Although you can change bullet styles in
PowerPoint, there may be times when you want to make changes to other characteristics of the bullet characters You might want to
alter the size of the bullet character so that it is somewhat smaller or larger than the text before which it is placed. Or maybe
you just need to change the color of the bullet characters. Most of the time, the defaults work best. However, just in case you
want to make these changes, this is how you will go about the whole process in
PowerPoint 2016:
Tip: Do you want the bullet color and size changed in all slides? The instructions on this page are for working
with individual slides in
Normal view. To apply these
changes to all slides, follow the same steps within the
Slide Master view.
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Open the presentation, navigate to the slide where you want to make these changes, and select the bulleted text. If you want to
make these changes to all the bullets in the text placeholder, you can select the entire placeholder by clicking on the edge of
the placeholder (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Slide with bulleted text
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Access the Home tab of the Ribbon
and click the down-arrow beside the Bullets button (highlighted in blue within
Figure 2). This brings up the Bullets drop-down gallery, as shown in Figure 2.
Within this drop-down gallery, choose the Bullets and Numbering option (highlighted in
red within Figure 2).
Figure 2: Bullets drop-down gallery
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This will open the Bullets and Numbering dialog box, as shown in Figure 3. Make sure that the
Bulleted tab of this dialog box is selected. Within the Bulleted tab, you can see the
Size and the Color options, as shown highlighted in red and
blue respectively within Figure 3.
Figure 3: Bullet options within the Bullets and Numbering dialog box
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To change the size of the bullet in relation to the text, just type in the value in the size box, or use the up and down arrows
placed next to the size box to increase/decrease the size value. As you can see in Figure 4, the dialog box now
shows that the size value has been changed to 75 percent of text (highlighted in red).
Figure 4: Size value is changed
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Click the Color button to reveal the Color gallery, as shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5: Color gallery
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The options within this Color gallery are:
Automatic
- This is the default color for the bullets, and uses the same color as the text color.
Theme Colors
- Choose any color from the active Theme of
the presentation. You can also choose from any of the 5 tints (lighter variations) or shades (darker variations) for any Theme
color. Do remember that these colors will change if you
apply a new Theme to your presentation.
Standard Colors
- Choose from any of the ten standard colors. These ten standard colors are just choices
of colors that PowerPoint believes to be widely used. These colors will not change if you apply a new Theme.
More Colors
- Works just like Standard Colors, and choices you make do not change if you apply a new Theme. The
More Colors option summons the Colors dialog box with two tabs:
- The Standard tab provides 127 colors in a honeycomb style palette, 14 gray shades, black, and white.
- The Custom tab enables you to choose any color from the spectrum and later adjust the selected
color's luminosity with the slider on the right. You can even enter specific values of RGB and HSL to create a specific color. All these
combinations provide 16 million color choices!
- Select any color you want. As soon as the color is selected, you can see that the bullet color changes in the Bullet Style
previews (highlighted in red within Figure 6).
Figure 6: Color of the bullets changed within the Bullets and Numbering dialog box
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Now, click the OK button to apply the choices you have made to your selected bulleted text.
- Figure 7 shows the changed bullet size and color within the selected text placeholder (compare
Figures 1 and 7).
Figure 7: Bullet color and size customized on the slide