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Convert Bulleted Text to SmartArt in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

Author: Geetesh Bajaj

Product/Version: Microsoft PowerPoint 2011
OS: Mac OS X

Date Created: September 9th 2011
Last Updated: September 9th 2011

Excerpt/Capsule: Learn how to convert your existing bulleted text to a SmartArt graphic in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

With all the bad publicity that bulleted text on a PowerPoint slide gets these days, it may be a good idea to look at some alternatives -- even if you are exploring other options for only a few slides. One of the options that works great is SmartArt -- if you have some bulleted text on your slide in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac, you can easily convert it into to a SmartArt graphic with just a few clicks. Do note though that this works best when your original bulleted text does not have too much text -- just a small word or phrase in each of the bullets is something that translates very well to SmartArt:

1. Open a slide in your PowerPoint presentation that includes bulleted text, as shown in Figure 1. If you do not have such a slide handy, go ahead and create one.
   
   
   Figure 1: Slide with bulleted text
   
   
2. Click anywhere within your bulleted text -- then right-click to summon the context menu shown in Figure 2. Choose the Convert to SmartArt option.
   
   
   Figure 2: Convert to SmartArt option within the context menu
   
   
3. This activates the SmartArt tab of the Ribbon. Within this tab, you will find the Insert SmartArt Graphic group that you can see highlighted in red in Figure 3. Within this group, select the SmartArt graphic category that you want to apply to the selected bulleted text. As shown in Figure 3, we chose the List category to bring up a drop-down gallery that includes different types of List SmartArt graphics. Thereafter, we clicked on the Vertical Picture List graphic.
   
   
   Figure 3: Choose a SmartArt Graphic
   
   
   Tip: Want to know more about the different type of SmartArt graphics -- and individual categories of SmartArt -- explore our What is SmartArt and Some SmartArt Samples tutorials. Also look at our Insert SmartArt in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac tutorial.
   
   
4. Figure 4 shows the same bulleted text (refer to Figure 1 above) converted to Vertical Picture List SmartArt graphic. Do you see the placeholders before the text in the SmartArt graphic -- you can click on those placeholders to fill them with pictures.
   
   
   Figure 4: Bulleted text converted to Vertical Picture List SmartArt
   
   
5. Save your presentation.

See Also: Convert Bulleted Text to SmartArt in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows | Convert Bulleted Text to SmartArt in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows