PowerPoint's Text Fill gallery offers you with various text fill options like
solid color fill,
picture fill,
gradient fill,
texture fill etc. Additionally, another fill option is
available for your text—this is the pattern fill, and we will show you where you can find this option. Just like any other text fill, the
appearance of text filled with a pattern depends upon certain factors like the type of pattern, colors used to create the pattern, and also the size
of text, etc. Look at the slide shown below in Figure 1. Notice that the pattern used for text on the top part of the slide has a
pattern fill that makes it very difficult to read whereas the pattern used for the text on the bottom part of the slide looks good, and is much more
legible.,
Figure 1: Two examples of Pattern fills for text
Follow these steps to learn how to apply a pattern fill to your text:
- Select the text to which you want to
apply a pattern fill. Alternatively, if you just want to follow this tutorial step-by-step,
insert a text box
on a blank slide and type some text in it. Also, change
the text font to something "blockier", such as Arial Black (see Figure 2).
Select the text, or the entire text box to bring up the
Drawing Tools Format tab on the Ribbon as shown highlighted
in red within Figure 2.
Figure 2: Drawing Tools Format tab of the Ribbon
Note: The
Drawing Tools Format tab is a
Contextual tab. These tabs are special tabs in the
Ribbon that are not visible all the time. They only make an appearance when
you are working with a particular slide object which can be edited using special options within these tabs.
- Within the Drawing Tools Format tab, locate the WordArt Styles group. Click on the
Format Text Effects dialog launcher that you can see highlighted in red within
Figure 3.
Figure 3: Format Text Effects dialog launcher
- This opens the Format Text Effects dialog box as shown in Figure 4. Make sure that the
Text Fill option is selected within the sidebar, then select the Pattern fill radio button as shown
highlighted in red within Figure 4.
Figure 4: Pattern fill options within Format Text Effects dialog box
- Click on any of the pattern style previews to apply it to your text. Whichever pattern you choose, you can then change its
foreground and background colors using the Foreground Color and Background Color buttons that you can see in
Figure 4 (highlighted in blue). When you click any of these buttons, you can see the
Color gallery shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5: Color gallery for Foreground and Background colors
- The options within Color gallery will work in the same way as explained in the
Text Fills in PowerPoint 2010 tutorial -- in that tutorial,
refer to the points 4-A, 4-B, 4-C, and 4-E for more info on how to use
the options within Color gallery. Also note that even though More Colors option has been
named as More Fill Colors within the "Text Fills in PowerPoint 2010" tutorial, both options serve the
same purpose.
-
If you don't want to change the foreground and background colors, you can just accept the default color values.
- Make your choices as required. In Figure 6 you can see the foreground and background colors for the
pattern have been changed,and the pattern with the name Diagonal brick is being selected.
Figure 6: Various Pattern fill options selected for the text
- As and when you make your choices within the Format Text Effects dialog box, you can see the result on the
selected text. Once you are happy with the effect achieved, click the Close button
(highlighted in red within
Figure 6). Figure 7 shows the selected text with a pattern fill applied.
Figure 6: Text with a pattern fill applied
- Remember to save your presentation often.
