Adding and Modifying Tab Stops
A tab stop is the location where the insertion point moves (including any text to the right of it) when you press the Tab key. PowerPoint has tab-stop alignment styles.
The four styles are left
, center
, right
, decimal
. The default tab stops on the ruler are left tabs, which position the left edge of text at the tab stop and extend the text to the right. However, to align the right sides of dollar amounts or other figures use a right tab stop to position the right edge of text at the tab stop and extend the text to the left.
Right Alignment
Practice: Changing Tab Stops
- Insert a new slide. You can use the default layout provided of Title and Text.
- Type a title for a department service and then click in the text placeholder and type some figures associated with it such as shown below, putting a tab stop between the end of the text and the figures.
- If the ruler doesn't appear above the Slide Pane, click View on the menu bar, and then click Ruler.
- Click the Tab Stop Alignment Style button
, located in the upper-left corner of the ruler as shown until the right tab stop
appears there. Normally, you have to click the button twice, but you might have to click it more or fewer times depending on the current tab-stop style appearing there. (As you click, you will cycle through the four alignment styles left
, right
, center
, and decimal
.) - Click just below the 8-inch marker in the white area of the horizontal ruler at the top of the Slide Pane. The new right tab stop appears at the location you clicked, the default tab stops left of the new tab stop disappear, and the amounts in the body text box become right-aligned.
- Click View on the menu bar, and then click Ruler to deselect it. The ruler is removed from the PowerPoint window.

The ruler appears on the screen. Click anywhere in the body text placeholder and type so that the ruler displays the default tab stops. See the figure below.
Notice that the default tab stops are marked with light gray rectangles, or hash marks, under the ruler bar. When you add a tab stop, all the default tab stops to the left of the one you added are automatically deleted. The user-placed tab stop is marked with the corresponding tab-stop character.

Bullets
Practice: Changing Bullets
- Drag over the bulleted items to highlight all of the text.
- Click Format on the menu bar, and then click Bullets and Numbering.
- Click the four-diamond bullet style as shown above and then click the Color list arrow, selecting the bright green tile. This changes the bullet from white to green.
- Click the OK button to accept the changes. You should now see four green four-diamond bullets.
- Save the presentation and go on to the next section on Inserting a Movie.

The Bullets and Numbering dialog box opens. See below.


If you wanted to change the bullets on all of the slides you would go to the Slide Master as previously discussed.

