Customize the Bullet Size and Color in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

Even though you can always change bullet styles in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac, there may be occasions when you don't want to really change one bullet style to another, but want to alter the bullet size to make it little smaller or bigger than the text following it. Also, possibly you need a particular color to be used for the bullets. In this tutorial, we are going to show you how you can change the size and color of the bullets in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

1. Open the presentation, navigate to the slide where you want to make these changes, and select the bulleted paragraph. If you want to make these changes to all the bullets in the text placeholder, you can select the entire placeholder by clicking on the edge of the placeholder as shown in Figure 1.
2. 
   Figure 1: Placeholder containing bulleted paragraph selected
2. Access the Home tab of the Ribbon. Within the Paragraph group, click the arrow beside the Bulleted List button (highlighted in blue within Figure 2). This brings up the Bullets gallery, as shown in Figure 2. Within this gallery, choose the Define New Bullet option (highlighted in red within Figure 2).
3. 
   Figure 2: Bullets gallery
3. This will open the Format Text dialog box with Bullets and Numbering option selected within the sidebar, as shown in Figure 3. Make sure that the Bullets tab is selected.
4. 
   Figure 3: Bullets options within the Format Text dialog box
4. Notice the Color and the Size options within the Format Text dialog box (highlighted in blue and red respectively within Figure 3). These are used to change the color and size of the selected bullets. Let us start with changing the color of the bullet. Click the Color selection box (highlighted in blue within Figure 3) to reveal the Color gallery, as shown in Figure 4.
5. 
   Figure 4: Color gallery
6. The options within this Color gallery are:

Automatic

7. This is the default color for the bullets, and uses the same color as the text color.

Theme Colors

8. Choose any color from the active Theme of the presentation. You can also choose from any of the five tints (lighter variations) or shades (darker variations) for any Theme color. Do remember that these colors will change if you apply a new Theme to your presentation.

Standard Colors

9. Choose from any of the ten standard colors. These ten standard colors are just choices of colors that PowerPoint believes to be widely used. These colors will not change if you apply a new Theme.

More Colors

10. This option is to summon the Mac OS X Color picker, as shown in Figure 5.
11. 
    Figure 5: Mac OS X Color picker
12. In this Color picker, you can choose any color from the wheel. Thereafter adjust the selected color's luminosity within the long, thin slider on the right. Once you are happy with the color attained, click OK to get back to Format Text dialog box.
5. Select any color you want. As soon as the new color is selected, you can see that bullet style previews change from the default color to the newly selected color (highlighted in red within Figure 6). Compare Figures 3 and 6 to see the difference.
6. 
   Figure 6: Bullet preview thumbnails with changed bullet color
6. To change the size of the bullet in relation to the text, just type in the value within the Size box, or use the up and down arrows placed next to the box to increase/decrease the size value. In Figure 7, the dialog box shows the size value changed to 120 percent of text (highlighted in red).
7. 
8. Figure 7: Size value is changed
7. Now click the OK button to apply the changes to the selected text placeholder.
8. Figure 8 shows the changed bullet size and color of the selected text (compare Figures 1 and 8).
9. 
   Figure 8: Bullet color and size are changed