Does providing outlines to text make it easier to read on Microsoft’s PowerPoint?
Microsoft PowerPoint is a fantastic presentation app packed with functions. In fact, it has so many functions it can feel daunting to use at first.
I am K-Bo, a user of Microsoft’s PowerPoint for more than 20-years, here to solve some issues you might be facing when starting with this app.
Have you ever felt it is impossible to make the text readable when placing the text-box on top of a picture?
Read further to find out about outlining text to deal with this issue.
Is text on Microsoft PowerPoint difficult to read?
There are times that text on a slide in PowerPoint is difficult to read. There is nothing wrong with Microsoft’s PowerPoint. This tends to happen when there are a lot of different colors being used behind the text.
For example, it is often difficult to read text that is placed on a picture. The letters just blends in.
Is there a way to make the text easier to read?
There are a few ways to improve the readability of text.
One is to color the background of the text-box. Another is to give each letter of the text an outline.
I recently noticed that TV programs in Japan use this technique quite often.
How are outlines added to the text?
There are a few ways to do this on PowerPoint.
I find that the easiest way to do this by following these steps. Click on:
- Text-box
- [Shape Format] (It will appear in the menu once the text-box is selected)
- [Text Outline] (Click on the arrow pointing down for the color pallet)
- A color of your liking
Try out a few different colors to see which works the magic the best.
What if a good color is hard to find?
Sometimes it might feel impossible to find a good color to use as outlines. Then again, it might not be the color, but the width of the outline that is not helping make the text easy to read.
The width can be changed by clicking on [Weight] near the bottom of the color panel for [Text Outline].
Can the color of the text (inside the outline) be changed?
When fiddling with the color of the outline, you might want to change the color fill of the text to make things look nicer.
This can be accomplished by clicking on [Text Fill] in the [Shape Format] tab (picture below).
What’s another way to outline text?
When you know you want outlines on your text from the start, you should use [Word Art]. Click on:
- [Insert]
- [Word Art]
- Type your message in the text-box
Before I go…
In some situations, coloring the background of the text-box is very useful. In others, giving an outline to individual letters is better. Choose the better solution to make your presentations inspiring and interesting.
If you need to learn about outlining text on Apple Keynote and creating text borders on Google Slides, please check out my other articles.