Introduction & Opening | About the Slides & Opening Screen | Opening & Creating a Presentation
Saving/Create New Slide/Slide Design | Inserting Objects/Lists/WordArt | Edit Text/Images | Transitions & Animation
Set Up/View Presentation | Print Slides/Save to Web

Edit Text:

To type in a text box, use your cursor and click in the text box that says, "Click to add title." Once the text box is active, you can type whatever you want there, as you would in a word processor. When you are finished typing, click outside of the text box to see how your text looks. You can select the text box by clicking in the inside of it. When a text box is selected, you can edit the text inside or move the box around and reposition it on the slide.

A text box (or any other object in PowerPoint) is selected when you see the gray, bold outline going around the object, and when your cursor turns into a cross. You can adjust the size of your text box by using your cursor to grab the "handles" that are placed around the border of the text box (they look like the small white squares that are on each corner and on the sides of the selected text box). Drag the handles to where you wish to position your text box.

If you want to change the look of the text in your text box, then you must first select the text. Click inside of the text box, and then use your cursor to highlight all of the text you wish to modify. Let's say you want to bold the text, change the font, and give the text a new color. You can make all of these changes using various tools for editing text in PowerPoint. The first area which you should pay attention to is the "Formatting Toolbar." If you do not see it in PowerPoint, then go to the menu bar and select View >> Toolbars >> Formatting to access this toolbar.

As you can see, it looks like any other formatting toolbar that you may be accustomed to, such as in a word processing program. Some basic formatting attributes include bold, underline, italics, and shadow. You can change the alignment of text (left, right, centered), as well as insert numbered and unordered (bulleted) lists. You can also change the indenting of your text.

The "Drawing" toolbar can also be used to modify text. The “Drawing” toolbar can be found on the bottom of your screen. If you don’t see this tool bar, go to the menu bar and select View >> Toolbars >> Drawing.

On the toolbar, you will see an icon that looks like a letter "A" with a colored bar (the default color is black) underneath it. This is the tool you can use to change the font color. Make sure the text you want to change is highlighted by your cursor. Go over to the Font Color icon on the Drawing toolbar and click on the small triangle. A small menu with colored squares will appear. However, not very many colors will be available for you to choose from. So, click on the text in that menu that says, "More Colors…" There, you can choose from a wider variety of colors. Use the cursor to pick a color and then click "OK." The color will be stored in the menu. To apply that new color to your text, select the desired text to be changed and then click on the Font Color icon.

It's also possible to delete text box objects, whether they have text in them or are just empty text boxes that may be leftover from a slide layout that you don't want to use. To delete a text box, make sure the text box is selected and then click on the outside border of the box. Then, press the "Backspace" or "Delete" buttons on your keyboard. Alternatively, you can right-click on the text box so that the sub-menu appears and then select "Cut."

You can also edit your text using the Format Text Window. This window presents a few more advanced and detailed options for modifying your text. To access this menu, go to the menu bar and select Format >> Font (you must be in a text box in order to access this window).

In this window, you will find most of the same formatting features found on the Formatting Toolbar. However, when you use this window, you will have access to a few extra features, such as emboss, super and subscript, as well as font color.

Editing an Inserted Image:
Images that are inserted into a PowerPoint presentation (see above section on "Inserting Objects") can also be modified.

There are a number of things you can do to image object boxes in PowerPoint. If you have a slide using a pre-made layout with a pre-existing image object box, then the first thing you can do is double-click the box to insert a Clipart image. You will then be taken to the Clipart menus, when you can browse through different categories of images. When you find a Clipart you want to insert, a submenu will pop up asking you if you want to insert the image, preview the image, or search for images of similar content. You can choose from any of these options if you want, or you could simply click an image and then click the "OK" button to insert it into the image object box.

Please note that when you change the appearance of an image in PowerPoint, you are not actually changing the original image file, so you don't need to worry about changing a picture in PowerPoint, and then override the image you already have saved.

If you want to insert an image you have on your computer or a disk, and don’t want to insert a Clipart file, then go to the menu bar and select “Insert >> Picture >> From File…”.

Once you have inserted an image, you can change various aspects of that image. For example, using the cursor to click and drag the corners and sides of the image stretches the image out, and increases or decreases the image's size.

Selecting the image brings up a new pop-up menu called "Picture." There you can modify the appearance of your image in a number of ways.

1. Insert Picture from File: Browses your computer and inserts a saved image.
2. Color: The drop-down menu here contains functions for changing the look of your image. You can keep the colors of the image the same, make it grayscale, turn it into black and white, or make it a watermark image.
3. More Contrast: Increases the intensity of color in an image.
4. Less Contrast: Decreases the intensity of color in an image.
5. More Brightness: Adds white to an image to make it lighter.
6. Less Brightness: Adds black to an image to make it darker.
7. Crop: Using the Crop tool trims a portion of an image.
8. Rotate Left 90◦: Spins the image around in 90 degree intervals.
9. Line Style: Adds a border around an image. Decide on a line width using the drop down menu.
10. Compress Picture: Lowers the visual quality (dpi) of an image. This will make images appear faster in your presentation, but they may not look as nice.
11. Recolor Picture: Opens up a window that allows you to change colors in your picture. If your image is a bitmap file, then you can only recolor an image if you have an image editing program on your computer, such as Adobe Photoshop.
12. Format Picture: Clicking this button brings up a more complex and detailed menu for editing your image. Contains options that would not normally be available using the main "Picture" toolbar.
13. Set Transparent Color: When you make a color of an image transparent, you make it appear to be "invisible" in a picture. Use this tool to click on a color in an image that you want to make transparent. The color will then become somewhat "see-through."
14. Reset Picture: By clicking on the "Reset Picture" button, you can remove all of the formatting you added to your picture and revert the image back to its original state.

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