But first, see the icon at the bottom right of your screen that looks like this

But first, see the icon at the bottom right of your screen that looks like this

This icon is a button to run your show, you should do this often because the show is what the audience sees.

Try it. Then use the Esc key on your keyboard to come back to this working mode.

Using Text in PowerPoint 2007 and 2013

There are two fundamental categories of text: body text and title text

Body text has a primary purpose: for reading. Any design choice you make for body text should take this into consideration.Title text is for decoration and for getting attention. Title text should provide at-a-glance recognition. People don’t always have to read title text, they can just look at it and know what it says. The PowerPoint tool for title text is WordArt. You have a lot of creative freedom with WordArt because there are options for changing the shape, size, location, rotation, the outline style and the fill color-pattern-picture.

PowerPoint text tools are the same text tools in other Office products.

You can also use other software for creating title text and bring a picture of the title into PowerPoint.

Using Text in PowerPoint 2007 and 2013

text formatting tools

These are the standard text formatting tools in the Home tool tab at the top of the screen.

Selecting TextMove the cursor over this text and the cursor changes to a vertical line. While holding the right mouse button down, drag across text to select it: all of it or just one word, or just one letter. When you have some text selected, use the buttons in the PowerPoint toolbars to change how the text looks. Try it.

Experiment with all these tools so you know what they do.

font list text size

tool for body text

Choose the body text tool from the Home tool set. With this tool selected, starting at the star below, hold the left mouse button down and drag diagonally down and right to create a box for text to go into. When you release the mouse button you can start typing something. Text will automatically wrap to the next line when it gets to the edge of the box you created. (called a “soft return”)

The tool for title text is the WordArt tool which is found in the Insert tool tab. Typically, WordArt is not used for body text because the main purpose of body text is readability and not decoration.Select the WordArt object below by clicking it. Try moving it, resizing it. You can select the text by dragging across with the cursor and choose the Format tab in the top toolbar to access options for fills and outlines.

tool for title text

This is WordArt

This is WordArtThe power in designing title text with WordArt are the unlimited options you have. Right click the WordArt text above and select Format Text Effects from the fly-out menu.

You can fill the letters with photos, textures, gradients, make shadows, outlines, and many more options. Play with these options, try all kinds of effects.

Many of the PowerPoint 2007 WordArt effects are not available in previous versions of PowerPoint.

This title text is WordArt filled with a photo

One very handy text tool is the Format Painter in the Home tool set.

This tool will copy text formatting in one block of text and apply it to another. As a design principle this tool helps you with visual consistency. As a time saver this makes it very easy to apply numerous format settings to text in one simple move.

To use the tool, first set your cursor insertion point anywhere in the text that you want to copy the formatting. The cursor will change to the format painter cursor.

Then move the cursor to the text you want to reformat and drag across the text with the left mouse button held down. When you release, the formatting will be applied to the text you selected.

Try it. Copy the formatting in the top sentence and apply it to this sentence.