Inserting text boxes in PowerPoint – how do I do this? Watch the video to learn more
This week’s hint and tip is about how to insert text boxes in PowerPoint in your presentation slides. This is on our Basic PowerPoint training course and we cover how to insert, resize and format them. We are going to go through it now below.
Where do you find the option to insert a text box?
Firstly make sure that you have a slide open in PowerPoint. There are two ways in which you can insert a text box. The first is on the Home Tab under the drawing section of the ribbon. Then the second is on the Insert Tab under the text section of the ribbon.
How to draw a text box
Once you have clicked on the text box button, your cursor will change. You will now be able to draw your text box on the slide. Click and drag on the slide to draw the text box to the size you require. Once you let go it will have inserted in your text box. From here you can now type in the text that you want in it.
You will notice that once you type some text into the text box, the text box shrinks to just one lines height. This happens in PowerPoint, but do not worry as you type the text box will get longer to fit your text into it.
Moving and resizing a text box
Once you have the text box inserted into your presentation you can now move it to where you want it to be.
To move the text box, click on the outside line of the text box itself when the cursor changes from being just the white arrow to the white arrow plus a cross. This is the moving option and if you now click and drag with this arrow & cross cursor it will allow you to move the text box to where you want it to be on your slide.
To resize the text box, use the white handles (the white dots) positioned around the outside of the text box. The white handles in the corners will re-size in 2 directions at once whereas the handles in the middle of the outside lines will only resize in 1 direction: ‘vertically’ or ‘horizontally’.
The video below shows you how to insert, resize, move and format a text box in your slide. These options are all useful for when inserting text boxes and allow you to alter them for your presentation.
Take a look below at the video to find out more and then try it out on your own computer!
We hope you have enjoyed this hint and tip on changing inserting text boxes in PowerPoint. Why not take a look at our previous video hint and tip on bullet points in Word?