Office 2007 Bible

Working with Text Boxes

Text boxes (either placeholder or manual) form the basis of most presentations. Now that you know how to create them, and how to place text in them, let’s take a look at how to manipulate the boxes themselves.

Cross-Ref

Are you looking for information about formatting text boxes—perhaps to apply a background color or a border to one? See the formatting text boxes discussion in Chapter 7.

Selecting text boxes

On the surface, this topic might seem like a no-brainer. Just click it, right? Well, almost. A text box has two possible “selected” states. One state is that the box itself is selected, and the other is that the insertion point is within the box. The difference is subtle, but it becomes clearer when you issue certain commands. For example, if the insertion point is in the text box and you press Delete, PowerPoint deletes the single character to the right of the insertion point. However, if you select the entire text box and press Delete, PowerPoint deletes the entire text box and everything in it.

To select the entire text box, click its border. You can tell that it is selected because the border appears as a solid line. To move the insertion point within the text box, click inside the text box. You can tell that the insertion point is there because you can see it flashing inside, and also because the box’s border now consists of a dashed line. Figure 21-27 shows the difference between the two borders.

Figure 21-27. The border of a text box is different ...