Columns Within Text Boxes in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows

Columnar text layouts are something you see often in Word documents or even in published formats used by desktop publishing software. PowerPoint 2010 gives you some column capabilities, although don't expect anything close to the controls provided by word processing applications. In PowerPoint, you can set up a text container to possess multiple linked columns, as shown in Figure 1, below.

Figure 1: Columnar text within a text box

All these columns are limited to be within a single text container. You can add or delete text and the new or remaining text automatically adjusts itself to flow within the container. You cannot have text flow from one container to other though. We told you PowerPoint's column options for text are limited! The good thing is that when you do have too much text on a slide (and trust us, too much text is not a good thing on a slide), then you can easily convert a single-column layout into a multicolumn one, giving your text more reading space and also breathability.

If you need to set up columns for text boxes (and shapes), then go ahead and follow the procedure explained on this page. However if you need to make all text within individual text placeholders columnar, then don't make these changes for every individual text placeholder. Not only will working with individual text placeholders be monotonous, but also you will lose the consistent look of successive slides. Therefore, make these changes for text placeholders within the Slide Master.

Tip: Don't know the difference between a text box and a text placeholder? Look at our Text Boxes vs. Text Placeholders tutorial.

Follow these steps to set columns within text containers:

Open any slide which has a text box. Click on the edge of the text box so that it shows a solid line with selection handles on its perimeter (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Text box selected
Right-click to get the context menu you see in Figure 3. Select the Format Shape option (refer to Figure 3 again).
Figure 3: Format Shape option
This will open the Format Shape dialog box (see Figure 4). Make sure you choose Text Box from the left pane of this dialog box (refer to Figure 4 again).
Figure 4: Text Box pane selected within Format Shape dialog box
Within the Format Shape dialog box, click the Columns button (highlighted in red in Figure 4 above) to open the Columns dialog box, as shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5: Columns dialog box
Within this dialog box you can enter a Number to specify the number of columns, and set an amount of Spacing in inches. We choose 2 columns, and a spacing of 0.5 inches.
In the example on the left in Figure 6, you can see a text box with simple paragraphed text, and towards the right, you can see the same text box with text laid out in two columns.
Figure 6: Compare the same text container with and without columns

Tip: Restrict yourself to 2 columns as far as possible. If you must, even then never go beyond 3 columns. Slides don't take as kindly to columns as normal paragraphs in a document program like Microsoft Word do.

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Columns Within Text Boxes in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows

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