text Boxes”
When we want to align the text , we click on these buttons 
in the “Formatting toolbar”.
3. “Line spacing”
We can use the line spacing for our text by clicking “Format” – “Line spacing” (“Format” – “Line Spacing”) in the menu bar.
This opens the “Line Spacing” dialog box:
Here we can see the space between the lines, the spaces in a paragraph, and determine the space after a paragraph.
When we are satisfied with the settings we click on OK.
4. Setting lowercase, uppercase …
We can easily modify the settings of our letters from lowercase to uppercase or vice versa. Click on “Format”- “Change Case” from the menu bar.
In the dialog box that appears, we have several options.
Select one and click OK.
All your selected text is automatically changed.
5. Formatting “Font”
We can format the “Font” for the whole text or for certain words in our text.
In the first case, we select the entire object and in the second case, we select only the text in the object.
Once you have made your selection, click “Format” – “Font” in the menu bar.
This opens the “Font” dialog.
I do not need to explain everything as it is the same for any Windows application.
The only thing left is the option at the bottom of the dialog box, where we have the choice for “Shadow” (“Shadow“) and Emboss” (‘Emboss“).
Formatting Text Boxes
We can format “Text boxes” / “Placeholders” by filling the borders to our wishes.
First, we select the object.
Then we click on “Format” in the menu bar.
At the bottom of the dropdown menu choose “Placeholder …,” or “Auto Shape …,” or “Text Box ….”
A dialog box appears with several tabs:
In this lesson we look at only the first tab, “Colors and Lines” (“Colors and Lines”).
The dialog is divided into three sections:
“Fill” at the top, “Line” in the middle and “Arrows” at the bottom.
In version 2003 and XP, we also have the option to set “Transparency”.
If we want to change the background color of our object, we click on the dropdown menu next to “Color”:
We choose a color and click OK.
When we click “More colors …” we can find other colors that we do not find upfront.
Or we can choose “Fill Effects …” which in turn opens another dialog box with several tabs.
We can even use a picture as background in our text:
Yes, that’s me with my wife, probably after a night out.
So you see, possibilities abound.
To format the border of our object, we click the arrows in the third section of the dialog.
This needs no further explanation, I think.
Setting default properties for text boxes
Let’s see what other properties we can give to our “Text box”.
We first select our “Text box”, and click “Format” in the menu bar.
From the dropdown menu we select our object (“Placeholder …,” or “Auto Shape …,” or “Text Box ….”)
In the dialog we still have about six tabs:
- “Size”: Here we can enter the “Size” of the text, the number of degrees that we want to rotate the text and determine the scale of the object. (When we make the “Lock aspect ratio” checked, the ratio between width and height remains constant)
- “Position“: Here we determine the position of the object, most of us determine the position of the object by clicking and dragging, but you can do it in this tab too.
- “Picture”: In the “Picture” tab we can select any picture to use as background in the object.
- “Text Box”: In this tab we determine where we will place our text in the object. Try all these out , it’s too much to describe them all here.
I want to give you a tip here: you can enlarge the text box vertically. This is because the “Resize AutoShape to fit text” is checked in the “Text Box” tab. - “Web”: In the “Web” tab, we provide an alternative text for an image while they are loading, or for users with visual disabilities.
When we’re in the “Colors and Lines” tab, clciking the checkbox “Default for new objects” will set all these properties as default for a “Text box”.
Click the OK button when you are satisfied with your settings.
