The standard PowerPoint slide text paragraph format is a bulleted list, but you’re not limited to that format. You can change paragraph formatting in several ways, either before or after you enter text. Let’s look at a few of them here, and then you can investigate more fully on your own.
To create a second-level bulleted list by indenting a list item:
Position the insertion point at the beginning of a list item, and then either press Tab, click the Increase Indent button on the Formatting toolbar, or click the Increase List Level button in the Bullets and Numbering panel of the Formatting Palette.
To outdent a list item:
To convert a bulleted (unordered) list to a numbered (ordered) list:
- Select the list items you want to change, and then click the Numbering button on the Formatting toolbar or in the Bullets and Numbering panel.
You can change the style of the numbers or letters identifying ordered list items by making a selection in the Style list in the Bullets And Numbering panel, or on the Numbering page of the Format Text dialog box. From this page, you can also specify a color, size, and starting letter or number.
Tip
You can display the Format Text dialog box, either by clicking Bullets And Numbering on the Format menu, or by right-clicking the list and then clicking Bullets And Numbering.
Troubleshooting
When you apply a number format to a multilevel list, PowerPoint uses the same format for all list levels. (This is different from the way Microsoft Word gracefully handles multilevel lists.) To differentiate the importance of the list levels, you can select and format the list items in each level separately.
See Also
You can format the fonts and colors associated with a PowerPoint slide deck by applying or changing the theme. For more information, see "Work with Office Themes" in Chapter 7.
To convert a bulleted list to normal text:
Click the active Bullets button in the Bullets and Numbering panel or on the Formatting toolbar to remove the bullet character or number.
If the text will be long enough to wrap to multiple lines, you’ll need to remove the hanging indent from the paragraph. Start by displaying the Paragraph page of the Format Text dialog box in one of these ways:
On the Paragraph page of the Format Text dialog box, under Indentation, click (None) in the Special list, and change the Before Text measurement to 0".
