Chapter 14: Working with Slide Text

Chapter at a Glance

Add and manipulate text boxes, page 399. Correct and size text while typing, page 405. Check spelling and choose the best words, page 409. Change the size, alignment, spacing, and look of text, page 416.

In This Chapter, You Will Learn To:

• Enter text.

• Edit text.

• Add and manipulate text boxes.

• Correct and size text while typing.

• Check spelling and choose the best words.

• Find and replace text and fonts.

• Change the size, alignment, spacing, and look of text.

In later chapters of this book, we show you ways to add fancy effects to electronic slide shows to really grab the attention of your audience. But no amount of animation, jazzy colors, and supporting pictures will convey your message if the words on the slides are inadequate to the task. For most of your presentations, text is the foundation on which you build everything else, so this chapter shows you various ways to work with text to ensure that the words on your slides are accurate, consistent, and appropriately formatted.

In this chapter, you will learn how to enter and edit text on slides, on the Outline tab, and in text boxes. You will see how the AutoCorrect feature can help you avoid typographical errors, and how the spell-checking feature can help you correct misspellings after the fact. For those times when a word or phrase is correct but you want to substitute a different word or phrase, you will learn how to replace one word with another throughout a presentation by using the Find And Replace feature, which you also use to ensure the consistent use of fonts. Finally, you will vary the size, alignment, spacing, and look of words and phrases on individual slides.

See Also Do you need only a quick refresher on the topics in this chapter? See the Quick Reference entries at the beginning of this book.

Important 

Before you can use the practice files in this chapter, you need to install them from the book’s companion CD to their default location. See “Using the Book’s CD” at the beginning of this book for more information.

Troubleshooting 

Graphics and operating system-related instructions in this book reflect the Windows Vista user interface. If your computer is running Microsoft Windows XP and you experience trouble following the instructions as written, please refer to the “Information for Readers Running Windows XP” section at the beginning of this book.