In addition to character formatting options, there are numerous formatting options that you can apply to paragraph text. West Cal are checking out this coffee bean bullet format for their QwikBrew presentation. To add bullets to a list, select a text box or portion of text, then to apply the default bullets, click the bullets button on the home tab. To choose a different type of bullet, click the drop down arrow next to the bullets button and then choose the desired style. To create a custom style, click the bullets and numbering command in this menu. The bullets and numbering dialog box will open to the bullet at tab. There are so many options to change the format and style of your bullets here, you can change the size the color. You can even change the bullet to a picture. Why not try a coffee bean bullet. Let's use the icons option to try that out. If you like, you can even change the bullet format to that of a particular type of symbol. Switch to the number tab if you would like to change to a bulleted list. Here, you have the option of a range of numbered styles. In the paragraph group of the home tab, you can change the alignment of the text, simply select the target text or click inside a text box, then choose one of the alignment commands on the home tab or the menu toolbar. Each button is a preview of the type of alignment. From left to right, you can choose left, center or right alignment. Justified alignment is also available on the home tab. To change how text is aligned in the text box, click the text box to select it. Then click the align text command on the home tab and choose an alignment. The format shape task pane contains many different formatting commands for text boxes as well as shapes. It can be open to using many option buttons and commands. The easiest way to open the pain is to right click the target object and click format shape. The format shape task pane will open on the right hand side of the screen. It is divided into two major sections, shape options and text options. Click the option that matches the object that you're working with. The fill section allows you to change the colors and lines around the text box. Let's select a different color as the shape fill here and change the color of the line around the shape also. With effects, you can apply shadows, reflections, glows 3D rotation and so on. You can also change the size, position and alignment of the text box here. The text option section of the format shape pane gives the same options. You have all the same options here as you did for the shape options, change the text color, text outline, apply a special effects such as reflection, shadow or 3D rotation. Wouldn't it be fantastic to have a PowerPoint feature that suggests a particular set of graphics and style for your presentation based on the text that you type. The design ideas feature offers just that. And with dictate you can give your fingers a break from typing by simply speaking the text you wish to appear in your slide directly into the presentation itself. To use this fantastic PowerPoint feature, you must have an internet connection and your device must have a microphone. Let's run through these features and more. With the third icon here in the text options pane, the auto fit feature appears. This feature controls how text is fitted into a text box, shape or other object. Right now do not auto fit is selected. If additional text is typed into the box, there would be a kind of spillover. To avoid this simply select shrink text on overflow. This will ensure that all the text appears in the text box. The more you type, the smaller the text will get. Another option with auto fit is to select resize shape to fit text, which will make the shape bigger rather than the text smaller. You can also modify the amount of space between the text and the margins of the text box within the format shape task pane. Notice that you can also choose to wrap the text in the shape in this subcategory of the task pane. If you uncheck this option, the text will be allowed to overflow outside of the shape. To change the amount of spacing between lines, select the text box and go to the home tab, then select the line spacing option on the paragraph section of the ribbon. For more advanced options, click the line spacing options command in this menu. This will open the paragraph dialog box. Here, you can customize the alignment, indentation and spacing for the selected text, including the spacing before and after the paragraphs. You can also separate text using columns. To do this first place your cursor in the desired text box, then click home, columns and choose the number of columns to apply. You can also create custom columns with the more columns command. To change the direction of text, first select the text box or place your cursor inside it, then click the text direction button on the home tab and choose a direction. The more options command will open the text box category of the text options section of the format shape task pane, which you explored previously. To clear the formatting from text and return it to its default state, click the clear formatting button on the home tab. Sometimes you may feel like taking a little break from typing. PowerPoints dictate function, allows you to use speech to text to create content for slides and slide notes, without manually typing. Place the cursor at the point where you would like to add text, then select the dictate button which is on the right hand side of the home tab. Once the dictate icon which is shaped like a little microphone switches into the red colored recording icon, you can start speaking. Here it goes from the best coffee company in town. In this case simply changed the capital F to lower case, once you have finished speaking. But if you would like to insert punctuation, you simply say the type of punctuation you wish to use explicitly. For example say the words comma or period, dictate also supports different languages. To select the language you wish to use, click the dictate dropdown menu and select the language you wish to use to compose. The design ideas pane will open on the right hand side of the document, browse through the suggestions and double click one of the layouts to select it. The selected layout will be applied to the slide. If you cannot find a design you like scroll down to the bottom and select see more design ideas. The design ideas pane will expand and suggest more layout designs. Finally, let's take a look at PowerPoints ruler function which can help you line up objects and organized slides. Go to the view tab on your ribbon and check the box beside the word ruler. You will then see rulers on the top and left hand side of the slide Window. Markers and shaded areas will show where the selected object is positioned. Now that you can format paragraph text in PowerPoint, next you will discover how to format text boxes as shapes.
