Video: Add bullets to text

Try-it! Transcript



Format your text as bullets; change font size, line spacing, and indentation; and change list formatting on the slide master to change all of your slides at once.

Add bullets or numbers to text

Use bullets or numbers to present lots of text or a sequential process in a PowerPoint 2013 presentation.

1. On the VIEW tab, in the Presentation Views group, click Normal.

2. On the left-hand side of the PowerPoint window, click a slide thumbnail that you want to add bulleted or numbered text to.

3. On the slide, select the lines of text in a text placeholder or table that you want to add bullets or numbering to.

4. On the HOME tab, in the Paragraph group, click Bullets or Numbering.

   • To change all lines of text, select the outline of the text object, and then apply the bullet or numbering.

   • To increase or decrease the indent, to change spacing between a bullet or number and the text, to change the style, color, or size of bullets or numbers, to manually change the number that you want to start from, and so on, see Adjust the indent in a bulleted or numbered list on the ruler.

Want more?

Use slide masters to customize a presentation

Apply and change a theme

In PowerPoint, add bullets to a list of text items to emphasize the key points of information.

For a list to be most effective, you'll keep it moderate in length, and the list items will be brief and scannable.

Another aspect of lists concerns their formatting — font size, line spacing, margins, indentation of bullets and text, and bullet type.

So, as you create bulleted lists, think of their effectiveness in terms of both what they say and how they look.

Let's go over some list basics.

All the content layouts in PowerPoint include bulleted-list formatting.

To remove the bullets or add them, you select the content placeholder and click Bullets on the HOME tab.

To add a new item and drop down another level, press Enter, and click Increase List Level. Or, press Enter+Tab.

To move an item one level up, place the insertion point at the start of the text and click Decrease List Level. Or, press Shift+Tab.

Be careful in the use of text levels. For example, this Agenda list, with first and second-level items is much easier for an audience to take in, if you limit it to the top-level points, as in the list here.

As you create a list, you'll want to work with how it looks.

If you want a certain theme, apply it early, so you know what its list styles look like.

Then make other adjustments.

To learn more, see the other movies in this course, called Change font size, line spacing, and indentation, and Change list formatting on the slide master.

Up next: Change font size, line spacing, and indentation.