Text Formatting

Text Formatting

To do this:	Windows Keyboard:
Change Font	CTRL+Shift+F, then use up/down arrow keys, click Enter when done
Change Point Size	CTRL+Shift+P, then use up/down arrow keys, click Enter when done
Increase Font Size	CTRL+Shift+>
Decrease Font Size	CTRL+Shift+<
Bold	CTRL+B
Underline	CTRL+U
Italic	CTRL+I
Superscript	ALT+CTRL+Shift+>
Subscript	ALT+CTRL+Shift+<
Plain Text	CTRL+Shift+Z
Spelling Checker	F7
Center Paragraph	CTRL+E
Justified Paragraph	CTRL+J
Left-Aligned Paragraph	CTRL+L
Right-Aligned Paragraph	CTRL+R
Change Case	Shift+F3 toggles selection through lower case, upper case, initial caps with each press of keys
Create Hyperlink	CTRL+K

Deleting and Copying

Delete Character Left	Backspace
Delete Word Left	CTRL+Backspace
Delete Character Right	Delete
Delete Word Right	CTRL+Delete
Cut	CTRL+X
Copy	CTRL+C
Paste	CTRL+V
Undo	CTRL+Z
Create a copy of the text	CTRL+Drag

Navigating in Text Blocks

Character Left	Left Arrow
Character Right	Right Arrow
Line Up	Up Arrow
Line Down	Down Arrow
Word Left	CTRL+Left Arrow
Word Right	CTRL+Right Arrow
End of Line	END
Beginning of Line	HOME
Paragraph Up	CTRL+Up Arrow
Paragraph Down	CTRL+Down Arrow
End of Text Block	CTRL+END
Start of Text Block	CTRL+HOME

Navigating and Working With Objects

To Previous Object	TAB
To Next Object	Shift+TAB
Select All Objects	CTRL+A
Drag and Drop Copy	CTRL+Select and Drag
Create a Duplicate Object	CTRL+D
Create another Duplicate with same offset as first Duplicate	CTRL+D, move new copy to desired location, then use CTRL+D repeatedly to create more copies

Outlining, in All Views

Promote Paragraph	ALT+Shift+Left Arrow or TAB from beginning of Paragraph
Demote Paragraph	ALT+Shift+Right Arrow or Shift+TAB from beginning of Paragraph
Move Selected Paragraphs Up	ALT+Shift+Up Arrow
Move Selected Paragraphs Down	ALT+Shift+Down Arrow

Outlining, in Outline View

Collapse to Titles	ALT+Shift+1
Expand Text under a heading	ALT+Shift+Plus
Collapse Text Under a Heading	ALT+Shift+Minus
Show All Text and Headings	ALT+Shift+A
Display Character Formatting	Keypad / (numlock off)

Selecting, in Text

Character Right	Shift+Right Arrow
Character Left	Shift+Left Arrow
End of Word	CTRL+Shift+Right Arrow
Beginning of Word	CTRL+Shift+Left Arrow
Line Up	Shift+Up Arrow
Line Down	Shift+Down Arrow
Select All	CTRL+A or F2
Select Any Text	Drag with left mouse button depressed
Select Word	Double-Click
Select Paragraph	Triple-Click
Drag and Drop	Select and Drag
Drag and Drop Copy	CTRL+Select and Drag

Working with Slides and Presentation Files

New Presentation	CTRL+N
Open a Presentation	CTRL+O, CTRL+F12
Save	CTRL+S, F12
Save As	F12
Print	CTRL+P
Find	CTRL+F
Replace	CTRL+H
New Slide (menu)	CTRL+M
New Slide like last one, no menu	Shift+CTRL+M
Exit/Quit	CTRL+Q or ALT F4
Move from Title to Text	CTRL+Enter
Move from Body text to Title of Next Slide	CTRL+Enter

Working with Presentation Windows

Go to Previous Window	CTRL+Shift+F6
Go to Next Window	CTRL+F6
Size Presentation Window (Un-Maximize)	ALT+F5
Maximize Application Window	ALT+F10
Maximize Presentation Window	CTRL+F10
Restore Presentation Window to Previous Size	CTRL+F5
Put Presentation in its own Window	CTRL+F5

Drawing & Formatting

Show/Hide Guides (toggle)	CTRL+G
Switch from Normal View to Master View	Shift+Click Slide View Button
Group	CTRL+Shift+G
Ungroup	CTRL+Shift+H
Regroup	CTRL+Shift+J
Resize while Maintaining Proportions	Shift+Resize
Resize from Center	CTRL+Resize
Resize from Center while Maintaining Proportions	CTRL+Shift+Resize
Rotate in 15 degree increments	Shift+Rotate tool
Rotate from Corner	CTRL+Rotate tool
Rotate in 15 degree increments from Corner	Shift+CTRL+Rotate tool
Extend Line along same angle	Shift+Resize
Make Straight Segment while Using Curve Tool	CTRL+ALT+click (using curve tool)
Nudge object one grid unit	Arrow Key
Nudge object one pixel	CTRL+Arrow Key
Temporarily Release Grid/Guide Snap	ALT
Create Multiple Guides	CTRL+Drag Guide

Controlling Slides in Slide Show

Go to Slide <number>	<number> ENTER
Black/Unblack Screen	B or Period
White/Unwhite Screen	W or Comma
Show/Hide Pointer	A or =
End Show	ESC, CTRL+Break, Minus, END
Erase Screen Annotations	E
Advance to Hidden Slide	H
Advance to Next Slide	Mouse Click, Spacebar, N, Right Arrow, Down Arrow, Page Down
Return to Previous Slide	Backspace, P, Left Arrow, Up Arrow, Page Up

Getting Help & Programming Tools

Help	F1
Menu and Dialog Explanations	Shift+F1
Right Mouse Click without Mouse	Shift+F10
Bring up Visual Basic Editor	ALT+F11
Macro Recorder	ALT+F8

Save Your Fonts with Your Presentation

If you're preparing a presentation that you plan to distribute to others, be sure that you check this option by clicking on the Tools button in the File/Save As dialog box.  This will work for most TrueType fonts on the Windows platform.

Saving Your Toolbar Configurations

If you like to customize your UI, move toolbars around, configure toolbars, etc, then you'll want to know that all this information is stored in c:\windows\application data\microsoft\powerpoint\ppt.pcb
By copying this file, you can move your customizations to other machines. 

Displaying Keyboard Shortcuts in Tool Tips

If you'd like to see the available keyboard shortcuts for menus, commands, and toolbar buttons, go to Tools/Customize, click on the Options tab, and click on "show shortcut keys in screen tips". 

Getting Rid of Short Menus

Forgetting user reaction to this feature when it was introduced in Word years ago, the Office team decided to try it again.  Unfortunately, it's still annoying.  To see all of your options when you click on menus, go to Tools/Customize, click on the Options tab, and uncheck "menus show recently used commands".

Preview Fonts in the Toolbar

If you'd like to see previews of the actual fonts in the font selection of the formatting toolbar, go to Tools/Customize, click on the Options tab, and click "List font names in their font", click Close.

Making Auto-Fit Text Stop Auto-Fitting

Turn this feature off by going to Tools/Options, click on the Edit tab, and uncheck "autofit text to text placeholder", click OK.

Getting Rid of Tri-Pane View

Unfortunately there is no way to permanently avoid this improvement, but you can quickly get rid of it by holding down the CTRL key when you click on the Slide View button.

Using Ctrl-Drag to Copy

You can quickly make a copy of any object by holding down the CTRL key while you drag on the object.  You will then "drag off" a new copy.

Making Slides Print Correctly

PowerPoint has certain defaults to determine how it prints each object on the page.  You can see over-ride these defaults.  Go to View/Black and White; this will show you a gray-scale preview of how your slide will print.  To change the print settings for any given object, right-click on it, then click "Black and White", and then choose the appropriate print option for that object.  Master objects can be selected by going to the Master page View.

Preview Slide Show Effects

While editing a presentation, hold down the CTRL key while clicking the slide show view button; this will open a tiny preview window showing that slide in slide show mode.

Setting the Default Text Style

 If you want to change the style of the text that appears when you type things that aren't the title or the slide body, do the following:
Make sure no objects are selected.
From the Format menu, select Font. Make all the changes that you want there, and click OK.
From that point on, new text will be created in that style.
To Set the formatting for the title or slide body objects, go to the Slide Master and format these objects on the master.

Using Different Backgrounds within one Presentation

 Users of PowerPoint 2000 and lower will only have two background designs automatically supplied with the Masters (counting both the Slide Master and the Title Master).  However, you can have any design you want on any slide. From the Format menu, select Background. Check the box that says "omit background items" and this will make the slide ignore the Slide Master's design. You are now free to add whatever design you want to this slide. If you want to do this to many slides at once, go to the Slide Sorter, select the slides, and then use the Format menu command. Remember though that if you choose to do something like put a photographic background on many of your slides instead of doing it once on the Master, that your file size may increase dramatically.
PowerPoint 2002 supports multiple background masters.

Using More than One Guide

 If you like using guides, but wish there were more, you can create additional Guides by simply holding down the CTRL key while dragging on an existing Guide. This will create a new guide. To get rid of guides, just drag them off the edge of the slide.

Using Guides to Measure

Make the Guides visible by using View/Guides.  Then, hold down the SHIFT key while you click-and-hold a guide; the tooltip for the guide will display 0:00.  As you move the guide, the distance the guide covers from the beginning of the drag will be displayed in the units of your ruler.  In this way you can measure distances between objects, place guides at specific places, etc.

Creating Pages with Slides and Descriptive Text

If you want to create printable pages that have notes or descriptive text associated with each slide, PowerPoint has a feature designed to do just this called Notes Pages, or Speaker's Notes (depending on which version you're using). To view the Notes page for any slide, go to the View menu and select Notes Pages. You will see an image of your slide there, and a placeholder for adding your script, notes, or any other text you wish. You can cut-and-paste text from Word here if you like. To print these pages, bring up the Print dialog, and at the bottom of the dialog where it says "Print What:", select Notes Pages. These pages were originally designed to be used as audience hand outs (with space for the audience to take notes) but were also used by many as speaker's notes: the text block would have the script of the presentation, to be used by the speaker, or for sales binders to educated sales people.

Making Presentation Files Smaller

 Prior to PowerPoint 97, there was no internal file compression code inside of PowerPoint, and files could get pretty big quickly. The most common cause of large files is the addition of large bitmaps. PowerPoint 97 compresses these bitmaps, but previous versions do not. To keep your presentations as small as you can, try reducing the resolution of your bitmaps, which will bring their size down tremendously. For viewing on screen, the bitmaps don't need to be more than 96 dpi; they won't print nicely until they're up around 150 or higher, but the screen always displays at 96 dpi, so if the primary viewing medium is the screen, there's no point in having the bitmaps be a higher resolution. Also, the bitmap format can make a big difference to your file sizes. JPEG and PNG both have good internal compression code. GIF has some, but not as good as JPEG. BMP files are the largest; TIFF files will also be very large.
Sometimes, as you're working on a presentation, you'll notice that the file seems to get bigger for no reason.  To get rid of this "bloating", save the file using "File/Save As" and give the file a new name.  This can reduce the file size up to 50%.

Building Presentations for Distribution to Others

  If you're making a PowerPoint presentation that you intend to distribute to lots of different people, here are some important things to watch out for that will cause problems:
1. Stick with the fonts that come installed with Windows; Fancy fonts that appear on your machine will cause problems if everyone else doesn't have them.
2. Avoid embedding sounds and videos: these will not go from Mac to Windows gracefully, and you have to be very careful about how you insert the files in order to get them to "travel" properly. See the FAQ section for more information on this.
3. Try looking at the presentation on a different platform (Mac vs Windows); be prepared for some visual changes in your file--the version or platform may not support some of the features you've put in, so be sure to sanity check your file on several different machines and versions BEFORE you distribute it!

Easily Changing from Caps to Lower Case (or Vice Versa)

 If you have text that is in the wrong case, select the text, and then click Shift+F3 until it changes to the case style that you like. Clicking Shift+F3 toggles the text case between ALL CAPS, lower case, and Initial Capital styles. You'll be surprised how often you use this once you get the hang of it!

Nudging Objects

 You can use the arrow keys to move objects very small distances. This is a big win for those laptop users who no longer have mice. Select the object, then use your arrow keys. Each press of the key will move the object on "grid unit" (1/12th of an inch, don't ask why); if you hold down the ALT key while nudging, or if you have the grid turned off, you can move the objects one pixel at a time.

Saving Across Multiple Diskettes

 From the File menu, select Pack and Go. This wizard will compress your PowerPoint presentation and copy the file onto as many floppies as are necessary.  Be sure to format a bunch of floppies BEFORE you start the process, and make sure they are empty.  This feature requires PowerPoint 95 or higher.

Subliminal Messages

These can be pretty hysterical in the right circumstances. Create a text object. With the text object selected, click on the Animation Effects button on the tool bar (the one that looks like a yellow star), and then click on the "flash once" button. Go to slide show and see the message quickly flash and then disappear.

Editing Drawings

Anything you draw with the pencil tool, you can edit. To get the object into "points mode", either double-click on the object, or select it then hit the Enter key. You will then see points at every vertex, which you can move. You can add points by holding down the shift key and clicking, you can subtract points by holding down the ALT key while clicking, and you can of course just drag points around.

Soft Shadows

You can create "soft" shadows for square or round objects that sit on a solid color background. Make a copy of the object, then change its fill to be shaded from black to the background color, with the shading set with black going from the center out to the background color at the edges. Make this object about 150% bigger than the original object, and put it behind the object. This will give you the effect of "soft" shadows.

Selecting Small Objects

Hit the ESCAPE key to insure that nothing is current selected, then repeatedly hit the TAB key, which will toggle you through a selection of all of the objects on a slide. This is useful for selecting very small objects, or objects that are covered up by other larger objects.