January 15, 2002

How can I customize bullets?

Discover how to take control of the bullet symbols

Have you ever wanted to select presentation bullets that would fit with
your taste, the topic of the presentation, the audience, and so on?

Have you ever wondered how and where to find more appropriate icons for
your presentation bullets?

Microsoft PowerPoint also assigns, by default, different bullet styles
for the different levels of indentation:

For the first level of bullets, you find a normal black dot.

For the second level, the sub-bullets, you get a dash (hyphen).

The third level of indentation, the sub-sub-bullets, has again the same
black dot as the first level, but smaller in size. 

The fourth level, even if I am pretty sure you are not likely to use it
really often, has again the dash (hyphen).

These are the standard symbols used by default any time you choose to
have a bulleted list.

If you want to customize the bullets, and you want to do it for all the
slides and not only for one slide, do the following:

Go to "View" >> "Master" >> "Slide
Master".

What you can do here is customize the single bullets:

Move the mouse pointer on top of the bulleted area, and click just in
front of the line whose bullet you want to modify: first bulleted line for
the first level of bullets, second bulleted line for the second level and
so on.

Once the cursor is blinking in the right line, go to
"Format":

For PowerPoint 2000, select "Bullets and Numbering...". You
will obtain a dialog box with different options:

a) You can choose whether you want numbers, letters or symbols.

b) You can set the size of the bullets in relation to the size of the
text

c) You can change the color of the bullets.

d) But most of all, by clicking on "Character..." you have
the option to change the type of bullet. You have different font families
that you can browse to search for the right bullet for your presentation.

For PowerPoint 97 you should click on "Format" >>
"Bullets..." and then directly choose the font style, the symbol
to use, the size of the bullets and the color of it.

I would suggest you to choose among these fonts:

Symbol

Webdings

Windings

Monotype Sorts

ZapfDingbats.

You will find plenty of different icons and symbols that will replace
your default bullets. The additional advantage, choosing one of the above
fonts, is great compatibility:

According to our article #1, you should keep in mind that not all the
characters available to you in PowerPoint will be properly displayed in a
different operating system, printer or browser. But any of the symbols
chosen from the above list is universal, standard, and can be found also
on different computers.

You will avoid any bad surprise of having another computer replacing
automatically any unknown symbol with a default bullet, usually a simple
black dot, sometimes an empty white rectangle.

 

You can read this article in the original issue of MasterView.


posted by Robin Good on Tuesday, January 15 2002
Tuesday, January 15 2008

URL of this article:
http://masterview.ikonosnewmedia.com/2002/01/15/how_can_i_customize_bullets.htm


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