PowerPoint 2007 Line Spacing and Alignment

Efficient use of line spacing is one of the most neglected options in PowerPoint 2007 presentations, but it's one of the easiest to manage. (Line spacing denotes the spacing between sentences and paragraphs in a text box.)

Follow these steps to tweak line spacing and alignment:

1. Select the text that you want to change.

You can select either

• The entire text box (to change spacing for all the text in the box)

• Just the text you want to format

2. Click the Home tab on the Ribbon and then click the Line Spacing button.

The Line Spacing gallery appears.

3. Choose any of the preset line spacing options or choose Line Spacing Options to summon the Paragraph dialog box.

If the dialog box covers your text box, move the dialog box to another position so that you can preview any changes you make.

4. Change the following line spacing options as desired:

The Alignment option changes the alignment of the selected text — choices include left, centered, right, justified, and distributed. All these options are also directly available in the Home tab's Paragraph group.

The Indentation options allow you to change the value of the indent before text and the hanging value. Hanging denotes the area between the bullet and the first text character within the bulleted list.

The Spacing options change the spacing between lines of the same sentence or paragraph.

• The Before option changes the line spacing in the area above the selected text or paragraph.

• The After option changes the line spacing in the area below the selected text or paragraph.

• The Line Spacing drop-down list allows you to choose from line spacing presets such as Single, 1.5, Double, and more.

5. Click OK to apply the changes to the selected text or paragraph.

If you don't like the changes, press Ctrl+Z to undo. You can then change the line spacing options again.

Reducing the line spacing value is a great idea when you need to squeeze a single, extra line on an existing text box. To do this, select Multiple in the Line Spacing drop down box, and set it to a spacing value of 0.8 or 0.85. Don't do this trick too often, however, because reducing the line spacing might affect readability.