Section 90. Format Presentation Text

90. Format Presentation Text

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

88 Enter Text into a Presentation

SEE ALSO

91 Animate Text

93 Use a Style

90. Format Presentation Text

Although Impress's slide Layouts define preformatted text, there will be many times when you want to change the text format to something else. You can control many factors related to your presentation's text, including the following:

• Choose the alignment (such as left and right justification)

• Change the text size

• Change the font

• Animate the text (as described in 91 Animate Text )

• Change the text to a 3D format

If you've used other OpenOffice.org programs, such as Writer, you'll feel at home with some of Impress's formatting tools because the font-related options are similar to those of the other OpenOffice.org programs.

1.	Select Text to Format Locate the slide that contains the text you want to format. Select the text.
2.	Change the Font To change the selected text's font, alignment, display format, or background, select Format, Character from the menu. The Character dialog box appears. You can also right-click over the selected text to display the Character dialog box. Other right-click options are more specific, such as Font, Size, Style , and Alignment , in case you want to change one of those specific aspects of the text. From the Character dialog box's Font page, you can change the font, the typeface (such as bold or italic), and the size of the text. A preview updates at the bottom of the Font page, showing you how your changes will affect your text. Click to select the Font Effects tab to change other aspects of the text, such as underlining and the text color . The Position tab determines how the text appears on the line (as normal, superscript , or subscript text). Click the OK button to close the dialog box and view your formatted text. KEY TERMS Superscript Small text that begins above the text baseline, as is often used to indicate the square of a number. Subscript Small text that begins below the text baseline, as is often used to indicate numbers that drop below the line in chemical formulas.
3.	Prepare for 3D If you want to convert your text to 3D, you often can, depending on whether Impress can convert the font used to 3D. As appealing as 3D text sounds, the result may not meet your expectations. The text is often too dark and thick to work well. You can experiment and decide whether you like the 3D effect. Click to select the text box that holds the text you want to convert to 3D. Impress selects the text and places the resizing handles around it.
4.	Request 3D Conversion Press the Esc key once. The resizing handles will stay around the text, but the selection outline goes away. Right-click the text to display the menu and then select Convert, To 3D . Impress converts the text to 3D. NOTE When converting text to 3D, Impress changes the text to a graphic image. If a text placeholder, such as Type name here , originally appeared where the text was, it may return once the 3D effect occurs. You may need to type a space over the placeholder to hide the placeholder text behind the 3D image.
5.	Adjust the 3D Text Once the text converts to 3D, drag the resizing handles up and down to make the text appear as clear as possible. Right-click the 3D text and select 3D Effects to adjust the way Impress applies the three-dimensional style to your text.