spacing Archives - The PowerPoint Blog

Applying Line and Paragraph Spacing

Quick Shortcut to Apply Line and Paragraph Spacing

The F4 key reapplies the last action. It’s a great timesaver for those repetitive actions – an especially helpful task in customizing the line and paragraph spacing in a text box where not every paragraph gets the same spacing. Here is my sample slide with several text boxes and several paragraph spacing opportunities to improve the legibility.

line spacing f4_image01

If the formatting goal is to add some additional paragraph space between the bullets on each text box, the process unfortunately involves selecting the bulleted text in one text box, opening the paragraph spacing dialog, adjusting, closing dialog and then repeating the process in the next text box.

As a shortcut, adjust the Line and Paragraph spacing, then select the next text box and position cursor on the next bullet line. Use F4 to repeat the step automatically! F4 applies the last action made, so in this case you can go from the above sample slide to the one below in less than 30 seconds vs. several minutes selecting text boxes and opening/adjusting the Line and Paragraph dialog 6 times.

line spacing f4_image02

The F4 repeat works on virtually any command while editing slides. Another great use is formatting text in Tables – in this sample F4 was used to quickly add the text indenting for each 2nd line.

line spacing f4_image04

Also, Ctrl Y is another key command that does the same thing. So F4 or CTRL+Y repeat the last command. Test it out and see how it can save you time.

-Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-08-10T08:24:12-07:00April 13th, 2016|Tutorial|

Find and Replace Double Spaces in a Presentation

[text]Presentations are the creation of many people copy/pasting content into a single slide deck. One of the common content edits is double spaces in sentences. Here is a quick and easy method for removing them.[/text]
[text]1. On the Home ribbon, select “Replace” on the far right.[/text]

replace double spaces 1

[text]2. Under “Find what:” Hit the space bar 2x. Then, under “Replace with:” Hit the space bar 1x. Click “Replace all.”[/text]

replace double spaces 2

[text]3. PPT will find all instances of double spaces and replace with a single space with 1 click! It searches the Notes section as well as slides, but it’s certainly very helpful in catching the ones hiding in slide content.[/text]

replace double spaces 3

[text]4. If you wanted to see exactly where the erroneous double spaces are, you can opt to click “Find Next” and PPT will take you slide by slide highlighting where the spaces are. You can then choose which ones to change by clicking “Replace” rather than “Replace all.”[/text]

replace double spaces 4

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-08-10T09:02:39-07:00July 22nd, 2015|Tutorial|

How To Fix The Gap in Text Reflections

Selective use of the reflection tool for text can make slide layouts very dynamic. But why does the upper text have a gap and the lower text does not?

There are 3 preset gap options, but both samples here have the same setting (zero gap).

The answer is the line spacing is different. The larger the line spacing the larger the reflection gap – even when set to zero gap option. The top sample has a line spacing of 2.0, which creates a gap:

The lower text is setup with a .95 line spacing (note: 1.0, or single spacing, is the zero point for refections):

– Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-08-16T11:47:30-07:00April 15th, 2010|Tutorial|

Kerning!!

If you have used desktop publishing software you are familiar with the concept of kerning. With (variable width) fonts, different pairs of characters are spaced differently. Kerning is the adjustment of spacing between letters to obtain a more pleasing appearance. The great news is that PowerPoint now has some basic kerning capabilities. Microsoft calls it ‘Character Spacing’ and here is the quick menu.

We can also get more fine control over the Character Spacing by opening the Character Spacing dialog window.

Here are a few examples of kerning in use. The top text is the standard, or normal, kerning. The second one is expanded and the third is condensed. All is still editable text and can be applied to select text within a single text box.

– Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-11-17T14:50:27-07:00December 3rd, 2007|Tutorial|