12. Formatting Shapes, Text, and More

In This Chapter

Now that we’ve shown you how to create excellent content, let’s journey into some tips on making it prettier.

When most people think Microsoft Office graphics, the first thing that comes to mind is Clip Art, WordArt, or something equally ugly and tacky. That obviously isn’t acceptable for your presentation, so often you’d spend hours deciphering Adobe Photoshop to perform a simple operation such as adding a soft shadow or a glow on some text because such tasks were impossible to do in previous versions of PowerPoint. Though that might have been representative of Office graphics for the last decade or so, that assumption is no longer true.

For the PowerPoint 2007 release, an entirely new feature set was created to support amazing graphics. This means it’s easy to create twenty-first century visuals that are easy to create and aesthetically mind-blowing. If you want to jazz up some shapes, spiff up your text, or make a nice graphic for your next marketing stunt, Office 2007 makes it very easy to do so. Formatting a presentation also helps your audience read slides easily and understand the message you are trying to convey.

What Can I Format?

image We’re going to focus on formatting a simple rectangle shape, but the formatting described in much of this chapter is applicable to a plethora of objects, whether they are

  • Shapes
  • SmartArt diagrams
  • Charts
  • Text
  • Tables
  • Or even parts of these objects, such as one bar in a chart

After an object is selected, go to the Format tab to see what changes can be made to the object.

Note

If you have a shape selected, this is the Drawing Tools Format tab. If you have SmartArt selected, it’s the SmartArt Tool Format tab you want. Whatever you select, the tab is labeled Format.

Three Ways to Apply Formatting

image There are three ways to apply formatting in PowerPoint. You can use gallery styles, do specific formats from the gallery, or use the Format Shape dialog.

Let’s walk through an example. Insert a rectangle by going to the Home tab’s Drawing group and opening the Shapes gallery. Click one of the rectangles, and then click on the slide to insert the rectangle. (More information about inserting shapes can be found in Chapter 7, “Working with Shapes.”) Now let’s discuss the different ways you can customize this rectangle.

Gallery Styles

The easiest way to format is to choose from the style gallery. With the rectangle you inserted earlier selected, go to the Drawing Tools Format tab’s Shape Styles group and choose from the gallery of shapes. Whatever you select is applied to the shape, changing everything about it—including its fill and its outline—and often applying fancy effects such as a shadow or a reflection. You can click the bottom of the three buttons to the right of the gallery to fully expand the style gallery and see the available choices (see Figure 12.1).

Figure 12.1 Expand the style gallery to see some styles that can be applied to a shape.

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You can make similar text formats by going to the Drawing Tools Format tab, and then the WordArt Styles group, and choosing from the gallery of formatted text. You learned in Chapter 11, “Dissecting Themes,” about how Office uses themes to determine what styles end up in both the shape and text galleries.

Note

To quickly format when you have a shape handy, just double-click the shape, and PowerPoint switches you over to the Drawing Tools Format tab.

Formatting from the Ribbon

Most gallery formats look nice enough, but they’re overkill if we just want to make one very specific change, such as change a rectangle’s fill to red.

Making a single edit, such as changing the fill color, is easy enough to do: Go to the Drawing Tools Format tab, the Shape Styles group, and click Shape Fill. Select your favorite fill (see Figure 12.2). For text, you’d use the Drawing Tools Format tab, go to the WordArt Styles group, and choose Text Fill. If you look on the Shape Styles and Text Styles groups, you will see other drop-downs that let you change the outline or apply effects. For example, going to Drawing Tools Format tab, Shape Styles group, clicking Shape Effects, and choosing Glow lets you apply a glow to a shape.

Figure 12.2 Choose a shape fill.

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Format Shape Dialog

Finally, for super power users, there’s the Format Shape dialog. For this example, let’s say that we want to be very specific about the type of outline for our rectangle:

1. Select the rectangle again.

2. Go to the Drawing Tools Format tab, Shape Styles group, and click the box launcher (the little rectangle at the bottom right of the group). Alternatively, right-click your rectangle and select Format Shape. Either command brings up the Format Shape dialog, which lets you customize all aspects of a shape in great detail.

Note

Read more about the Ribbon’s dialog box launcher in Chapter 1, “Introducing the Office 2007 User Interface.”

3. Select Line Style on the left and set a new dash type for the outline. We will discuss each of these line options in greater detail later in this chapter. Notice how the change is applied right away.

4. Close the Format Shape box.

Again, the same effect can be applied to text by clicking the expand rectangle in the Drawing Tools Format tab’s WordArt Styles group or by selecting text, right-clicking, and choosing Format Text Effects.

Impressive Fills

image There’s more to life than just plain, solid fills. In this section, we talk about the different ways you can fill an object.

Solid Fills

We already talked about super simple solid fills in this chapter. With your favorite items selected, go to the Drawing Tools Format tab, the Shape Styles group, and then click Shape Fill to choose your favorite fill color. You can learn more about the two types of colors, Theme Colors and Standard Colors, in Chapter 11.

Gradient Fills

A gradient fill is actually very similar to a solid fill, only with more than one color. A solid fill uses one color for the entire fill. A gradient uses several set colors and smoothly transitions between them. For example, Figure 12.3 shows a gradient from black to white to gray.

Figure 12.3 This gradient goes from black to white to gray.

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Applying a Simple Gradient

Applying a basic gradient fill is easy. With something selected, go to the Drawing Tools Format tab and then the Shape Styles group. Click Shape Fill, Gradient to choose from the canned variations shown in Figure 12.4. These gradients all involve colors pulled from the current theme that your presentation is using (again, more on themes in Chapter 11).

Figure 12.4 Choose from the canned gradient in the Gradient menu.

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Creating Custom Gradients

To do something more custom, do the following:

1. Go to the Drawing Tools Format tab and then to the Shape Style group and click Shape Fill.

2. Click Gradient. Click the More Gradients button at the bottom of the drop-down. Choose Gradient Fill if it isn’t already chosen. Make sure that the dialog doesn’t cover up the shape you’re formatting because as you change things in the dialog, the shape changes immediately. Move the dialog off to the side if you need to.

3. Choose the Gradient Fill option. You get a very complex set of options shown in Figure 12.5.

Figure 12.5 Advanced gradient options. Your settings might look different depending on the gradient you selected.

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A few drop-downs on this dialog box let you change things about the gradient:

  • Preset Colors—Lets you select from some canned gradients. They have been here since older versions of PowerPoint had them, but they’re honestly pretty ugly so we suggest skipping over them.
  • Type—Describes how PowerPoint transitions between different colors in the gradient. See Figure 12.6 to see what the different gradient types look like.

Figure 12.6 The four gradient types applied to a rectangle shape.

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  • Linear—The color band between colors looks like a line (hence the name “linear”).

Tip

The number of bands is independent of the number of stops. Placing many stops very close to one another can be used to visually produce one smooth band.

  • Radial—Has a circular color band between colors.
  • Rectangular—The color band looks like a rectangle.
  • Path—The gradient’s color band depends on the shape that you’re applying the gradient to. For a star shape, for example, the path gradient’s boundary is star shaped.
  • Direction and Angle—These actually do the same thing by letting you choose what direction the boundary between colors faces. For example, a 0° linear gradient has colors changing from left to right, whereas a 90° gradient goes from top to bottom. The Direction drop-down lets you choose from some preset choices, whereas the Angle text box lets you type in an exact number. These are grayed out if you set the Type as Path because the direction is determined by the type of shape you have.
  • Rotate with Shape—This check box at the bottom of the dialog lets you choose whether the colors rotate when you rotate the shape. You will learn more about rotation in Chapter 14, “Positioning Slide Elements.”

The dialog also lets you add and remove colors in the gradient. Each of these color points is called a gradient stop.

The Gradient stop drop-down lets you choose which stop in the gradient (Stop 1, Stop 2, and so on) you want to edit. When you choose a value, the Stop position, Color, and Transparency values change to show you what their values are for the current stop. To add more stops, click Add. To delete the selected stop, click Remove.

Here’s what the values within each stop mean:

  • Stop position—Lets you determine how important this stop/color is in the gradient. The stops define when gradient changes from one color to the next with the stop order determined by the stop number. For example, if you want Stop 3 to stand out a lot in your gradient (for example, you want the blue in your red, white, and blue gradient to stand out the most), select Stop 3 in the drop-down and increase the Stop position percentage. Similarly, if you want the color to have less prominence, decrease the percentage.
  • Color—This sets the color for this gradient stop.
  • Transparency—Choose how transparent that stop is. This means that part of your shape can be more transparent than other parts.

Creating Gradient Overlays

image Overlaying transparent, gradient-filled shapes on top of existing objects creates a stunning, yet very professional effect. It’s fairly easy to create and can be applied to any object you have in your presentation.

Let’s walk through an example. We have a picture of a mountain, and we want the left side to represent day and the right side to represent night.

1. Insert a picture by going to the Insert tab’s Illustrations group and choosing Picture. If you have Windows XP, you can find this exact picture (see Figure 12.7) at C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersDocumentsMy PicturesSample PicturesWinter.jpg, but any picture will do.

Figure 12.7 Insert a large picture.

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2. For this overlay, you need three rectangles. To insert these shapes, go to the Home tab’s Drawing group, select Shapes, and choose a rectangle. Drag out the first rectangle so that it covers up the left half of the picture, and then create two more rectangles that each cover up a quarter of the remaining area on the right side, as shown in Figure 12.8.

Figure 12.8 Cover the picture up with rectangles.

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3. Shift-click to select all three rectangles and set the line style to No Line. To do this, go to the Drawing Tools Format tab, find the Shape Styles group, click the Shape Outline drop-down, and choose No Outline.

4. Now it gets more hard-core. Select just the big rectangle on the left side. Right-click it and choose Format Shape to bring up the Format Shape dialog.

5. Click Fill on the left, and then choose the Gradient fill option.

6. PowerPoint creates three gradient stops automatically, so there are three choices. You want to play with the middle gradient stop. So, change the Gradient Stops drop-down from Stop 1 to Stop 2. Then change the Transparency value from 0% to 100%, which sets the transparency of the middle gradient stop.

Three stops are set, and we’re making the middle stop see-through; this means that you will be able to see through the middle of the rectangle completely, as shown in Figure 12.9.

Figure 12.9 Make the middle of the big rectangle see-through.

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Okay, now that the left side of the picture looks spiffy, let’s work on the right side:

1. With the Format Shape dialog still open, select the top-right rectangle. (You might need to reposition the dialog so that it doesn’t block the rectangle.)

2. In the dialog, click Fill on the left, and then choose Gradient Fill. Choose black as the color for the first gradient stop.

3. In the Gradient Stops drop-down, switch to Stop 2. Verify that the Transparency is set to 100%, or set it to 100% if it isn’t.

4. Switch to Stop 3 in the Gradient Stops list and click Remove to delete it. We only want two gradient stops for this rectangle.

5. Finally, select the bottom-right rectangle. In the Format Shape dialog, click Fill on the left and set it to Gradient Fill as well. Stop 1 should already be selected, so we’re manipulating the first gradient stop. Set the Transparency to 100% so that we can see-through the first stop. Switch to Stop 2 and change the transparency back to 0%.

Close the dialog, and bam; you get the cool looking effect pictured in Figure 12.10. Neat, huh?

Figure 12.10 Final results of our gradient overlay recipe.

image

This technique of overlaying partially transparent shapes on top of pictures or other objects is effective for making subtle color changes to stuff that’s underneath. Experiment with shapes other than rectangles, with different gradient colors, and with different transparencies, and see what you can come up with.

Picture Fills

Want to use a picture as your shape background? That’s easy enough.

Once again, start with your basic rectangle. Go to the Home tab and in the Drawing group, click Shapes. Choose a rectangle, and then click on the slide to insert it. To apply a simple picture fill to your rectangle, select the rectangle, and then go to the Drawing Tools Format tab. In the Shape Styles group, click the Shape Fill button and choose Picture. Then browse to a folder in which you keep your pictures and choose a picture to use.

Note

After the picture is inserted, notice how the Picture Tools Format tab appears. This lets you apply picture-based effects to your picture-filled shape. Details on using pictures in your presentations can be found in Chapter 4, “Working with Pictures.”

Textures and Picture Fills

Of course there’s more to picture fills than just that simple case. Insert a new rectangle, right-click it, and select Format Shape. Choose the Picture or Texture Fill option in the main pane on the right, shown in Figure 12.11.

Figure 12.11 Picture Fill dialog.

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Let’s briefly walk through the options found on this dialog:

  • Texture—Lets you choose from a canned set of textures that have come with PowerPoint for several versions.
  • Insert From—Most likely, you want to insert a picture from a file you have. But, PowerPoint also lets you insert something you copied to the clipboard or use some Clip Art.
  • Tile Picture as Texture—If you check this box, the image is tiled, meaning that it keeps repeating to completely fill up the shape. If it’s unchecked, the image you choose is stretched to fit the shape.
  • Stretch Options—These options appear if the Tile Picture as Texture box was unchecked. The four percentages let you adjust where the edges of the image touch the edges of the shape. For example, if you make the Left percentage negative, the left border of the image will spill a little outside the left border of the shape. Similarly, making it positive means that there will be a slight gap between the left border of the shape and the left border of the image.
  • Tiling options—These options appear if the Tile Picture as Texture box is checked (see Figure 12.12). The Offset values let you choose where to begin tiling the image. You might want to start with half a tile, for instance, rather than have the first tile begin at the left border of the image. The Scale values let you reduce the size of the image so that you can tile more of them. Alignment lets you choose where to start tiling from, and the Mirror type lets you choose whether the second tile is a mirror image of the first tile or whether it just appears normally.

Figure 12.12 Picture Fill dialog when Tile Picture as Texture is checked.

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  • Transparency—Choose how transparent the picture should be.
  • Rotate with Shape—Decide whether you want the picture to rotate when the shape rotates.

Note

Previous versions of PowerPoint also supported pattern fills. For this, you’d select between 64 different colorless patterns. This was useful in the days before color monitors and color printers were as prevalent as they are now. PowerPoint 2007 no longer supports pattern fills, and if you open an older presentation with one, PowerPoint converts it to a picture fill.

Background Fill

One special type of PowerPoint fill is a slide background fill. You will find the other fills (solid, gradient, and picture) in other Office applications such as Excel, but Slide Background Fill is unique to PowerPoint.

Say you have a rectangle that you give a background fill. The rectangle gets the same fill as the background, even if you have a few other shapes underneath the rectangle. You can think of it as using a hole punch: You’re cutting a hole in everything that lies between your shape and the background.

Here’s how to set one up:

1. In a new presentation, change the slide background to a picture. To do this, right-click the slide background and choose Format Background. Click the Gradient Fill option to fill the slide background with a gradient.

2. Insert a shape of some sort (use the Shapes gallery on the Home tab). A rectangle will do just fine.

2. Right-click the shape and choose Format Shape.

3. Choose the Slide background fill option.

Note that this didn’t simply copy the background’s fill type, which is set to a two color gradient, and plop it on the rectangle. If we apply the same two color gradients directly to the rectangle, it looks different (see Figure 12.13).

Figure 12.13 Setting a gradient fill isn’t the same as a background fill. Notice how the left side of the gradient-filled rectangle on the right is dark, whereas the background at that part of the slide isn’t nearly as dark.

image

A background fill is actually equivalent to punching a hole all the way through and the shape picking up the fill from the background.

Interesting Uses of Background Fills

This section gives a brief overview of two creative uses for a background fill.

Say that you want to put a link to slide 1 on every slide in your presentation. So, you go to the Slide Master, and you stick an Action button to the first slide on there. (Read Chapter 15, “Going Beyond Slide-by-Slide,” for more on Action Buttons.)

Awesome! But that button shows up on the first slide, too. And it’s sort of silly to have a link on the first slide to the first slide.

Now, this is certainly fixable. We could, for instance, use a different master or a different layout for the first slide; you learned about those in Chapter 10, “Formatting Your Presentation.” Those aren’t perfect though, because if we ever update the master we would have to remember to also update the special master or layout we created for the first slide. We’re probably not going to remember to do that.

This is where background fills come in handy. All we have to do is cover up the link on the first page with a background filled shape. In Figure 12.14, we’ve inserted a rectangle shape on top of the Action Button, removed the line (selected the button, went to the Drawing Tools Format tab, went to the Shape Styles group, and chose No Outline), and given it a background fill. Best of all, our first slide still follows the same master as the rest of the slides, but that special Action button we added on the master won’t show on the first slide because we’ve covered it up.

Figure 12.14 Putting a background filled shape on top of the Action button hides the Action button on the front page, while still allowing that slide to follow the same master as our other slides.

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Note

Another way to accomplish this task would be to add the Action button just on the layouts in which it made sense. This means that you wouldn’t have to hide the button on the other layouts. The downside is that you would have to add the button multiple times if you wanted the button on most of your layouts.

Just as a background-filled object can be used to hide a button on the master, background fills can be used to punch holes through parts of pictures. This lets you create nonrectangular pictures in a totally custom shape that you determine.

Tip

If you don’t need something too custom and just want your picture in a simple shape such as a star, a circle, or a heart, insert a shape and then apply a picture fill to it, as described earlier in this chapter.

1. Insert a picture.

2. Go to the Home tab and in the Drawing group, click Shapes. Choose Scribble in the Lines section; it’s the last item in the Lines section.

3. Use the pencil to circle the area of the picture you want to hide.

4. Right-click the shape you created and choose Format Shape.

5. Choose Line Color on the left and then select No Line.

6. Click Fill on the left, and then choose Slide Background Fill.

7. Click OK, and voilà! You’ve punched a hole through part of the picture (see Figure 12.15).

Figure 12.15 The result of a background-filled freeform on top of a picture is a partially hidden picture.

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Advanced Line Styles

image Shapes, text, diagrams, and charts have outlines. PowerPoint allows you to format them in a pretty rich way.

Line Color

If you’re comfortable with fills from the previous section, setting a line color is just as easy.

  • To use the gallery, go to the Drawing Tools Format tab, Shape Styles group and click Shape Outline to select an outline color.
  • Alternatively, you can use the Format Shape dialog to select a line color, which lets you apply gradient colors. Just right-click the shape and choose Format Shape. Choose Line Color on the left, and you can select No Line, which can be hard to find there under the Line Color section. But, usually you would select Solid Line or Gradient Line. The gradient line options may look complicated at first, but you will quickly notice that they’re identical to the gradient fill options described earlier in this chapter.

Note

A gradient line might not appear to do anything if the line itself or the outline around a shape is too narrow. Gradient-colored lines are new to PowerPoint 2007 and weren’t available in previous versions of PowerPoint. Previous versions of PowerPoint allowed setting patterned lines; however, they aren’t available in PowerPoint 2007. It’s all give and take.

Line Style

Colors aren’t the only changes you can make to a line or an outline. To explore PowerPoint line styles, let’s walk through an example:

1. Insert a line from the Shapes gallery (on the Home tab’s Drawing group). Choose one of the lines in the Lines section and click the slide to insert it.

2. Right-click the line and choose Format Shape to bring up the Format Shape dialog.

3. In the left section of the dialog, choose Line Style. You will see the options shown in Figure 12.16.

Figure 12.16 Line styles in the Format Shape dialog.

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4. Let’s make our line thicker. For illustration purposes, make the width 15 pt so that it’s very large and you can easily see it.

5. A compound line describes how many parallel lines your line is composed of. If we choose the second option, notice how our line becomes two lines running alongside one another.

6. A dash type chops up the line in the other direction so that the line becomes a series of shorter segments instead of one continuous line. If we choose the third option (Square dot) for Dash type, look at how the line is no longer continuous but broken into smaller pieces.

7. Change the Cap type to Round. Notice how each segment is rounded now rather than having sharp corners as it did before.

8. Let’s skip to the arrow settings at the bottom. These let you decide whether to have arrow heads and the ends of the line (Begin Type, End Type) and how big the arrowheads should be (Begin Size, End Size). Steps 4–7 are visually shown in Figure 12.17.

Figure 12.17 Customize each line style attribute one at a time.

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Join type determines how two lines should join in a corner. For example, if you have a rectangle shape and choose Miter for the join type, the rectangle corners are sharp. A round join type gives rounded corners, and bevel is the compromise between the two (see Figure 12.18). A join type isn’t applicable to our example, which uses a simple line because the line never joins another line.

Figure 12.18 The three join types on both a rectangle and a partial circle shape.

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Tip

Remember, like most tricks in this chapter, lines are not specific to rectangles or even to shapes. Try customizing lines on text, pictures, diagrams, and charts.

Drawing Ellipsis...

Let’s walk through a more concrete usage of lines: An ellipsis, also known as “dot dot dot,” can be useful to have in a diagram. For example, say that we actually have 100 blocks. Instead of drawing all 100, we just draw a few and have an ellipsis there to represent the rest.

We’ve been asked on several occasions how to make one of these, so we thought that we’d publish the steps we use:

  1. Create a line. On the Home tab’s Drawing group, click Shapes and choose the plain, normal leftmost line in the Lines section and click the slide to insert it.
  2. Change the dash style to dots by selecting the line and going to the Drawing Tools Format tab. In the Shape Styles group, click Shape Outline. Choose Dashes, and then choose the second, Round Dot option. You can probably see that the line now has many tiny little dots.
  3. Let’s increase the thickness so that we can actually see the dots. Use the Drawing Tools Format tab and go to the Shape Styles group, click Shape Outline, click Weight, and then choose 6 pt.
  4. Change the length of the line as necessary either by dragging the ends of the line or using the Size drop-down list on the Drawing Tools Format tab.
  5. Voilà! Figure 12.19 shows the result.

Figure 12.19 An ellipsis created with a PowerPoint line.

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Tip

If you prefer rounded dots for your ellipsis, set a rounded Cap type in the Format Shape dialog. You learned about this in the “Line Style” section earlier in this chapter.

Brand New Effects

image Now that we’ve looked at fills and lines, we explore some of the fancier effects in PowerPoint. Look at examples of all these in Figure 12.20. Again, these can be applied to all sorts of objects such as text and charts; don’t limit yourself to shapes.

Figure 12.20 PowerPoint 2007 introduces a variety of effects.

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Shadow

Everyone’s seen a shadow. Let’s explore the many types of shadows in PowerPoint.

Soft Versus Hard

Shadows have been around in PowerPoint for a long time, but previous versions of PowerPoint only let you set “hard” shadows in which the entire shadow was one solid color.

PowerPoint 2007 supports the more popular and realistic-looking “soft” shadow. With these, the edges of the shadow fade away and get softer around the edges.

Exotic Shadow Types

PowerPoint calls a traditional shadow an Outer Shadow, but PowerPoint 2007 also supports more exotic shadow types:

  • Inner Shadow—The shadow is inside the subject.
  • Perspective Shadow—The shadow floats beneath or falls behind the subject.

Setting a Shadow

Setting a shadow is pretty easy. Just select a shape, diagram, chart, or picture, and go to the Drawing Tools Format tab. In the Shape Styles group, click Shape Effects. Select Shadow, and then choose from the available options.

Tip

Text can similarly be shadowed in the Drawing Tools Format tab by going to the WordArt Styles group, clicking Text Effects, and then choosing Shadow.

If you choose Shadow Options, the Format Shape dialog gives you more control over the color, transparency, size, blur amount, angle, and distance of the shadow (see Figure 12.21). This is a big step up over previous versions of PowerPoint, which only gave control over the shadow distance and color.

Figure 12.21 Customize the shadow in the Format Shape dialog.

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Reflection

Forget copying your shapes, rotating them upside down, flipping them, stretching them, and trying to make a reflection yourself. Two clicks of a button, and you end up with a beautiful reflection.

Select whichever object you want to reflect, and look at the Drawing Tools Format tab. For shapes, go to the Shape Styles group, click Shape Effects, and choose Reflection. For a text reflection, go to the WordArt Styles group, click Text Effects, and choose Reflection. You will find your object looking back at itself like a reflection in water in no time.

Hidden Effect Customizations

The PowerPoint 2007 file format supports more customization options than the simple choices presented in the Reflection gallery. It lets you customize a reflection’s position, direction, and alignment, as well as whether the reflection should rotate with the shape. Unfortunately, there’s no advanced reflection control in the Format Shape dialog, so there’s no real control of these options inside PowerPoint.

The same is true for glows and soft edges. There are simple galleries, but nothing inside PowerPoint itself that lets you view or change the power hidden in the file format.

If you’re feeling brave, Chapter 18, “Publishing Your Presentation to Any Format,” introduces you to the file format, and you can try editing these directly yourself. If you wait a few years, it’s possible that Microsoft will one day add these options to the PowerPoint user interface.

Glow

What better way to brighten your day than with a little glow? Glow is another new Office 2007 effect that can be applied using a gallery. Select something, go to the Format tab’s Shape Styles group, open the Shape Effects drop-down, and choose Glow to try it out.

Soft Edges

Finally, there’s the new soft edges effect, which cuts off part of the edges of an object and makes them...well...soft. To be honest, it doesn’t look that great except on photos. But, if you have a object that you want to give a “feathered edge” to, go to the Format tab’s Shape Styles group, click Shape Effects, and then choose Soft Edges.

Caution

You’ve likely seen an incredibly tacky WordArt in a restaurant indicating where the bathroom is or a sign advertising the Catch of the Day. Remember that the next generation of these overused signs are just around the corner by overusing the effects just discussed. So, don’t just settle for the default values they apply. Be creative and mix and match effects to see if you can create a unique look.

Bevel, 3D Rotation

Tired of living in two dimensions? Well you shouldn’t be because you don’t—you live in three, and so should your graphics. Three dimensional effects like Bevel and 3D Rotation are described in Chapter 13, “Demystifying 3D.”

Transparent Overlay

image One pretty effect is to overlay a semitransparent object over the slide.

1. After you have some content on your slide, insert a rectangle that covers the entire slide. Or create a few rectangles that cover large portions of the slide. You can experiment with other shapes as well.

2. Select the shape, choose the Drawing Tools Format tab, and go to the Shape Styles group. Click Shape Fill, and then choose a fill of some kind. A solid color or a picture fill will do fine.

3. Right-click the shape and choose Format Shape. Go to the Fill section on the left if it’s not already selected. For the Transparency slider near the bottom, set it to 65% or so.

4. Get rid of the line around the shape. Click Line Color in the left pane of the dialog and choose No Line to get rid of the line.

5. Click Close. The result is a pretty overlay that filters your existing content (see Figure 12.22). The overlay will also look nice even if you change themes because the shape uses a color from the theme.

Figure 12.22 Placing a semitransparent shape over the slide creates a nice-looking effect.

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Customize the Default Shape

image Maybe you went to Berkeley like we did (Go Bears!), and you wish that all the shapes you inserted would have gold fills and blue lines. Or you’re loud and wish that all the text you typed was size 72 and bold. Fear not! That’s what defaults are for.

Insert a rectangle shape by going to the Home tab, going to the Drawing group, clicking the rectangle in the Shapes section, and clicking somewhere on the slide to insert it.

Now go crazy on it. Give the rectangle a gradient or picture fill (on the Drawing Tools Format tab, go to the Shape Styles group, and click Shape Fill); give it a crazy line. (On the Drawing Tools Format tab’s Shape Styles group, click Shape Outline.) Type some text into the rectangle. Format the text by changing the font size and making it bold and underlined. (Go to the Home tab and look in the Font group.)

When you’re done, right-click the rectangle and click Set as Default Shape. Now, whenever you insert a new shape or a new text box, it defaults to whatever formatting you just used.

image These defaults are saved into the presentation, so they work if you copy the presentation to another machine. But, you need to set them again if you start a new presentation.

Note

In previous versions of Office, you could also go into the Format AutoShape dialog and check the Default for New Objects check box at the bottom to have all the changes you made set as the default on that computer. In Office 2007, there’s no OK button on the Format Shape dialog, and all changes you make are applied to the selected items immediately. So, this check box no longer exists.

The Mysterious Paintbrush Icon (Format Painter)

image Often you’ve formatted something only to want to format something else exactly the same way. Maybe you typed a few words, made them pretty by applying some colors and styling, and now want to make another word look exactly the same. Maybe you got a picture looking picture-perfect, and you want another picture to look exactly the same. Enter Format Painter. This tool allows you to copy the formatting only, from one object to another. This means that if you have several different shapes to be formatted in the same way, you don’t have to choose each one individually and set the formatting. For example, say that your presentation contains a slide with a star, one with an oval, and one with a square to which you want to apply the formatting from a rectangle on another slide. You can simply copy all the formatting applied to the rectangle and “paint” it onto your other shapes. This feature works the same way with text.

Format Painter Example Using Shapes

To use Format Painter to copy the formatting from one shape to another, do the following:

1. Insert two pictures and select the first picture.

2. Format the picture by going to the Picture Tools Format tab, going to the Picture Styles group, and choosing something pretty from the gallery. Feel free to apply other edits to the picture, such as recoloring it, changing the picture shape, giving it a border, or changing brightness/contrast (see Chapter 4 to learn a lot about formatting pictures).

3. With the formatted picture still selected, go to the Home tab’s Clipboard group and click the Format Painter button. The button looks like a paintbrush (see Figure 12.23).

Figure 12.23 Format Painter button.

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4. Note how your cursor mouse now has a paintbrush next to it.

5. Click the second picture you inserted in step 1. Now it is formatted with all the formatting you applied to the first picture.

Format Painter Works on Other Things Too!

It’s not like we haven’t repeated ourselves enough times already, but we say it again: This doesn’t only works on shapes. Try Format Painter on text, pictures, tables, diagrams, and charts too.

In the Thumbnail pane and Slide Sorter view, you can even pick up the formatting from one slide and apply it to another slide. It will take the theme colors and background from one slide and apply it to another.

Format Painter Tips

Here are random facts for you Format Painter power users:

  • There are shortcut keys for Format Painter. Use Ctrl+Shift+C to pick up and Ctrl+Shift+V to apply. After you get accustomed to using the shortcuts, you will find yourself using Format Painter more often.
  • Format Painter never saves shape geometries. You will never be able to pick up the “circle-ness” of a circle, apply it to a rectangle, and have it turn into a circle. Similarly, Format Painter doesn’t pick up or apply shape sizes.
  • Format Painter does respect colors coming from an Office theme. If you use Format Painter to pick up a theme color from one item and apply it to another item, the color will update correctly and still be a theme color. Similarly, if you pick up a theme color from one place and apply it to an object on another slide that follows colors from a different theme, the target object will visually have a different color from the original color and will match the target object’s theme. More information about theme colors is discussed in Chapter 11.
  • Shapes formatted using Format Painter lose their links to the Master. Say that you have a placeholder on the slide that derives its formatting from a Master placeholder. Say that you use Format Painter to pick up that placeholder’s formatting and apply it to a star shape. If you then change the formatting on the Master placeholder, the star shape won’t get the new formatting.
  • Format Painter doesn’t work on Excel text. So, the next time your Excel-wielding, rich, financial buddies try to impress you with their Excel prowess, demonstrate text Format Painter for them and make them cry (or not).
  • Though most Office users these days don’t use Format Painter, Format Painter is one of the oldest features in Microsoft Office—found even in the earliest versions of Word.

Using Repeat Can Save You Time

image If you’ve been using Windows for a while, you’re undoubtedly familiar with Undo and Redo. You probably even use the Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y keyboard shortcuts.

Repeat is their unloved step brother. It’s pretty easy to use. Here’s an example:

1. Insert a rectangle anywhere on the slide.

2. Do step 1 again to insert a second rectangle.

3. Select one of the rectangles and change its line style (using the Drawing Tools Format tab, as shown in previous sections of this chapter). PowerPoint remembers the last command you applied.

4. Select the other rectangle.

5. Press Ctrl+Y to repeat the procedure. This applies the line change to the second rectangle.

Redo and Repeat are not found anywhere on the Ribbon. By default though, it’s the rightmost button on the Quick Access Toolbar to the right of the Office button (see Figure 12.24).

Figure 12.24 Repeat/Redo on the Quick Access Toolbar.

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Note

If you ever remove the Redo button from the QAT on accident, you need to re-add it by clicking the Office button, clicking PowerPoint Options at the bottom, and clicking Customize in the left pane.

You might be slightly confused why Ctrl+Y is the shortcut for this when you usually associate Ctrl+Y with Redo. It’s simpler than you think: If you’ve just undone something, Ctrl+Y does Redo. If you’ve just performed an action, Ctrl+Y does Repeat. At any one time, either Redo or Repeat is available, but never both.

Mastering Multiple Undo

image Sometimes you want to undo just the last operation. That’s easy; just press Ctrl+Z. Other times, you want to undo the last 10 operations. There’s an easier way to do it than pressing Ctrl+Z 10 times:

1. Find the Undo icon on the Quick Access Toolbar. It looks like a blue arrow pointing to the left.

2. Click the little down arrow to the right of it. This drops down a menu that lists all the possible actions that can be undone. You can pick as many items as you want to undo (see Figure 12.25).

Figure 12.25 Undo multiple undo operations.

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Tip

You can’t undo an unlimited number of operations; by default, PowerPoint only stores the last 20 operations. To store more, click the Office button, select PowerPoint Options at the bottom, click Advanced in the left pane of the PowerPoint Options dialog, and then change Maximum Number of Undos in the first section.

Change Shape

image Say that you inserted a rectangle, made a whole bunch of changes to it, and then realized that you really wanted an oval. It’s easy enough to change your mind. Just select the shape, go to the Drawing Tools Format tab, the Insert Shapes group, and click Edit Shape. (Of the two buttons, it’s the one on top.) Click Change Shape and choose an oval (see Figure 12.26).

Figure 12.26 Change Shape in the Ribbon.

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This works on SmartArt shapes as well. Select any shape within the SmartArt, choose the SmartArt Tools Format tab, go to the Shapes group, and click Change Shape.

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