Tutorial

PowerPoint presentations often need references, disclaimers, or legal notices on slides—but not always. Many of the presentations we work on have a variety of text box formatting and location needs for these important (but often small) amounts of text. Internally, our design team uses a special set of rules for formatting these text boxes. This makes the formatting task quicker and easier, and keeps the slide content clear. Let’s dive in!

What is a Reference Text Box? 

On many slides – especially when showing data, citing sources, branding details, or adding footnotes – a small reference text box is needed at the bottom of the slide.  

TIP: because this is generally not a text placeholder on the Master Slide Layout, we paste a reference version onto an extra (hidden) slide so we have all of these formatting options set to go! Here are the two “template” or reference text boxes, ready to be pasted into our slide deck. 

TLC Creative Formatting Guidelines for Reference Text Boxes 

When setting up a reference text box, these formatting details help maintain readability without distracting from the main content: 

1. Font Size: Small – 8 to 9 pt (adjust as needed for the font being used) 

2. Alignment: Left-aligned 

3. Text Box Margins: None (set all text box margins to 0) 

4. Vertical Position: Bottom aligned – because this is a bottom-of-the-slide element, additional lines of text should move upward, keeping the bottom line of text always in the same position 

5. Paragraph Spacing: 4 pt before – provides a small gap between multiple lines of text when longer citations or source text is needed 

6. Width: Set the text box to full slide width, and shorten as needed, to fit the layout design 

For teams managing brand consistency or legal compliance, reference notes can make a big difference in creating polished, professional presentations. 

Need help optimizing your templates or standardizing presentations – like assuring all reference text is consistent across all slides?
The TLC Creative team can help bring consistency, clarity, and design precision to every slide.

–The TLC Creative Design Team 

One of the biggest things that irks us at TLC Creative is stacking text boxes on top of shapes in PowerPoint. It might seem like a quick fix, but it’s just lazy formatting. Don’t do this – please! It almost always can be avoided because it almost always leads to formatting headaches down the road. 

What is “stacked text”? It’s placing a text box on top of a PowerPoint shape. This creates two objects on the slide that need to be moved and aligned together instead of just one object. 

This often happens because someone is not familiar with how to control a shape’s text. Knowing how to edit text inside a shape is ultimately going to make future slide edits happier, vs becoming a slow and time-sucking process. 

Another reason not to stack is that text boxes placed on top of a shape are often not horizontally aligned with the shape. As an example, a text box stacked on top of a shape with the text left aligned is not truly centered by default – the text box must be manually moved to center the text on the shape – ugh! Even if you center the text in the text box, you still have to select both objects and center them to one another. The better solution is to set your text inside the shape and simply center the text – yay!  

When it comes to animation, it might seem easier with two objects, but it’s still two objects. Don’t do this! You can get the same effect with one object. PowerPoint actually allows you to animate text within a shape independently. This means you can get the same effects without the hassle of animating multiple objects. 

Selecting objects can also be difficult when using two elements. When the overlapping textbox is bigger than the shape behind, it’s a little tricky trying to select that back object. You will need to select both, then Shift deselect the top text box in order to modify the back underlying shape (you can also use the selection pane).  

Accessibility is another good reason not to stack a text box on top of a shape. The Office PowerPoint accessibility tools do not work very well with layered content, as these tools have several limitations in identifying stacked objects. As an example, white text on top of a light baby blue shape isn’t seen by the accessibility checker as a flawed low contrast item. PowerPoint looks at a text box with no fill color and sees it essentially in black-and-white and ignores the layered element underneath. This can lead to content being missed by users relying on screen readers. 

In conclusion, managing text within a shape is simply way more efficient. You have a single object to select and work with while designing, your animation and selection panes are less cluttered, line wrapping adjusts automatically when the shape or text size changes, and the list goes on. All of this makes it easier to keep a clean and responsive layout, plus it’s also more accessible. 

-Tips and a big ask, from the TLC Creative Design Team 

If you’ve ever tried to create a numbered list in PowerPoint and wanted to start it at “0”, you’ve likely run into a small (and slightly frustrating) limitation: PowerPoint lets you change the starting number of a numbered list—but only if that number is 1 or higher. Starting at “0”? That’s not allowed!

How to Change the Starting Number in PowerPoint 

1. Highlight the numbered list

2. Right-click and choose “Bullets and Numbering”

3. In the Numbered tab, change the “Start at” value

4. Enter any whole number except “0”

Yep, if you try to enter “0,” the field will snap back to “1”

But Larger Numbers Are Allowed

Side note: a numbered list can start at any number (larger than 0) and will continue the auto numbering from there. For example, PowerPoint makes it easy to update this number list to start at the number 8. 

1. Right-click and choose “Bullets and Numbering”

2. Go to the Numbered tab

3. Change the “Start at” value from “1” to “8”

4. Click OK

Why No Zero?

PowerPoint follows the more traditional formatting logic found in word processing and presentation tools, where lists begin with “1” by default. Unlike coding languages or spreadsheets that often treat “0” as a valid starting index, PowerPoint assumes that users are building lists meant for human consumption, where “1” is the standard starting point. This is disappointing because we have slides that start with “0” occasionally. 

A Workaround, if You Really Want to Start With a Zero

If starting your list with “0” is needed (such as when showing steps in a programming sequence or a timeline), here’s a simple workaround. This workaround does not use PowerPoint’s auto numbering, but it will look exactly the same. 

Manually add bullet/number spacing: 

1. Go to the “Home” tab, then the “Paragraph” section, click on the “Line Spacing” icon, then go to the “Line Spacing Options”… at the bottom of the menu open the “Paragraph” dialog 

2. On the “Indents and Spacing” tab, go to the “Indentation” area 

3. Change the “Before Text” to “0.38”  

4. Change the “Special” section to be “Hanging” and by “0.38” 

5. Click OK 

These settings will mimic the spacing and alignment of a bullet/number list.  

Now start the first line by typing “0”, then hit tab and continue (manually) numbering the full list. The result is a numbered list starting at “0”! 

Depending on the font used and the text size, you may need to adjust the “Before Text” and “Special” settings to space the numbers and text appropriately – just make sure the numbers used in these 2 settings are the same. 

Final Thoughts

While this method does not produce a true numbered list, it does visually replicate one, allowing you to start at “0” without disrupting the layout. It’s a small quirk, but it’s good to know these limitations when you’re trying to get your slides just right. PowerPoint’s list formatting features are powerful, but sometimes a manual tweak is the key to getting the result you need. 

-The TLC Creative Design Team 

Back in 2011, we had a great post here on The PowerPoint Blog with a very cool trick: animate a super-wide panoramic image across a regular slide to create a smooth, cinematic movement. Fast-forward to today, and it’s still a great effect to add energy to your slides—especially with so many widescreen displays and virtual presentations in play.

What makes it timeless? It’s simple, visual, and super effective. No fancy software needed—just PowerPoint and a smart animation. The PowerPoint features have improved over the years, but this technique still delivers a modern, professional feel.

Read through the January 11, 2011 post for  great example and tutorial of animating a super wide panoramic image with a combination of slide transitions and motion paths. The same thing can accomplished in PowerPoint today! But today, we would create this animation a bit different, and a bit faster. Let’s show how we can do this as only 2 slides with image cropping (not available in 20111), and a morph transition (also not available in 2011) to accomplish the same visual. Here’s how:

1. Here is our panoramic image for this tutorial

2. Add image to slide #1 and align to left of slide

3. Crop to slide size

4. Duplicate slide and adjust crop by moving image so right edge is now displayed

5. Add Morph transition

6. Adjust duration (we are going to make it 10 seconds because our image is extra wide)

7. Done!

This is from our Look Back series rediscovering previous blog posts with relevant PowerPoint Tips, Tricks and Examples. The original January 11, 2011 blog post can be found here.

During a Teams meeting, multiple presenters can run and share control of the same PowerPoint presentation! This can be a very handy feature especially when multiple people are presenting the same deck. There are some guidelines to be aware of, so let’s get started. 

There are three ways to open a PowerPoint presentation from Teams: Open in Teams, Open in Browser, and Open in Desktop App. For this post, we’re focusing solely on using the “Open in Teams” option (this also works in “Open in Desktop” but controlling the presentation could be tricky).

Opening the presentation in Teams keeps the presentation within the Teams app, making it easier to manage control when multiple presenters are involved and is the best choice when different team members are presenting different sections of a PowerPoint deck. One person runs the slides, and each presenter can take control when it’s their turn to speak, ensuring a smoother flow without having to share and unshare.  

Here’s how to do it: 

1. Schedule the Meeting: Go to your Teams calendar and create a new meeting (either by clicking the day/time you want within the calendar or simply clicking the new event button in the upper right-hand corner of your calendar tab) and invite all participants. Note: you can also do this through your Outlook calendar, but for our demonstration here we’re going to stay within the Teams environment. 

2. Add Co-Organizers: 

• Open the meeting options in Teams 

• Click on Meeting Options > Roles 

• Add co-organizers using the dropdown menu 

• Note: You cannot add a participant as a co-organizer until after they have accepted the meeting invite 

3. Choose who can present: 

• Go to Meeting Options > Roles 

• Choose who can present – options include Everyone, People in my org and guests, Specific people, and Only organizers and co-organizers 

• If selecting Specific People, add the names of the presenters 

• Note: during our testing, we ran into some snags when selecting and trying to add Specific People. We found “Only organizers and co-organizers” worked well consistently. 

4. Allow Control Sharing: 

• Open the Teams admin center by navigating to https://admin.teams.microsoft.com/ (you need to be an admin of the Team to check this setting) 

• Expand Meetings and select Meeting Policies. 

• In most cases, click Global (Org-wide default), and scroll down to Content Sharing, then toggle Participants can give or request control to On.  

During the Meeting: 

1. Share your Screen with the presentation open in show mode.
Note: the “Present in Teams” option for sharing does not allow you to pass control of a presentation during a meeting (hoping Microsoft will add this feature). 

2. Make Someone a Presenter: 

• Open the participant list by selecting People in the meeting controls. 

• Hover over a participant’s name and click More Options > Make a Presenter. 

3. Share or Request Control: 

• When a presenter is already sharing, they can click Give Control to pass control to another participant. 

• Attendees can also click Request Control to ask for control of the presentation.  

Once attendees (or co-organizers) have control of the presentation, everyone will see a small bubble with the presenter’s Teams profile photo or initials next to the cursor. 

To advance the slides (or go back) the presenter simply needs to click on the right or left side of the slide in their Teams meeting window or use the right and left arrow keys or space bar. 

Important Notes: 

• In recurring meetings, changes to Meeting Options will apply to all future occurrences. 

• Updates made to roles during a meeting only apply to that specific meeting instance. 

• If a participant exits and rejoins, they will retain their assigned role unless it’s changed. 

• By default, meeting participants can give control of their shared screen to another participant. 

We believe the setup outlined here will help ensure your presentation runs smoothly, whether you’re the only one presenting or sharing control with others. Following these steps makes it easy to manage multiple presenters and maintain flow throughout the meeting. Have a great meeting! 

-The TLC Creative team 

Want to make your PowerPoint videos stand out and grab some extra attention? Videos do not need to be limited to the standard rectangle. Imagine a video playing inside a circle, a star, a speech bubble, or even a custom shape! It really adds a creative touch that feels way more immersive.  

Typically, all videos are inserted onto a slide as a rectangle.

Videos can be cropped, resized, and positioned anywhere on the slide – all using native PowerPoint features. Videos can also have styling effects applied; drop shadow, outline, recolored, etc. – also all using native PowerPoint features. 

Change the Shape 

Now for the fun part. Change the rectangle into something else. Native to PowerPoint is the ability to change to any of the shapes in the Shape Library; circle, triangle, parallelogram, 3D cube – pick whatever you like! Select the video > go to Video Format > open the Video Shape selection > pick a shape!  

All of the PowerPoint shapes work flawlessly, automatically masking a video to that shape. So don’t hold back! Video shapes, just like the rectangle, can be customized with a border or effect. How about an oval video? 

Or how about a thought bubble (using PowerPoint’s preset thought bubble shape)? 

TIP: use the CROP tool to resize and reposition the video within the new shape. 

Add a Video to a Custom Shape 

The basic PowerPoint shapes are nice, but what about a complex shape with multiple parts or a logo? With the use of the Merge Shapes tool and a vector graphic as the custom shape, virtually anything is possible. For example, let’s make a video play inside this shape. 

• First, add the video to the slide (Insert > Video) 

• Add then add the custom vector art to the slide.
  • NOTE: This must be a vector art file (eg. .SVG)
  • TIP: If the Merge Shapes step below does not work, select the shape(s), copy, delete (yes, it’s okay to delete), then “Paste Special” and select “SVG”

• Resize and move both the shape and the video to the desired placement. Keep the vector art on top of the video.

• Select the video first, then hold Shift and select the shape (the order you select the shapes is critical to this working). 

• Go to Merge Shapes > Intersect. 

Now your video takes the shape of whatever you picked. Use the Crop tool to adjust the size and position of the video as needed. 

And that’s it! It’s a great effect, all done within PowerPoint, and can definitely level up your slide and impress the audience! 

-Mike, and the TLC Creative design team