Help! Bullet styles won't change when I indent

[Andrew Diamond]

Unless I've been living in an alternate universe, I don't reclal having this
problem before. I seem to recall creating text boxes at will and when I
used bullets and indended one (via the -> indent button) the style of the
bullet wold change appropriately. So, say, if the top level bullet style
was a big dot the style of a once indented bullet would change to a dash.

However, I can't get that to happen. Now matter how I indent I just get the
top level bullet style.

Note, given a new slide with it's default text box (i.e. the text box that
appears beneath he title versus adding a text box as per the above) this
style change DOES occur. I can't find any setting that's different from
this default box. WTF? Have I just forgetten how to use Powerpoint in the
last month.

Please, help the retarded,
Thanks

 

[Luc]

Andrew,
As far as I know this has always been the case. When you draw a textbox
yourself, then add bullets using the Bullets and numbering dialog you get
one level numbering. PPT, has never offered multilevel numbering outside the
classic placeholders.
But hey maybe someone will prove me wrong.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Andrew,
As far as I know this has always been the case. When you draw a textbox
yourself, then add bullets using the Bullets and numbering dialog you get
one level numbering. PPT, has never offered multilevel numbering outside the
classic placeholders.
But hey maybe someone will prove me wrong.

Well, since you offered ... <g>

You can use the Outlining toolbar to indent text (rather than using the TAB
key) and then assign the text different bullet types. If you keep adding text
at the same level, it'll inherit the same bullet settings but if you demote or
promote the text, the bullets don' change to reflect that.

So really this is kind of faking it, but not really proving you wrong. ;-)

 

[Guest]

Morning (UK) Steve

A little extra to you neat trick (I had to play)

If you produce a text box with several levels of text and apply different
bullet styles to each either as you suggested or by marking a level and
format > bullets & nums
then you seem to be able to double click the format painter and use it to
assign those bullets to other text boxes.

 

[Luc]

Steve,
Yep, it's a workaround I used before, but since it is not a very flexible
one I did not propose it to Andrew. By the way the increase indent and
decrease indent buttons on the formatting toolbar do the same job.
What I usually do is type in the whole list using the mentioned buttons,
then select each level and assign a bullet of my choice then repeat the
process by using F4. As John said the format painter is a good suggestion if
you need the same pattern again.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Morning (UK) Steve

A little extra to you neat trick (I had to play)

If you produce a text box with several levels of text and apply different
bullet styles to each either as you suggested or by marking a level and
format > bullets & nums
then you seem to be able to double click the format painter and use it to
assign those bullets to other text boxes.

Good one.

Or our ShapeStyles add-in. Hey hey hey, we're on a roll. And speaking of
rolling, weren't you just on a two-wheeled roll?

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Steve,
Yep, it's a workaround I used before, but since it is not a very flexible
one I did not propose it to Andrew. By the way the increase indent and
decrease indent buttons on the formatting toolbar do the same job.

D'accord. And thanks for that tip re the formatting toolbar. I forgot those
buttons where there. <g>

 

[Andrew Diamond]

First: Thank you all for your suggestion and I there may be times where my
solution is not appropriate so I will keep them in mind.
Perhaps this is a "Captain Obvious" solution:
Since what I needed larger text boxes that looked and behaved like the
standard slide body bullet text box that you get on a standard slide (the
ones that initialize with "Click to add text" when a new slide is created),
I just copy and pasted existing instances of those (pre-fab bullet text
boxes) for my additional text boxes. Apparently, they have to have
something in them first to allow copying so I start by making making a dummy
slide and filling one in with a letter. I just copy and past that around
(and overwrite the letter as needed). Obviously, if I had lots of small
text boxes that would be a pain but then those text boxes are not where I
use bullets let alone indended ones. At least this way I know the behavior
of that box will be consistent with all other such items in particular the
slide default bullet box.

Frankly, I find it bizarre that I can't just find the attributes of this
default item and tell all text boxes to behave like this (or something like
that). Oh well, I'm just happy to not be trying to manually make my text
boxes behave...and failing.

Again, thanks for your help and sorry for the bother.

 

[Guest]

First of all, is this behavior that's being discussed: A demoted or promoted
bullet (using the tab key, say) isn't getting reassigned the bullet character
of its new level? If that's the subject, then albeit a tad late, I'd like to
add some comments.

I have found that when a bullet is demoted/promoted it *does* get reassigned
the correct bullet character (as well as font characteristics for the
bulletized text itself). However, if one changes the bullet character for
text at a certain level, and *then* promotes or demotes that bulleted line,
the bullet character is *not* reassigned after the promotion/demotion - the
bulletized text retains the bullet character that you put on that text.

This is not what I would have expected (or hoped) would occur, and I'm not
sure of the rationale for it happening that way. I'm now firmly on the 2007
series of products and have no way to check this against 2003 - did it work
that way in 2003?