iWork '09: The Missing Manual

Adding and Formatting Text Boxes

Any text in a slide must live within a text box or a shape. Keynote provides three kinds of text boxes: title text boxes, body text boxes, and free text boxes. (You’ll also learn about shapes on Making Shapes.)

• Title text boxes. Most Keynote themes contain a number of slide masters (Changing the Slide Layout with Master Slides) featuring a title text box. There can be only one title text box per slide. Text you enter in one of these text boxes appears as the slide’s title in outline view (Outline View). Although they’re usually designed to hold a relatively short title, you can actually add as much text as you care to squeeze in.

Note

Title text boxes can use all available text formatting options (described below), except for a quirk with bullets and numbering: The title can’t have more than one bullet point.

• Body text boxes. You often see body text boxes featured in Keynote slide masters under their alternative moniker, bullet text boxes. Like title text boxes, Keynote permits only one body text box per slide. Text you enter in this kind of text box shows up in Outline view as bullet points, with a bullet for each paragraph. In the slide itself, you can change the bullet style or remove bullets from the slide completely by using the Text Inspector’s Bullets & Numbering tab’s pop-up menu (see The Text Inspector).

• Free text boxes. These text boxes take their name from their freedom from the outline (text in a free text box doesn’t appear in Outline view) ...