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Character Spacing in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

Explore various Character Spacing options in PowerPoint 2011

Author: Geetesh Bajaj

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

Date Created: October 15, 2012
Last Updated: October 15, 2012

When you increase or decrease the font size of text in PowerPoint, you'll discover that not only does this make a difference in the aesthetics of your slide, but the text itself uses more or less space than you may want. Sometimes, you may want the text to take just a wee bit lesser space so that all content can fit within two lines rather than three. If you want to alter the spacing between text characters, you can do so by using PowerPoint 2011's Character Spacing option that influences the appearance and readability of both Title and Body text. Character Spacing is the amount of space in-between individual letters. You can easily adjust this spacing for a cleaner look or to make more or less text fit within any text object. Let us explore how you can select different Character Spacing options for your text:

Open any presentation and select the text you want to change the Character Spacing for, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Text selected on the slide
Now, access the Home tab of the Ribbon and locate the Font group. Within this group, click the Character Spacing button, highlighted in red within Figure 2.

Figure 2: Character Spacing button within the Font group
This brings up the Character Spacing drop-down gallery, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Character Spacing drop-down gallery

Within the Character Spacing drop-down gallery there are six options. Also, notice that within the Character Spacing drop-down gallery, a check mark is placed in front of the active option -- the active option in Figure 3 is Normal. This indicates that the character spacing for the selected text is Normal.

Figure 4, below shows immediate results of applying first five options of Character Spacing drop-down gallery to the selected text:
1. Very Tight: This will condense the Character Spacing for the selected text by 3 points.
2. Tight: This will condense the Character Spacing for the selected text by 1.5 points.
3. Normal: This keeps the Character Spacing normal.
4. Loose: This will expand the Character Spacing for the selected text by 3 points.
5. Very Loose: This will expand the Character Spacing for the selected text by 6 points.
  
  Figure 4: Text applied with various Character Spacing options
6. Character Spacing: This option bring up the Format Text dialog box with the Character Spacing tab active, as shown in Figure 5. We already explored the Font tab in our Format Text Dialog Box -- Font Options tutorial.
  
  Figure 5: Character Spacing tab within the Format Text dialog box
  
  Within this dialog box you can adjust character spacing and kerning using custom settings. To set custom spacing, choose either Expanded or Condensed from the Spacing drop-down list, and then enter the number of points by which you want to expand or condense the Character Spacing. You can also adjust the Kerning between two letters, based upon their shapes. Kerning takes the shapes of the letters into account as it selectively tightens the spacing. Click OK when done.
  
  Note: If you need to use the same Character Spacing in all slides in your presentation, then it is advisable to adjust the Character Spacing options within the individual Slide Layouts. You can edit Slide Layouts within the Slide Master view. The changes you make within the Slide Master view will affect all the slides in your presentation.
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