Text Boxes

To use a text placeholder just click in it and start typing
A text placeholder is just a special type of text box.
Anything you type will automatically appear in the Outline pane (and visa versa)
When you deleted everything from a text placeholder the default message "click to add .. " will return automatically.

The boxes with dotted outlines that appear when you first insert a new slide are called placeholders
The placeholders will contain the slide title and the slide text for this slide.
There are also placeholders for other objects as well including charts, tables, clip art etc.

A text box is a special type of shape that is designed to place text on your slides.
You can insert a textbox using the textbox button on the Drawing toolbar click where you want one corner and drag to the opposite corner.
Textboxes can be manually added using the Drawing toolbar but the text will not appear in the Outline pane.
To create an extra textbox you can use the textbox button on the Drawing toolbar.
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Release the mouse and enter your text.

To reposition the text elsewhere on the slide click outside the text area then click on text and a shaded border will appear.

To change the font of the whole textbox.
click on the text box and a shaded outline will appear.

To change a selection of text select the text first and then select (Format > Font)

Aligning text
Objects can be distributed and spaced evenly horizontally or vertically and they can also be aligned relative to the slide itself.

Text is automatically wrapped so you do not have to press Enter at the end of every line.
Press Enter only when you need to start a new paragraph.
Text is usually formatted with a bullet character at the beginning of every paragraph.
The default bullet is a square box although this can be easily changed.
Refer to the Bullets and numbering for more details

It is important to remember that the bullet character is part of the paragraph format and cannot be typed directly as a character.

You can switch between "insert mode" and "type over" mode by pressing the Insert key
When you are in insert mode any characters that you type are inserted at the cursor location
In type over mode each character that is typed replaces an existing character.

You can move around your paragraph of text in the familiar ways.
Home - takes you to the start of the line
End - takes you to the end of the line
Ctrl + Arrow keys to move around quickly between whole words

You can delete by pressing Delete or Backspace
To delete from the cursor location to the start or end of the line use the Ctrl key in combination with the Delete or Backspace keys respectively.
If you select a block of text first, then the Delete and Backspace keys both delete the selection.

Whenever you move the mouse cursor over a text object, the cursor changes from an arrow to a vertical beam.
This allows you to select the text object and start typing.

Shortcut Keys

(Ctrl + Spacebar) - Removes any manual character formatting from the current selection.
(Ctrl + ] ) - Increase the font size to the next size in the drop-down list.
(Ctrl + T) - Displays the (Format > Font) dialog box.

Options

(Edit tab, When selecting, automatically select entire words) - Automatically selects an entire word plus the space after the word when you select part of the word.
(Edit tab, Drag and drop text editing) - Moves or copies selected text when you drag it with the mouse.

Expand Slide

Was this removed in PowerPoint 2002 ?
This is a useful feature if you are trying to cram a lot of information into a slide show. When a slide looks too crowded, Tools > Expand Slide. This will split the text across a group of new slides.
This automatically breaks a crowded slide into multiple slides for a cleaner more organised presentation. It turns each top level bullet point into individual slides and subpoints into bullets on corresponding new slides

Important

Avoid using a small font for your text. 20pts is probably about the smallest you want to use.
Any empty textboxes will not appear in a slide show.
Most autoshapes also function as text boxes. If you want to add text just select the shape and start typing.