Tips from the Trainer # 040

Sent 12/1/02

PowerPoint's Placeholders - Beyond Typing

I'll bet within 5 seconds of starting your first PowerPoint presentation you figured out how to type in a text placeholder. Unless you couldn't read at the time, the words "Click to add title" and "Click to add subtitle" make this process a no-brainer.

Actually, it's not even necessary to click. As soon as you add a new slide just start typing. Your text will appear in the slide's Title placeholder. And, when you're finished typing your title, no need to pick up your mouse. Just press Ctrl + Enter to jump to the text placeholder, then continue typing. Press Ctrl + Enter again and PowerPoint adds a new slide with the same layout as the existing slide. If you happen to be using that 2-column slide layout (see below), Ctrl + Enter will put your cursor in the second text placeholder. You'll need to press Ctrl + Enter again to add a slide.

2-column layout

If you had to crank out a quick, black and white, no graphics, all bullet slides presentation, you could literally never touch the mouse:

1. Press Ctrl + N to start a new presentation.

2. On the Title slide that appears, type your title, then press Ctrl + Enter.

3. Type a subtitle, then press Ctrl + Enter to add a bullet slide.

4. Type the Bullet slide's title, then press Ctrl + Enter.

5. Type the first bullet, press Enter.

6. Type each bullet. Press Tab when you want to create a subbullet (demote) and press Shift + Tab when you want to promote a bullet to a higher level. Press Enter after you type each bullet.

7. When you've finished typing your last bullet, press Ctrl + Enter to add a new bullet slide.

8. Repeat steps 4 through 7 for each bullet slide you need.

9. Press Ctrl + S, type a filename, then press Enter to save.

Change one or change all

When you want to change the font, size, style, etc. of every Title or Text placeholder in a presentation, make your changes on the Slide Master, not on the individual slides. (If you don't, you might as well use Word to create your presentations.)

1. Shift + click the Normal view icon at the bottom of the screen to switch to Slide Master view.

2. Click anywhere in the Title placeholder or in any bullet in the Text placeholder, then press Ctrl + T to open the Font dialog box and make your changes.

3. Click the Normal view icon again or press Alt + 3 to switch back.

And, while you're in Slide Master view...

Before finishing a presentation, I've usually made several formatting changes to both the Title and Text placeholders and almost all of them are made on the Slide Master. Most of these changes are made to accomodate slides with two line titles and slides with long bullet lists. (If I were writing the presentation, I'd probably just shorten the text.)

Before you make any formatting changes on the Slide Master, you might want to type your longest title in the Title placeholder (or just make one up) and your longest bullet list in the Text placeholder. If your text will be in ALL CAPS, type in ALL CAPS. Don't worry. The text you type won't appear on any slides. Once you've typed your text, do the following:

1. Change the Text Anchor Point of the Title Placeholder

What? Title text, by default, is "anchored" to the middle of the placeholder, meaning that the text is not only centered vertically in the box, it "grows" from the center (middle) out. I ALWAYS change the anchor point of the Title placeholder to the bottom. That way the second line of a two line title sits on the bottom of the placeholder, not suspended in mid-air.

One line title / Two line title

To change the anchor point, double-click the border of the Title placeholder, click the Text Box tab, then change the Text anchor point to Bottom. Click OK.

2. Line spacing

Line spacing is another setting I almost always change. That's because two-line titles, especially those typed in ALL CAPS, generally have too much line spacing. Most PowerPoint users just reduce the font size of two line titles to make the text fit on one line or, at the very least, fit in the Title placeholder. I prefer to leave the font size the same on all slides if possible and, instead, reduce the spacing between lines.

1. On the Slide Master, click anywhere in the Title placeholder.

2. Select Format/Line Spacing.

3. Change the Line spacing from 1 line to .9. If your titles will be in ALL CAPS, you can reduce this value even more to .8.

4. Click Preview to see what the spacing looks like, then click OK.

5. Increase the height of the placeholder, if necessary, by dragging the placeholder's top middle handle up.

I don't particularly like the default line spacing for bullets either. I typically increase the space before first-level bullets and remove all spacing before second-level bullets, moving these bullets closer to their first-level bullet. The slide samples should make this clearer.

1. Click in the first-level bullet, select Format/Line Spacing, then increase the Before paragraph space to around .5.

2. Highlight the second-, third-, fourth- and fifth-level bullets (who uses 5 levels?), then select Format/Line Spacing. Remove all spacing Before paragraph.

Default Line Spacing / Adjusted Line Spacing

3. Text box margins

Often I'll change the Left, Right, Top and Bottom margin of both the Title and Text placeholders to zero. PowerPoint adds this spacing around the edges so that if you fill the text box with a color, the text won't butt up against the edges of the box. Problem is, these built-in margins make it impossible to align graphics, lines, etc. to the top, bottom, left or right of text. If you decide to change the margins:

1. On the Slide Master, double-click the border of the Title placeholder.

2. Click the Text Box tab.

3. Type a zero in the Left box, press Tab, type a zero, Tab, type a zero, Tab, type a zero, then press Enter.

Instead of making these changes every time you start a new presentation, you could make the changes once then overwrite PowerPoint's default template, default.pot. The steps are easy:

1. Press Ctrl + N to start a new presentation.

2. Make all changes on the Slide Master.

3. Press Ctrl + S, then select Design Template from the Save as type drop-down list.

4. Name the template blank.pot, then press Enter.

AO 778289.1