Chapter 4: Entering the Text
In This Chapter
Viewing, selecting, entering, and deleting text
Choosing fonts, font sizes, and font colors for text
Entering symbols and special characters
Using speed techniques for fixing typos and handling capitalization
Finding and replacing text
Translating and proofing foreign-language text
Using the thesaurus and dictionaries
Handling smart tags
This chapter is the first of two that look into entering, laying out, and formatting text in a PowerPoint presentation. In this chapter, you focus on getting the text onto the slides.
You’ll find advice, tips, and shortcuts for entering text, proofing it for correct spelling, and changing its appearance. You also delve into some PowerPoint features that can help make your presentation more thorough — the Research task pane, the thesaurus, and the various features that have to do with editing foreign-language text. You’ll discover how to find and replace text and correct typos as soon as you make them. Unfortunately, writing mistakes stand out in a PowerPoint presentation because the text is written so large on-screen. This chapter is devoted in part to helping you keep your text mistakes to a bare minimum.
Entering Text: The Basics
No presentation is complete without a word or two at least, which is why the first thing you see when you add a new slide to a presentation are the words “Click to add text.” As soon as you “click here,” those words of instruction disappear, and you are free to enter a title or text of your own. Most slides include a text placeholder frame at the top for entering a slide title. Many slides also have another, larger text placeholder frame for entering a bulleted list.
The people who construct PowerPoint presentation themes and templates designed the text frames to format text in a certain way. They chose a font and font size for the text. They aligned the text in a certain way. You find out soon enough what these formats are when you start typing, and if you don’t care for the text formats on a slide, you can change them. For example, you can choose a different font or align the text a different way. You can change the size of the text placeholder frames.
How much text formatting you want to do to slides as you enter the text is up to you. Here is a rundown of all the PowerPoint tasks that pertain to entering and formatting text (references are to topics covered in this chapter unless otherwise noted):
Entering text: Besides wiggling your fingers over the keyboard, PowerPoint offers some shortcuts for entering text. See “Correcting Typos Automatically with the AutoCorrect Command.” And if you’ve lost stray text or need to replace text, see “Finding and Replacing Text.” Spell checking is covered under “Correcting Your Spelling Errors.”
Writing your presentation: PowerPoint offers a handful of gizmos to help you with the writing, including the Research task pane and the thesaurus. See “Researching a Topic inside PowerPoint” and “Finding the Right Word with the Thesaurus.” You may also benefit from “Working with Text Written in a Foreign Language” and “Translating Foreign-Language Text.”
Selecting, copying, moving, and deleting text: These irksome tasks are covered in “Manipulating the Text.”
Changing the font, font size, and color of text: Fashioning an appearance for text is covered in “Changing the Look of Text.”
Handling the odd letter or symbol: Sometimes it’s necessary to enter symbols and foreign characters. See “Entering Symbols, Foreign Characters, Quote Marks, and Dashes.”
Rather than format text one slide at a time, you can format all the text on the slides in your presentation by taking advantage of master slides. Giving formatting commands to many slides simultaneously makes your presentation more consistent from slide to slide. Slide titles have the same font and are formatted the same way. Text is indented the same distance in lists. See Book II, Chapter 2 to find out how master slides can help you handle text formatting in a presentation.
Normal/Outline View for Reading and Editing Text
Depending on the task you want to do, some PowerPoint views are better than others, and for reading and editing text, nothing beats Normal/Outline view. As Figure 4-1 shows, slide text appears in the Slides pane in Normal/Outline view. You can enlarge the pane and get a very good look at the text on your slides. You can see whether text is capitalized the same way from slide to slide. You can catch spelling and grammatical errors. You can scroll through your presentation and see whether it reads well. You can even enter text in the Slides pane in Normal/Outline view.
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Figure 4-1: Examining the text in Normal/ Outline view. |
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Entering and editing text: Click in the Slides plane and enter or edit text. For example, double-click a word to select it, or drag across words to select them before pressing the Delete key. You can press Enter to enter another item in a bulleted or numbered list.
Moving from slide to slide: Click a slide icon in the Slides pane to display a slide. You can find slide icons next to slide numbers.
By right-clicking the Outline tab, you can choose shortcut commands for collapsing and expanding the text on slides, promoting and demoting text, and moving slides. Choose the Show Text Formatting command to see the fonts used in slide titles and text.
Manipulating the Text
This short but important part of Chapter 4 describes the many techniques for selecting, deleting, copying, and moving text on slides. I’m afraid you’ll find an inordinate number of “tips” on these pages because there are so many shortcuts for selecting, deleting, copying, and moving text. Master the many shortcuts and you’ll cut down considerably the time you spend editing text.
Selecting text on a slide
Still, you can’t get around selecting text if you want to change the formatting of more than one word at a time or delete, cut, move or copy text. Here are techniques and shortcuts for selecting text:
Moving, copying, and pasting text
PowerPoint offers a number of different ways to move and copy text from one place to another. And after you move or copy the text, PowerPoint gives you the opportunity to choose commands to format the text. You can move text from one part of a slide to another part, from one slide to another slide, and from one program to another program. Yes, you can even move and copy data between Windows-based programs.
Copying and moving text short distances using the drag-and-drop method
The fastest way to move or copy text is to use the drag-and-drop method. Use this method to move or copy text from one part of a slide to another:
1. Select the text you want to copy or move.
2. Move the mouse over the text you selected.
3. Copy or move the text.
Dragging means to hold down the left mouse button as you move the mouse pointer on-screen.
• To move: Drag the text to a new location. As you drag, a small square appears below the mouse pointer to show that you are moving text.
• To copy: Hold down the Ctrl key while you drag the text elsewhere. A square with a cross in it appears below the pointer.
4. At the place where you want to move or copy the text, let up on the mouse button.
Cutting and copying text with the Windows Clipboard
The conventional way to move or copy text is to use the Windows Clipboard. Use this technique to move or copy text on a slide or to another slide:
1. Select the Home tab.
2. Select the text to move or copy.
3. Cut or copy the text to the Windows Clipboard.
PowerPoint offers a bunch of techniques for doing this task:
• To cut: Click the Cut button, press Ctrl+X, or right-click and choose Cut on the shortcut menu.
• To copy: Click the Copy button, press Ctrl+C, or right-click and choose Copy on the shortcut menu.
4. Place the cursor where you want to move or copy the text.
5. Click the Paste button, press Ctrl+V, or right-click and choose Paste.
You can paste the text a second time. Text that you cut using these techniques remains on the Windows Clipboard in case you want to paste it again.
Book VII, Chapter 4 explains the Paste Special command and how you can use it to create a link between text in different slides such that changes to the text made in one slide are made automatically in the other.
The Paste options
Keep Source Formatting: The text keeps its original formatting.
Use Destination Theme: The text adopts the formatting of surrounding text (the default option).
Keep Text Only: The text is stripped of all formatting.
Taking advantage of the Clipboard task pane
The Windows Clipboard is a piece of work. When you copy or cut text with the Cut or Copy command in PowerPoint or another program, the text is placed in an electronic holding tank called the Clipboard. The Clipboard holds the last 24 items that you cut or copied. You can open the Clipboard task pane in PowerPoint and view the last 24 items you cut or copied to the Clipboard, as shown in Figure 4-2.
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Figure 4-2: The Clipboard task pane in action. |
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To open the Clipboard task pane, go to the Home tab and click the Clipboard group button. Icons next to the items tell you where they came from. Open an item’s drop-down list and choose Paste to copy it onto a slide. The Clipboard is available to all Office programs; it’s especially useful for copying text and graphics from one Office program to another.
The Options pop-up menu at the bottom of the Clipboard task pane offers these options:
Show Office Clipboard Automatically: Choose this option if you want the Clipboard task pane to open automatically when you cut or copy two items consecutively or you copy the same item twice.
Show Office Clipboard When Ctrl+C Pressed Twice: Choose this option if you want to open the Clipboard task pane by pressing Ctrl+C, Ctrl+C.
Collect Without Showing Office Clipboard: Choose this option to be notified when an item has been cut or copied to the Clipboard by an icon in the system tray and/or a pop-up notice. To be notified, you must have selected either or both of the last two options on the Options menu.
Show Office Clipboard Icon on Taskbar: Choose this option to be notified when an item has been cut or copied to the Clipboard by an icon in the system tray, the part of the Windows taskbar by the clock (the icon appears after you cut or copy the first item to the Clipboard). You can double-click the icon to open the Clipboard task pane. When an item is cut or copied to the Clipboard, a tiny page glides across the icon.
Show Status Near Taskbar When Copying: Choose this item to be notified when an item has been cut or copied to the Clipboard by a pop-up notice in the lower-right corner of the screen. It tells you how many items have been “collected” on the Clipboard.
Saving what is on the Clipboard in a file
You can save the contents of the Clipboard in a file. To do so, click the Start button and choose All Programs⇒Accessories⇒System Tools⇒ Clipboard Viewer. A window appears, and you see what is on the Clipboard.
To save the contents of the Clipboard Viewer in a file, choose File⇒Save As, choose a folder and enter a name for the file, and click OK in the Save As dialog box.
Deleting text
To delete a bunch of text at one time, select the text you want to delete and press the Delete key. By the way, you can kill two birds with one stone by selecting text and then starting to type. The letters you type immediately take the place of and delete the text you selected.
Remember: You can always click Undo if you regret deleting text. You can find this button on the Quick Access toolbar, which is in the upper-left corner of the PowerPoint window.
Changing the Look of Text
What text looks like is determined by its font, the size of the letters, the color of the letters, and whether text effects or font styles such as italics or boldface have been applied to the text.
A font is a collection of letters, numbers, and symbols in a particular typeface, including all italicized and boldfaced variations of the letters, numbers, and symbols. Fonts have beautiful names and some of them are many centuries old. Most computers come with these fonts: Arial, Comic Sans, Tahoma, Times New Roman, and Verdana, as well as dozens of others.
Font styles include boldface, italics, and underline. By convention, headings are boldfaced. Italics are used for emphasis and to mark foreign words in text. PowerPoint offers a dozen text effects. Text effects, also known as text attributes, include strikethrough and superscript. Use text effects sparingly.
The following pages look at the various and sundry ways to change the font, font size, and color of text, as well as how to assign font styles and text effects to text.
The Format Painter: A fast way to change the look of text
When you’re in a hurry to change the look of text and reformat paragraphs, consider using the Format Painter. This nifty tool works something like a paintbrush. You drag it over text to copy formats from one place to another. Follow these instructions to use the Format Painter:
1. Click a place on a slide whose text and paragraph formats you want to copy elsewhere.
2. On the Home tab, double-click the Format Painter button.
You can find this button in the Clipboard group. The pointer changes into a paintbrush. Unless you double-click the Format Painter button, you can’t copy format to more than one place.
3. Drag the pointer across the part of a slide to which you want to copy the formats.
At the opposite end of the spectrum from the Format Painter button is the Clear All Formatting button on the Home tab. Select text and then click this button to strip part of a slide of all its formats, whatever they may be.
Choosing fonts for text
If you aren’t happy with the fonts in your presentation, you have three ways to remedy the problem:
Select new theme fonts for your presentation.
Theme fonts are combinations of fonts that the designers of PowerPoint themes deem appropriate for the theme you are working in. Typically, a theme font comprises one font for slide titles and one for slide text. You can create your own theme fonts, as I explain shortly.
Dig in and choose new fonts on a slide-by-slide basis. Select a slide, go to the Home tab, and choose a font from the Font drop-down list or the Font dialog box. You can also choose fonts on the Mini toolbar.
Choose a new font on a master slide to change fonts throughout your presentation. Book II, Chapter 2 explains master slides and how you can use them to change formats on many slides simultaneously. In Slide Master view, select a master slide and change its fonts on the Edit Master tab.
Selecting theme fonts for your slides
If you want to experiment with new fonts, start on the Design tab and select a theme font (the previous chapter explains themes). You can choose among many combinations of fonts and even create theme fonts of your own. Experimenting is easy because all you have to do is choose theme fonts from a drop-down list. Theme fonts apply to the entire presentation, not a handful of slides.
Choosing a theme font
Follow these steps to choose a theme font for your presentation:
1. Switch to Normal view.
2. Select the Design tab.
3. Click the Theme Fonts button.
You see a drop-down list of theme font combinations, as shown in Figure 4-3. Move the pointer down the menu and watch how fonts on the slide change.
4. Select a theme font combination.
If you aren’t pleased with the choices, consider creating a theme font combination of your own.
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Figure 4-3: Selecting a new theme font is the fastest and most comprehensive way to change fonts. |
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Creating a theme font
A theme font you create becomes part of the theme you’re working in. It becomes available to all presentations created with the theme. Follow these steps to create a theme font combination:
1. On the Design tab, click the Theme Fonts button.
2. Choose Create New Theme Fonts on the drop-down list.
As shown in Figure 4-4, the Create New Theme Fonts dialog box appears.
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Figure 4-4: You can also create theme fonts of your own. |
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3. On the drop-down lists, select a Heading Font (for slide titles) and a Body Font (for the body text in slides).
4. Enter a descriptive name for your theme font in the Name text box.
The name you enter will appear at the top of the Theme Fonts drop-down list under “Custom.”
5. Click the Save button.
Choosing fonts on a Font menu
PowerPoint offers no fewer than four ways to change fonts. Select the text that needs a new font and change fonts with one of these techniques:
Mini toolbar: Move the pointer over the selected text. You see the Mini toolbar, as shown in Figure 4-5. Move the pointer onto this toolbar and select a font in the Font drop-down list.
Shortcut menu: Right-click the selected text and choose a new font on the Font menu at the top of the shortcut menu.
Font menu: On the Home tab, open the Font drop-down list and select a font. You can “live-preview” font choices on this menu.
Font dialog box: On the Home tab, click the Font group button. You see the Font dialog box. Select a Font and click OK.
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Figure 4-5: Changing fonts with the Mini toolbar. |
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Finding and replacing fonts throughout a presentation
Suppose that a co-worker who hasn’t read this book and heard the author’s constant nagging about using fonts conservatively gives you a PowerPoint presentation with myriad different fonts. The presentation resembles confetti. Different fonts, some of them very exotic, are found throughout. The presentation is a big old mess. How can you fix this problem? One way is to find and replace fonts in the presentation. Replace the exotic fonts with other, more sedate fonts in keeping with the “simple is best” approach.
Before you undertake a find-and-replace operation, take note of which fonts need replacing and which fonts you will replace them with. Then follow these steps to replace a font used throughout a presentation with a different font:
1. Click the Home tab.
2. Open the drop-down list on the Replace button and choose Replace Fonts (you may have to click the Editing button first, depending on the size of your screen).
You see the Replace Font dialog box, shown in Figure 4-6.
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Figure 4-6: Replacing one font with another. |
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3. On the Replace drop-down list, select the font that needs replacing.
Only fonts used in your presentation appear on the menu.
4. On the With drop-down list, select a different font.
5. Click the Replace button.
Repeat these steps for other fonts that need replacing.
Installing and removing fonts on your computer
If Windows is installed on your computer, so are many different fonts. The names of these fonts appear on the Font drop-down list and in the Font dialog box. Do you have enough fonts on your computer? Do you want to remove fonts to keep the Font menu from being overcrowded?
Font files are kept in the C:\Windows\Fonts folder on your computer. Windows Explorer and My Computer offer the File⇒Install New Font command for loading font files into this folder, but here are easier ways to handle fonts:
Installing new fonts: Place the font file in the C:\Windows\Fonts folder.
Removing a font: Move its font file out of the C:\Windows\Fonts folder. Store font files you don’t want in another folder where you can resuscitate them if need be.
Besides opening the Fonts folder in Windows Explorer or My Computer, you can open it by double-clicking the Fonts icon in the Control Panel. The Fonts folder provides these amenities for handling fonts:
Examining fonts: Double-click a font file to examine a font more closely. A window opens, and you see precisely what the font looks like. Do you know why “the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” in this window? Because that sentence includes every letter in the alphabet.
Finding similar fonts: To list fonts that look similar to a certain font, click the Similarity button and choose the font’s name on the List Fonts by Similarity To drop-down list. The list of fonts is arranged so that very similar fonts come first, fairly similar fonts come next, and dissimilar fonts come last in the list. Use this command to familiarize yourself with fonts or decide which fonts to remove when you have many that look nearly the same.
Shortening the font list: To shrink the list of fonts and make font hunting a little easier, choose View⇒Hide Variations. Doing so removes boldface and italicized versions of fonts from the list.
Changing the font size of text
Font size is measured in points; a point is 1/ 72 of an inch. The larger the point size, the larger the letters. For someone in the back row of an audience to be able to read text in a PowerPoint presentation, the text should be no smaller than 28 points. Try this simple test to see whether text in your presentation is large enough to read: Stand five or so feet from your computer and see whether you can read the text. If you can’t read it, make it larger.
Go to the Home tab and click in or select the text whose size you want to change. Then use one of these techniques to change font sizes:
Font Size drop-down list: Open this list and choose a point size. To choose a point size that isn’t on the list, click in the Font Size box, enter a point size, and press Enter.
Font Dialog Box: Click the Font group button to open the Font dialog box. Then enter a point size in the Size box and click OK.
Increase Font Size and Decrease Font Size buttons: Click these buttons (or press Ctrl+] or Ctrl+[) to increase or decrease the point size by the next interval on the Font Size menu on the Home tab. Watch the Font Size list or your text and note how the text changes size. This is an excellent technique when you want to “eyeball it” and you don’t care to fool with the Font Size list or Font dialog box.
Applying font styles to text
There are four — count ’em— font styles: regular, bold, italic, and underline:
Regular: This style is just PowerPoint’s way of denoting an absence of any font style.
Italic
: Italics are used for emphasis, when introducing a new term, and to mark foreign words such as violà,
gung
hay fat choy, and Que magnifico! You can also italicize slide titles to make titles a little more elegant.
Bold: Boldface text calls attention to itself.
Underline:
Underline text to call attention to it, but use underlining sparingly.
Select text and use one of these techniques to apply a font style to it:
Home tab: Click the Bold, Italic, or Underline button.
Keyboard: Press Ctrl+B to boldface text; Ctrl+I to italicize it; or Ctrl+U to underline it.
Mini toolbar: The Mini toolbar offers the Bold and Italic button.
Font dialog box: Choose a Font Style option in the Font dialog box. To open this dialog box, visit the Home tab and click the Font group button.
To remove a font style, select the text and click the Bold, Italic, or Underline button a second time. You can also select text and click the Clear All Formatting button on the Home tab.
Applying text effects to text
At the bottom of the Font dialog box are the Effects options, as shown in Figure 4-7. Text effects have various uses, some utilitarian and some strictly for yucks. Be careful with text effects. Use them sparingly and to good purpose. The following pages explain text effects and when to use them.
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Figure 4-7: Some text effects and underline options. |
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Effect options
Go to the Home tab and click the Font group button to open the Font dialog box and choose an Effect option (refer to Figure 4-7). Following is a laundry list of text effects for you to choose from.
Strikethrough and double strikethrough
By convention, strikethrough is used to show where passages have been struck from a contract or other important document. Double strikethrough, for all I know, is used to show where passages have been struck out forcefully. Use these text effects to demonstrate ideas that you’ve rejected.
Superscript
A superscripted letter or number is one that has been raised in the text. Superscript is used in mathematical and scientific formulas, in ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd), and to mark footnotes. In the theory of relativity, the 2 is superscripted: E = mc2. Select the number or letter you want to superscript and, in the Font dialog box, enter an Offset percentage to tell PowerPoint how high to raise the number or letter.
Subscript
A subscripted letter has been lowered in the text. In this chemistry equation, the 2 has been lowered to show that two atoms of hydrogen are needed along with one atom of oxygen to form a molecule of water: H 2 O. (Book III, Chapter 3 describes the Equation Editor, a special tool for entering equations — including superscripted and subscripted characters and numbers — on slides. To construct a complicated equation, seek the help of the Equation Editor.)
Small Caps
A small cap is a small capital letter. To give you an idea of how small caps are used, Table 4-1 describes how the Chicago Manual of Style, the copy editor’s bible, instructs editors and typesetters to use small caps. In newspapers, small capital letters are often used in the dateline at the start of the article (“KEY WEST, FLA. NOV 8 (UPI)”). You can find many creative uses for small caps in slide titles. An all-small-cap title looks elegant.
All Caps
The All Caps text effect merely capitalizes all letters. Use it in master styles to make sure that you enter slide titles in all capital letters. Later in this chapter, “Quick Ways to Handle Case, or Capitalization” explains ways to handle text case — uppercase, lowercase, and other text capitalization schemes.
Equalize Character Height
This text effect option makes all characters the same height and has the effect of stretching out the characters in text. You can use it to interesting effect in text box announcements, but use it sparingly. Seeing too many stretched-out letters on-screen gives your audience the impression it is sitting through an eye examination.
Underline styles
Underlining text is a good way to call attention to it. PowerPoint offers 15 ways to underline text, with styles ranging from “Words only” to “Wavy line,” and you can select a color for the underline. If you decide to underline slide titles, do it consistently. Underline the titles in all or most of the slides in your presentation.
PowerPoint offers two methods of underlining text. Select the text you want to underline, go to the Home tab, and pick your poison:
On the Home tab, click the Underline button. A single line runs under all the words you selected.
Click the Font group button to open the Font dialog box (refer to Figure 4-7), and select an underline style from the drop-down list. You can also select an underline color from the Underline Color drop-down list. The color you select applies to the underline, not to the words being underlined.
To remove an underline from text, select the text and click the Underline button on the Home tab twice.
The Shadow text effect
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Figure 4-8: The Shadow text effect. |
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Changing the color of text
Before you change the color of text, peer into your computer screen and examine the background theme or color you selected for your slides. Unless the color of the text is different from the theme or color, the audience can’t read the text. Besides choosing a color that contributes to the overall tone of the presentation, select a color that is easy to read.
Select the text that needs touching up, and use one of these techniques to change the color of text:
On the Mini toolbar, open the drop-down list on the Font Color button and choose a color.
Right-click, open the drop-down list on the Font Color button, and choose a color.
On the Home tab, open the drop-down list on the Font Color button and choose a color.
On the Home tab, click the Font group button open the Font dialog box, click the Font Color button in the dialog box, and choose a color on the drop-down list.
The Font Color drop-down list offers theme colors and standard colors. You are well advised to choose a theme color. These colors were deemed theme colors because they jibe with the theme you chose for your presentation.
Embedding TrueType fonts in a presentation
To display text in a certain font, your computer calls upon a font file in the C:\Windows\Fonts folder. For example, to display text in Times New Roman, PowerPoint gets the help of the TIME.TTF file, and all is well.
Problems with fonts can arise when you trade PowerPoint presentations with co-workers and friends whose computers aren’t equipped with the same font files as your computer. If you give a PowerPoint presentation to a co-worker and his or her computer doesn’t have the TIME.TTF file, PowerPoint substitutes a different font for Times New Roman, and the presentation doesn’t look the same.
If you’ve used exotic fonts in a PowerPoint presentation and you intend to hand off the presentation to someone else, consider embedding fonts in the presentation. Embedding fonts means to store font files along with the presentation. Instead of going to the C:\Windows\Fonts folder for a font file, PowerPoint relies on the presentation file itself. When you embed fonts, you can be certain that your presentation will look the same no matter what computer it is shown on. However, embedding fonts also increases a presentation’s file size. Because the presentation file is larger, it takes longer to load.
Follow these steps to embed fonts in a presentation:
1. Click the Office button and choose PowerPoint Options on the menu.
You see the PowerPoint Options dialog box.
2. Click the Save category.
3. Click the Embed Fonts in the File check box.
4. Click the Embed Only the Characters Used in the Presentation option button.
5. Click OK.
Quick Ways to Handle Case, or Capitalization
Case refers to how letters are capitalized in words and sentences. Table 4-2 explains the different cases, and Figure 4-9 demonstrates why paying attention to case matters in a PowerPoint presentation. In the figure, the slide titles are presented using different cases, and the titles are inconsistent with one another. In one slide, only the first letter in the title is capitalized (sentence case); in another slide, the first letter in each word is capitalized (title case); in another, none of the letters is capitalized (lowercase); and in another, all the letters are capitalized (uppercase). Decide on a capitalization scheme for the slide titles in your presentation and stick with it for consistency’s sake.
Sentence case: Renders the letters in sentence case.
Lowercase: Makes all the letters lowercase.
UPPERCASE: Renders all the letters as capital letters.
Capitalize Each Word: Capitalizes the first letter in each word. If you choose this option, go into the title and lowercase the first letter of articles, coordinate conjunctions, and prepositions, unless they are the first or last word in the title.
tOGGLE cASE: Choose this option if you accidentally enter letters with the Caps Lock key pressed down.
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Figure 4-9: Capitalization schemes (clockwise from upper left): sentence case, title case, uppercase, lowercase. |
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On the subject of case, PowerPoint can be somewhat presumptuous about how it handles capitalization in sentences. PowerPoint automatically capitalizes the first word you enter after entering a period (.) and the first word in slide titles. If you try to enter two capital letters at the start of a word, it lowercases the second letter. If these behind-the-scenes corrections annoy you, you can tell PowerPoint to cease making them by changing your AutoCorrect settings. See “Correcting Typos Automatically with the AutoCorrect Command,” later in this chapter.
Entering Symbols, Foreign Characters, Quote Marks, and Dashes
Don’t panic if you need to enter an umlaut, grave accent, or cedilla on a slide, because you can do it by way of the Symbol dialog box shown in Figure 4-10. You can enter just about any symbol and foreign character by way of this dialog box. You can also enter foreign characters by pressing Alt-key combinations.
These pages explain symbols and foreign characters, as well as quotation marks and dashes. Better read on.
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Figure 4-10: To enter a symbol or foreign character, select it and click the Insert button. |
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Entering symbols and characters with the Symbol dialog box
If you need a copyright symbol or an eight ball, you can find it in the Symbol dialog box. Click in your slide where you want to enter a symbol or foreign character and follow these steps to enter it:
1. Click the Insert tab.
2. Click the Symbol button.
You see the Symbol dialog box (refer to Figure 4-10).
3. If you’re looking to insert a symbol, not a foreign character, choose Webdings or Wingdings 1, 2, or 3 on the Font drop-down list.
Webdings and the Wingdings fonts offer all kinds of weird and whacky symbols.
4. Select a foreign character or symbol.
You may have to scroll to find the one you want.
5. Click the Insert button to enter the symbol and click Close to close the dialog box.
The Symbol dialog box lists the last several symbols or foreign characters you entered under “Recently Used Symbols.” See whether the symbol you need is listed there. It will spare you the trouble of rummaging in the Symbol dialog box.
On the subject of symbols, PowerPoint creates the smiley face symbol (J) when you enter these characters: :-). And you get an arrow (‘) when you enter these characters: ==>. If you prefer that the invisible hand of PowerPoint not make these changes for you, go to the AutoFormat As You Type tab of the AutoCorrect dialog box and unselect the Smiley Faces :-) and Arrows (==>) with Special Symbols check box. To open the AutoCorrect dialog box, click the Office button, choose PowerPoint Options, select the Proofing category, and then click the AutoCorrect Options button.
Handling dashes and quotation marks
You may have noticed that PowerPoint handles dashes and quotation marks behind the scenes. When you enter two hyphens in a row (--), PowerPoint joins them into a dash (—). To be exact, PowerPoint joins them into an em dash, a dash as wide as the letter M. Meanwhile, PowerPoint enters smart quotes (“, ‘, ‘ ,”), not straight quotes (', "), when you press a quotation mark on your keyboard. Smart quotes curl around the word, phrase, or sentence to which they’re attached, whereas straight quotes stand upright.
If you prefer straight quotes to smart quotes, or you want two hyphens to appear on your slides where PowerPoint enters an em dash, follow these steps to tell PowerPoint to quit its meddling:
1. Click the Office button and choose PowerPoint Options.
You see the PowerPoint Options dialog box.
2. Click the Proofing category.
3. Click the AutoCorrect Options button.
The AutoCorrect dialog box opens.
4. Select the AutoFormat As You Type tab, as shown in Figure 4-11.
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Figure 4-11: Punctuation esoterica in the AutoCorrect dialog box. |
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5. Unselect the "Straight Quotes" with “Smart Quotes” check box if you prefer straight quotes to smart quotes.
6. Unselect the Hyphens (--) with Dash (—) check box if for some odd reason you prefer two hyphens to an em dash.
7. Click OK.
Correcting Typos Automatically with the AutoCorrect Command
The unseen hand of PowerPoint corrects some typos and misspellings automatically. For example, try typing “accomodate” with one m — PowerPoint corrects the misspelling and inserts the second m for you. Try typing “perminent” with an i instead of an a — the invisible hand of PowerPoint corrects the misspelling, and you get “permanent.” While you’re at it, type a colon and a close parenthesis :) and you get a smiley face.
As good as the AutoCorrect feature is, you can make it even better. You can also add the typos and misspellings you often make to the list of words that are corrected automatically.
Opening the AutoCorrect dialog box
PowerPoint corrects common spelling errors and turns punctuation mark combinations into symbols as part of its AutoCorrect feature. To see which typos are corrected and which punctuation marks are turned into symbols, open the AutoCorrect dialog box by following these steps:
1. Click the Office button and choose PowerPoint Options.
You see the PowerPoint Options dialog box.
2. Click the Proofing category.
3. Click the AutoCorrect Options button.
The AutoCorrect dialog box opens.
4. Click the AutoCorrect tab.
As shown in Figure 4-12, the AutoCorrect tab lists words that are automatically corrected. Scroll down the Replace list and have a look around. Go ahead. Make yourself at home.
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Figure 4-12: As you type, words in the Replace column are replaced automatically with words in the With column. |
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Telling PowerPoint which typos and misspellings to correct
No doubt you make the same typing errors and spelling errors time and time again. To keep from making these errors, you can tell PowerPoint to correct them for you automatically. You do that by entering the misspelling and its corrected spelling in the AutoCorrect dialog box (refer to Figure 4-12):
Enter the misspelling in the Replace text box and its correct spelling in the With text box.
Click the AutoCorrect button in the Spelling and Grammar dialog box. This action automatically places the misspelling and its correction in the AutoCorrect dialog box so that the correction is made in the future.
Preventing capitalization errors with AutoCorrect
Near the top of the AutoCorrect dialog box (refer to Figure 4-12) are five check boxes whose job is to prevent capitalization errors. These options do their jobs very well, sometimes to a fault:
Correct TWo INitial Capitals: Prevents two capital letters from appearing in a row at the start of a word with more than two letters. Only the first letter is capitalized. This option is for people who can’t lift their little fingers from the Shift key fast enough after typing the first capital letter at the start of a word.
Capitalize first letter of sentences: Makes sure that the first letter in a sentence is capitalized.
Capitalize first letter of table cells: Makes sure that the first letter you enter in a table cell is a capital letter. A table cell holds one data item; it’s the place in a table where a column and row intersect.
Capitalize names of days: Makes sure that the names of the days of the week are capitalized.
Correct accidental usage of cAPS LOCK key: Changes capital letters to lowercase letters if you press the Shift key to start a sentence while Caps Lock is on. The idea here is that if you press down the Shift key while Caps Lock is on, you don’t know that Caps Lock is on, because you don’t need to hold down the Shift key to enter capital letters. PowerPoint turns the first letter into a capital letter and the following letters into lowercase letters and turns Caps Lock off.
Finding and Replacing Text
Use the Find command to locate a name or text passage in a presentation. Use its twin, the powerful Replace command, to find and replace a name or text passage throughout a presentation. To give you an idea how useful the Replace command is, imagine that the company you work for just changed its name and the old company name is on numerous slides. You could pick through the slides, correcting the name one slide at a time and ruining your eyesight, or you could use the Replace command to replace the old company name with the new name on all slides in a matter of seconds.
Finding stray words and text
To locate stray words, names, or text passages with the Find command, follow these steps:
1. Click the Home tab.
2. Switch to Slide Sorter view or Normal view.
Which view you start in matters for displaying the results of the search. Start in Slide Sorter view if you want to see all the slides in the presentation with the text you’re searching for; start in Normal view to examine text one instance at a time.
3. Press Ctrl+F or click the Find button (you may have to click the Editing button first, depending on the size of your screen).
You see the Find dialog box, as shown in Figure 4-13.
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Figure 4-13: Searching for a word or phrase on slides. |
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4. Enter the word or phrase you’re looking for in the Find What text box.
If you’ve made this search before, you can open the Find What drop-down list and select a word or phrase to search again.
5. If you so desire, choose options to narrow your search.
Taking advantage of these options can make a search go that much faster:
• Match Case: Finds words with upper- and lowercase letters that exactly match those of the word or phrase in the Find What box. For example, a search for Bow finds Bow but not bow or BOW.
• Find Whole Words Only: Finds the word in the Find What box, but ignores the word if it is part of another word. For example, a search for bow finds bow but not bows, elbow, bowler, or rainbow. Unless you are looking for a proper name or other one-of-a-kind word, be sure to choose this option. Your search will go faster and be more accurate.
6. Click the Find Next button (in Normal view) or the Find All button (in Slide Sorter view).
In Normal view, PowerPoint scrolls to and highlights the first instance of the word or phrase you’re looking for if the search is successful. You can leave the Find dialog box open while you edit the text, and then click the Find Next button again to find the next occurrence of the text.
In Slide Sorter view, PowerPoint selects all slides with the word or phrase, if the search succeeds. You can double-click a slide to see it in Normal view and edit text.
Making exceptions to the AutoCorrect capitalization controls
The AutoCorrect capitalization settings work fine except in certain rare circumstances. When you use abbreviations in sentences, or you have to type the rare name that starts with two uppercase letters, or you want to enter an acronym that happens to be listed in the AutoCorrect dialog box, the AutoCorrect mechanism may fix typos incorrectly. To take account of those rare instances when AutoCorrect doesn’t work right, click the Exceptions button in the AutoCorrect dialog box (refer to Figure 4-12).
You see the AutoCorrect Exceptions dialog box. By making entries in the First Letter and INitial CAps tabs, you can eat your cake and have it, too. You can continue to use AutoCorrect to correct typos and misspellings except under certain circumstances:
First Letter tab: When PowerPoint encounters an abbreviation that is listed on the First Letter tab, it allows the word following the abbreviation to start with a lowercase letter. However, if the abbreviation is not listed, PowerPoint assumes that the period at the end of the abbreviation marks the end of a sentence, so the program begins the next word incorrectly with a capital letter. If PowerPoint persists in capitalizing a word after an abbreviation you use, solve the problem by entering the abbreviation on the First Letter tab so that PowerPoint can recognize it as an abbreviation.
INitial CAps tab: Newfangled company names sometimes start with two capital letters: QUest Data Inc., DIgital DIngbats, Inc. Enter such names on the INitial CAps tab to keep PowerPoint from lowercasing the second capital letter.
Conducting a Find-and-Replace operation
Conducting a find-and-replace operation is the spitting image of conducting a find operation. Figure 4-14 shows the Replace dialog box, the place where you tell PowerPoint what to find and what to replace. Do the options and buttons look familiar? They do if you read the previous couple of pages about searching, because the settings on the Replace tab are the same as those in the Find dialog box.
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Figure 4-14: Use the powerful Replace command to find and replace text. |
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To locate stray words, names, or text passages with the Find command, follow these steps:
1. Select the Home tab.
2. Switch to Normal view or Slide Sorter view.
In Normal view, you can examine each instance of the text and decide one instance at a time whether to replace text. In Slide Sorter view, you see which slides have the text you’re looking for.
3. Press Ctrl+H or click the Replace button (you may have to click the Editing button first, depending on the size of your screen).
The Replace dialog box appears (refer to Figure 4-14).
4. Enter the word or phrase that needs replacing in the Find What text box.
You can select a word or phrase on the Find What drop-down list if you’ve looked for it since the last time you opened PowerPoint.
5. Enter the replacement text in the Replace With text box.
Again, you can select replacement text from the drop-down list.
6. Select the Match Case option if you want to search for words with upper- and lowercase letters that exactly match those of the word or phrase in the Find What box.
7. Select the Find Whole Words Only check box.
The Find Whole Words Only check box tells Word to look for whole words, not character strings. Forgetting to select the check box can have disastrous consequences in a find-and-replace operation. To see why, suppose you want to change all instances of man to humankind. If you forget to select the Find Whole Words Only check box, your search will find the letters man wherever they are found and replace them with the letters humankind. A sentence like “Man, the manifest measure of all things, the talisman of nature, wears the mantle of God,” turns into “Humankind, the humankindifest measure of all things, the talishumankind of nature, wears the humankindtle of God.”
8. Click the Find Next button (in Normal view) or the Find All button (in Slide Sorter view).
In Normal view, PowerPoint takes you to the first instance of the word or phrase you seek. In Slide Sorter view, PowerPoint selects all slides with the Find-What text.
9. Choose to replace all instances of the Find-What text with the Replace-With text (click the Replace All button) or examine each occurrence of the text before leaving it be or replacing it (click the Find Next button or the Replace button).
In Normal view, you can examine text before replacing it or replace all instances of the Find-What text without examining them first. Click the Replace button to replace the text, the Find Next button to bypass the text and search for its next instance, or the Replace All button to replace the text throughout your presentation.
In Slide Sorter view, you are faced with an all-or-nothing proposition. Click the Replace All button if you are confident that the search-and-replace operation is a sound one; click the Close button and start all over if you get cold feet.
Correcting Your Spelling Errors
PowerPoint keeps a dictionary in its hip pocket, which is a good thing for you. Spelling errors really stand out in PowerPoint presentation because the text is so big. PowerPoint consults the dictionary as you enter text and draws lines in red underneath words that are misspelled and words that were entered twice in a row. To correct misspellings, you can either address them one at a time or start the spell checker and proof many slides or an entire presentation simultaneously. You can even create a dictionary of your own with the jargon and slang peculiar to your way of life and have PowerPoint check the spelling of jargon and slang.
Correcting misspellings one at a time
With the one-at-a-time method of spell checking, you right-click each word that is underlined in red and choose a correct spelling from the shortcut menu, as shown in Figure 4-15. When you choose a word from the shortcut menu, it replaces the misspelling that you right-clicked.
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Figure 4-15: Right-click a redlined word to correct a typo or repeated word. |
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Words entered twice are also flagged in red, in which case the shortcut menu offers the Delete Repeated Word option so that you can delete the second word. You can also click Ignore All to tell PowerPoint when a word is correctly spelled and shouldn’t be flagged, or click Add to Dictionary, which adds the word to the PowerPoint spelling dictionary.
Getting rid of the squiggly red lines
More than a few users of PowerPoint think that the squiggly red lines that appear under misspelled words are annoying. To keep those lines from appearing, press F7 to open the Spelling and Grammar dialog box and then click the Options button. You see the Proofing category of the PowerPoint Options dialog box. Unselect the Check Spelling As You Type check box.
Even with the red lines gone, you can do a quick spell check of a word that you suspect has been misspelled. To do so, select the word (by double-clicking it) and either press F7 or go to the Review tab and click the Spelling button. The Spelling and Grammar dialog box appears if the word has indeed been misspelled. Select a word in the Suggestions box and then click the Change button.
Spell checking an entire presentation
Instead of correcting misspellings one at a time, you can spell check a presentation. Start your spell check with one of these methods:
Press F7.
Go to the Review tab and click the Spelling button.
You see the Spelling and Grammar dialog box shown in Figure 4-16. Misspellings are highlighted in the presentation and appear in the Not In Dictionary text box. As I explain shortly, PowerPoint offers all sorts of amenities for handling misspellings, but here is how to correct known misspellings in the Spelling and Grammar dialog box:
Select the correct spelling in the Suggestions box and click the Change button.
Click in the slide and change the spelling there; then click the Resume button (you can find it where the Ignore button used to be).
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Figure 4-16: Correcting a misspelling in the Spelling and Grammar dialog box. |
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Herewith are explanations of all the buttons in the Spelling and Grammar dialog box:
Ignore: Ignores this instance of the misspelling but stops on it again if the same misspelling appears later in the presentation.
Ignore All: Ignores the misspelling throughout the presentation and in all other open presentations.
Change/Delete: Enters the highlighted word in the Suggestions box in the presentation where the misspelling used to be. When the same word appears twice in a row, the Delete button appears where the Change button was. Click the Delete button to delete the second word in the pair.
Change All/Delete All: Replaces all instances of the misspelled word with the word that is selected in the Suggestions box. Click the Change All button to correct a misspelling that occurs throughout a presentation. When two words appear in a row, this button is called Delete All. Click the Delete All button to delete the second word in the pair throughout your presentation.
Add: Adds the misspelling to a spelling dictionary so that PowerPoint never stops on it again. By clicking the Add button, you tell PowerPoint that the misspelling is a legitimate word or name.
Suggest: Changes the list of words in the Suggestions box. Select a word in the Suggestions box and click the Suggest button to see whether you can find a correct spelling.
AutoCorrect: Adds the spelling correction to the list of words that are corrected automatically. If you find yourself making the same typing error over and over, place the error on the AutoCorrect list and never have to correct it again. See “Correcting Typos Automatically with the AutoCorrect Command,” earlier in this chapter.
Fine-tuning the spell checker
Especially if you deal in jargon and foreign languages, you owe it to yourself to fine-tune the spell checker. It can help you proofread foreign languages and make sure that your jargon, no matter how arcane, gets used correctly in slide presentations. These pages explain the nuances of the spell checker.
Choosing how to handle uppercase words, numbers, and Internet addresses
In spell checks, PowerPoint ignores the following:
Words in uppercase letters, which are considered acronyms and not worth spell checking.
Words that contain numbers.
Internet addresses and file addresses. An Internet address is one with the letters www (www.dummies.com) or http:// (http://mymachine.mydomain.com). A file address includes backslashes (\), as in C:\Windows\Temporary Internet Files.
If you need to spell check any of these items, press F7 to open the Spelling and Grammar dialog box and then click the Options button. You see the Proofing category of the PowerPoint Options dialog box. You will find check boxes that you can click to spell check uppercase words, words with numbers, and Internet and file addresses. By the way, PowerPoint doesn’t spell check e-mail addresses. Sorry, but when it sees the at sign (@), it assumes that it’s dealing with an e-mail address, and it skips merrily along to the next word.
Preventing text from being spell checked
Spell checking address lists, lines of computer code, and foreign languages such as Spanglish for which Microsoft doesn’t offer foreign- language dictionaries is a thorough waste of time. Follow these steps to tell the spell checker to ignore text in a presentation:
1. Select the text.
2. Click the Review tab.
3. Click the Language button.
You see the Language dialog box.
4. Select the Do Not Check Spelling or Grammar check box.
5. Click OK.
Spell checking text in foreign languages
Spanish and French dictionaries are included in the version of PowerPoint that is sold in the United States. That means you can spell check Spanish and French words. You can spell check words in other languages, too, as long as you installed proofing tools for those languages and told PowerPoint which languages you intend to use (see “Working with Text Written in a Foreign Language,” later in this chapter). Right-click a misspelled word or press F7, and PowerPoint proofs the word in the foreign language.
Employing other dictionaries to help with spell checking
To find spelling errors, PowerPoint compares each word on the page to the words in its main dictionary and a second dictionary called Custom.dic. If a word you type is not found in either dictionary, the program considers the word a misspelling. The main dictionary lists all known words in the English language; the Custom.dic dictionary lists words, proper names, and technical jargon that you deemed legitimate when you clicked the Add button in the course of a spell check and added a word to the Custom.dic dictonary. In Figure 4-17, for example, the word “gangsta” is being added to the Custom.dic dictionary. Never again will the spell checker pause over this mutant form of the word “gangster” because I am adding it to the Custom.dic dictionary.
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Figure 4-17: Adding a word to the Custom dictionary. |
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From PowerPoint’s standpoint, a dictionary is merely a list of words, one word per line, that have been saved in a .dic (dictionary) file. Besides the Custom.dic dictionary, you can employ other dictionaries to help with spell checking. People who work in specialized professions such as law or medicine can also use legal dictionaries and medical dictionaries to spell check their work. You can create dictionaries of your own for slang words, colloquialisms, or special projects. Before you start spell checking, you can tell PowerPoint which dictionaries to use. You can edit dictionaries as well. All this magic is done by way of the Custom Dictionaries dialog box, shown in Figure 4-18 and explained in the pages that follow.
Follow these steps to open the Custom Dictionaries dialog box:
1. Press F7.
You see the Spelling and Grammar dialog box.
2. Click the Options button.
The Proofing category of the PowerPoint Options dialog box opens.
3. Click the Custom Dictionaries button.
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Figure 4-18: Choosing a diction- ary for PowerPoint to use. |
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With the Custom Dictionaries dialog box open, you can create a new spelling dictionary, tell PowerPoint to use a third-party dictionary you acquired, edit words in a dictionary, and tell PowerPoint which dictionary to use in a spell check. Better keep reading.
Creating a new spelling dictionary
People who work in law offices, research facilities, and medical facilities type hundreds of arcane terms each day, none of which are in the main dictionary. One way to make sure that arcane terms are spelled correctly is to create or acquire a dictionary of legal, scientific, or medical terms and use it for spell checking purposes. By PowerPoint’s definition, a dictionary is simply a list of words saved in a dictionary (.dic) file.
Follow these steps to create a new spelling dictionary or tell PowerPoint that you want to use a secondary dictionary to check the spelling of words:
1. Click the New button in the Custom Dictionaries dialog box (refer to Figure 4-18).
You see the Create Custom Dictionary dialog box.
2. Enter a name for your new dictionary.
3. Click the Save button.
See “Editing the words in a dictionary,” later in this chapter, to find out how to enter terms in your new spelling dictionary.
Using a third-party dictionary
Besides creating your own dictionary, you can acquire one and tell PowerPoint to use it by following these steps:
1. Make note of where the dictionary file is located on your computer.
It doesn’t have to be in the C:\Documents and Settings\ User Name \Application Data\Microsoft\Proof (or UProof) folder along with the other dictionaries for PowerPoint to use it.
2. Click the Add button in the Custom Dictionaries dialog box (refer to Figure 4-18).
The Add Custom Dictionary dialog box appears.
3. Locate and select the dictionary on your computer.
4. Click Open.
The dictionary’s name appears in the Custom Dictionaries dialog box.
Select a dictionary and click the Remove button to remove its name from the Custom Dictionaries dialog box. Removing a name in no way, shape, or form deletes the dictionary. You can click the Add button to place the dictionary’s name in the dialog box again and use it for spell checking. Only 10 dictionaries total can appear in the Custom Dictionaries dialog box.
Editing the words in a dictionary
To edit the words in the Custom.dic dictionary or any other dictionary, select its name in the Custom Dictionaries dialog box (refer to Figure 4-18) and click the Edit Word List button. A dialog box opens with a list of the words in the dictionary, as shown in Figure 4-19. From there, you can delete words and even add words to the dictionary by clicking the Add button.
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Figure 4-19: Edit the words in a custom dictionary in this dialog box. |
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Telling PowerPoint which dictionaries to use in a spell check
PowerPoint checks for misspellings against the words in the main dictionary and each dictionary whose name is selected in the Custom Dictionaries dialog box (refer to Figure 4-18). To make use of a dictionary in spell checks, select the check box beside its name; uncheck the boxes beside the names of dictionaries you don’t need.
Researching a Topic inside PowerPoint
Thanks to the Research task pane, your desk needn’t be as crowded as before. The Research task pane offers dictionaries, foreign language dictionaries, a thesaurus, language translators, and encyclopedias, as well as Internet searching, all from inside PowerPoint. As shown in Figure 4-20, the Research task pane can save you a trip to the library. Table 4-3 describes the research services in the Research task pane. Use these services to get information while you write your presentation.
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Figure 4-20: The Research task pane is like a mini-reference library. |
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Your computer must be connected to the Internet to run some of the services in the Research task plane. Bilingual dictionaries and thesauruses are installed as part of the Office software, but the research Web sites and the Encarta dictionaries and encyclopedia require an Internet connection.
Using the Research task pane
No matter what you want to research in the Research task pane, start your search the same way. The task pane offers menus and buttons for steering a search in different directions. Follow these basic steps to use the Research task pane:
1. Either click in a word or select the words on a slide that you want to research.
For example, if you want to translate a word, click it. Clicking a word or selecting words saves you the trouble of entering words in the Search For text box, but if no word on your slide describes what you want to research, don’t worry about it. You can enter the subject of your search later.
2. On the Review tab, click the Research button.
The Research task pane appears (refer to Figure 4-20). If you’ve researched since you started running PowerPoint, the options you chose for researching last time appear in the task pane.
3. Enter a research term in the Search For text box (if one isn’t there already).
If you weren’t able to click a word or select words in Step 1, enter research terms now.
4. Open the Search For drop-down list and tell PowerPoint where to steer your search (refer to Table 4-3).
Choose a reference book, research Web site, or business and financial Web site. To research in a category, choose a category name — All Reference Books, All Research Sites, or All Business and Financial Sites. Later in this chapter, “Choosing your research options” explains how to decide which researching options appear on the drop-down list.
5. Click the Start Searching button.
The results of your search appear in the Research task pane.
If your search yields nothing worthwhile or nothing at all, scroll to the bottom of the task pane and try out the All Reference Books or All Reference Sites links. The first link searches all reference books — the dictionaries, thesauruses, and translation services. The second searches research sites — the Encarta Encyclopedia, Factiva News, and MSN Search.
You can retrace a search by clicking the Previous Search button or Next Search button in the Research task pane. These buttons work like the Back and Forward buttons in a Web browser. They also have drop-down lists that you can open to backtrack or move forward in a search.
Sometimes a hyperlink to a Web site appears in the search results. If you click one of these hyperlinks, your browser (if you’re using Internet Explorer) opens with the Research task pane on the left, as shown in Figure 4-21. You can continue using the Research task pane in the browser window.
Choosing your research options
Which research options appear on the Search For drop-down list is up to you. Maybe you want to dispense with the for-a-fee services (eLibrary, Encarta Encyclopedia, and Factiva iWorks). Maybe you want to get stock quotes from a particular country.
Choosing which options you want
To decide for yourself which research options appear in the Research task pane, open the task pane and click the Research Options link (you can find this link at the bottom of the task pane). You see the Research Options dialog box shown in Figure 4-22. Select the research services you want and click OK.
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Figure 4-21: The Research task pane in a browser window. |
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Figure 4-22: The Research Options dialog box. |
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Adding more third-party services to the Research task pane
To start with, three third-party research services are available in the Research task pane — eLibrary, Factiva iWorks, and Thomas Gale Company Profiles. You can also add these third-party research services to the task pane as well: Dorland’s Medical Dictionary and Spell-Checker, Emperian Business Reports, FindLaw, Hoover’s Inc., LexisNexis, Ovid, and Safari HelpDesk.
To be able to research using one of these third-party services, click the Get Services on Office Marketplace link on the Research task pane. Your browser opens to a Web site where you can discover more about the services and find out how to install them.
To install a service in the task pane, click the Research Options link. Then, in the Research Options dialog box (refer to Figure 4-22), click the Add Services button and enter the address of the third-party service in the Add Services dialog box.
Accessing a SharePoint site in the Research task pane
If your computer is set up to share files with others’ by way of SharePoint Services, you can place an intranet site in the Research task pane and be able to conduct research from sites within the company you work for. Intranet sites appear in the Research task pane in a fourth category called All Intranet Sites and Portals.
To add a company site to the Research task pane, open the Add Services dialog box (see the previous section in this chapter) and enter the intranet site address in this format:
http://root directory where site is located/_vti_bin/search.asmx
Finding the Right Word with the Thesaurus
If you can’t seem to find the right word, or if the word is on the tip of your tongue but you can’t quite remember it, you can always give the Thesaurus a shot. To find synonyms for a word on a slide, start by right-clicking the word and choosing Synonyms on the shortcut menu, as shown in Figure 4-23. With luck, the synonym you are looking for appears on the submenu, and all you have to do is click to enter the synonym on your slide. Usually, however, finding a good synonym is a journey, not a Sunday stroll.
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Figure 4-23: Searching for synonyms. |
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To search for a good synonym, click the word in question and open the Thesaurus on the Research task pane with one of these techniques:
Press Shift+F7.
Right-click the word and choose Synonyms⇒Thesaurus.
Go to the Review tab and click the Thesaurus button.
The Research task pane opens (refer to Figure 4-20). It offers a list of synonyms (sometimes with an antonym or two at the bottom). Now you’re getting somewhere:
Choosing a synonym: Move the pointer over the synonym you want, open its drop-down list, and choose Insert.
Finding a synonym for a synonym: If a synonym intrigues you, click it. The task pane displays a new list of synonyms.
Searching for antonyms: If you can’t think of the right word, try typing its antonym in the Search for box and then looking for an “antonym of an antonym” in the Research task pane.
Revisit a word list: Click the Back button as many times as necessary. If you go back too far, you can always click its companion Forward button.
The Back and Forward buttons, like their namesakes in a Web browser, offer a drop-down list for retracing your search for — pardon my French — le mot juste.
If your search for a synonym comes up dry, try clicking a link at the bottom of the Research task pane. Clicking All Reference Books gives you the opportunity to look up a word in the reference books you’ve installed in the task pane; clicking All Research Sites gives you a chance to search the Internet. See “Researching a Topic inside PowerPoint,” earlier in this chapter for more about researching from inside PowerPoint.
Working with Text Written in a Foreign Language
In the interest of cosmopolitanism, PowerPoint gives you the opportunity to construct presentations in foreign languages or include foreign-language text in a presentation otherwise composed in English, and still be able to spell check your work. To enter and edit text in a foreign language, you start by installing proofing tools for the language. With the tools installed, you tell PowerPoint where in your presentation a foreign language is used. After that, you can spell check any text written in the language.
To spell check text written in languages apart from English, you have to obtain additional proofing tools from Microsoft. These can be obtained at the Microsoft Product Information Center at www.microsoft.com/products (enter proofing tools in the Search box). Proofing tools include a spell checker, grammar checker, thesaurus, hyphenator, AutoCorrect list, and translation dictionary, although all these tools are not available for every language.
Telling PowerPoint which languages you will use
Follow these steps to inform PowerPoint that you will use a language or languages besides English in your documents:
1. Close all programs, if any are open.
2. Click the Start button and choose All Programs ⇒Microsoft Office ⇒ Microsoft Office Tools ⇒Microsoft Office 2007 Language Settings.
You see the Microsoft Office Language Settings dialog box, shown in Figure 4-24. The Enabled Editing Languages box lists languages that PowerPoint (and the other Office programs you installed) is capable of proofing.
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Figure 4-24: Declaring which languages will appear in your Office files. |
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3. Select a language in the Available Editing Languages box and click the Add button to make that language a part of your presentations.
If you see the words “limited support” next to a language’s name in the Enabled Editing Languages box, you need to install a language-proofing software. As I mentioned earlier, you can obtain this software at the Microsoft Product Information Center (www.microsoft.com/products).
4. Click OK.
Marking text as foreign language text
The next step is to tell PowerPoint where in your presentation you are using a foreign language. After you mark the text as foreign language text, PowerPoint can spell check it with the proper dictionaries. Follow these steps to mark text so that PowerPoint knows in which language it was written:
1. Select the text that you wrote in a foreign language.
2. Click the Review tab.
3. Click the Language button.
You see the Language dialog box, as shown in Figure 4-25.
4. Select a language and click OK.
You can create a master style for foreign-language text. Doing so will save you the trouble of always having to revisit the Language dialog box. Book II, Chapter 2 explains master styles.
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Figure 4-25: Identifying words for spell checking and grammar checking. |
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Translating Foreign-Language Text
PowerPoint offers a little gizmo for translating words and phrases from one language to another. The translation gizmo is good only for translating single words and well-known phrases. To translate an entire PowerPoint presentation, you have to seek the help of a real, native speaker.
Follow these steps to translate text
1. Select the word or phrase that needs translating.
2. Go to the Review tab.
3. Click the Translate button.
The Research task pane opens, as shown in Figure 4-26. Earlier in this chapter, “Researching a Topic inside PowerPoint” describes the Research task pane.
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Figure 4-26: Use the Research task pane to translate a word or phrase. |
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4. Under Translation, choose a From option and a To option.
For example, to translate from English to Spanish, choose English in the From drop-down list and Spanish in the To drop-down list.
The translation, if PowerPoint can make it, appears in the task pane.
Smart Tags, Smart Alecks
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Figure 4-27: A Smart Tag in action. |
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Not everyone likes Smart Tags, however. Often what PowerPoint thinks is a date, address, place, or ticker name isn’t that thing at all. Follow these steps to turn off Smart Tags:
1. Click the Office button.
2. Choose PowerPoint Options on the drop-down list.
3. On the Proofing tab of the PowerPoint Options dialog box, click the AutoCorrect Options button.
You see the AutoCorrect dialog box.
4. Select the Smart Tags tab.
5. Unselect the Label Text with Smart Tags check box.
6. Click OK.