Add text with text slides, boxes, and shapes

- [Narrator] We've already seen that one way to add text to your slides is to simply click inside the text place holders that are already on the slide. That's how I added to the text inside these two place holders on this slide. But there will be times when you want to insert text into a slide at a location where there are no place holders. So let's take a look at some other ways to add text. I'm gonna click to create a new blank slide. So again, new slides always appear below the slide you have selected. And this is a completely empty slide with no place holders or any other objects. I'm gonna come up to the insert tab of the ribbon and I'll come over here and select text box.

Clicking that turns your mouse cursor into a text box tool. And we can use this in one of two ways. I can simply click anywhere on the slide which creates a text box that will expand to fit the text that you type. And then I can drag the text box around on the slide. Another way to use the text box tool, is to click to select it and then drag to draw a box that is already the approximate size and position you want. Actually though, you really only need to draw out the width of the text box. Notice when I start typing, the box goes back to the height of a single line of text.

However it will stay locked in to it's current width. So if I just start typing some gibberish notice the text wraps down to the next line. Just delete that. Now if I press enter or return, I can go down to the next line and keep entering text. The height of the box will continue to increase to contain the text you're typing. So that's how to use the text box button. Again just select the text box tool and either click or drag out a box to create your text box. And then type in your text.

And then you're free to move that text box anywhere you need to. Now another way to add text is with a shape tool. This is useful if you want some text to appear in something other than an invisible rectangle. I'm gonna go back to the insert tab, and here I'll click the shapes button, now to add text you have to select one of the closed shapes here, under rectangles, basic shapes, block arrows and so on. You can't add text to the object under, lines, it has to be a closed shape. So for example I'm gonna select this cloud shape, here under basic shapes. And once I do that I can again either click to place the shape, or I can click and drag to set the shapes size right off the bat.

Now there's not place holder text flashing or a cursor here, because you won't always wanna put text inside shapes. But with a shape selected you can just start typing. And the text will flow within the shape if you resize it. Notice that when working with a shape the format tab appears up here in the ribbon. This let's you do all sorts of things to the shapes appearance, like changing the fill type, from a sold fill to say a gradient fill. Or I can even choose a picture or texture. I'm gonna switch that back to a solid color.

We also have a shape effects menu. For example I could go to the shadow section, and maybe add an outer shadow. Now if I come down here and choose shadow options, that opens up the format shape panel to the right and here I can really customize it's appearance. So for example I can change the size and angle of the shadow, or I can come back up to presets and choose no shadow. There's also options here to add a reflection and again I can go to the presets here, and other effects appear below. You can play around with them and adjust them as you like.

There's also a text options tab here, which basically gives you the same formatting tools but they apply to the text. Notice both the shape options and the text options have these three sub-sections for modifying the appearance of the shape or the text. Now truth be told, all text appears in shapes including the place holders that are on slide by default. If I select the functions and events text I can see the text box as usual, but notice I can also select shape options here in the format panel. So with the text box selected I could for example go to the fill area here. And maybe put in a gradient fill.

Or I could go to effects and add a shadow. And if I click off to de-select I can see the changes I've applied. So again, text always appears inside a shape whether it's an invisible text box or a text box you make visible by adding color or an outline, or whether it's inside a shape you draw on your slide.