PowerPoint 2007 for Starters: The Missing Manual

Adding Text

You'll want to add at least some text to most, if not all, PowerPoint presentations you create. (See the box in Section 1.3.2 for advice on how much prose to add to your presentation.) Knowing that, the PowerPoint designers made it easy for you to add text to your slides. The following sections show you how.

Adding Text to an Existing Text Box

When you start to work with a new presentation, the ribbon displays the Home tab (Figure 1-13).

Figure 1-13. Until you click a text box, most of the options appear grayed out, meaning you can't use them. See Figure 1-14 for a glimpse of the subtitle box.

Blank presentations come complete with title and subtitle placeholder text boxes. To replace the placeholder text in either of these two text boxes with your own text, simply click inside the placeholder and begin typing. When you do, two things happen:

• PowerPoint displays the Drawing Tools | Format tab and, on the Home ribbon, activates many of the text formatting options (Figure 1-14). You can use these options to change the font, size, and color of your text, turn your text into a right-justified paragraph or a bullet point, and much more. (Chapter 3 describes your options in detail.)

• Resize and transform handles appear at the corners and edges of the text box (Figure 1-14). Tiny white resize handles, which are square on the edges of the text box and circular on the corners, let ...