PowerPoint Tips

All the thousands of fancy fonts that are available can basically be broken down into two categories:

• serif

• and sans serif

A serif is a "tail"--the letters of such fonts as Times New Roman have little tails and thus fall in the serif category.

Sans serif, which literally means without tails - Arial is an example of a sans serif font.

Strangely enough, the tails on serif typefaces make these fonts easier to read in print. But, if you're projecting words onto a large screen, often it's the sans serif fonts that are more easily discernible.

Of course this is just a general rule. It's never a bad idea to set up a font test prior to a presentation. Simply make a slide containing several fonts that you're considering and project them onto a screen in a setting that's similar to the one in which the real presentation is going to take place.

This test should also illuminate why you should try to avoid using more than two different fonts on a slide during a presentation.

PowerPoint aligns text and graphics based on their location.

For example:

• If you select two drawing objects using the Shift-click method.

• Click on the Draw button on the Drawing toolbar select Align Or Distribute 4Align Left.

PowerPoint moves the element that is farther right and lines it up with the element that was farther left.

PowerPoint uses one element as a guide for lining up the other element. So, if you used the Align Right command, the element to the right would be a guide for lining up an element located farther left.

To align an object in strict accordance to its position on the slide

• Click on the Draw button and select Align Or Distribute and make sure the Relative To Slide option is selected.

You can easily highlight text within a text box and drag it to a new location on your slide to create a new text box containing the text you selected.

In order for this to work, you need to enable the Drag And Drop Text Editing option.

• From the Tools menu select Options.

• Click on the Edit tab.

• Select Drag And Drop Text Editing (so that a check mark appears in the associated check box).

• Click OK.