Customizing Line Spacing in Lists

Here's a simple and effective way to increase the readability of bullets in PowerPoint. The trick is to adjust the line spacing for each list item so that the line spacing is tighter than the spacing between list items.

If you're following along, I'm working inĀ Lesson Files > Chapter_02 > SlideMaster_LineSpacing.pptx.

Take a look at the following two lists. In the first list, we used PowerPoint's default line spacing settings. For the second list, we tightened the line spacing for each bulleted item.

What a difference, right? The bulleted items are better grouped making them easier to read. Let's see how to do it.

Customizing the Line Spacing Options

  1. Go to View > Slide Masters
  2. Create an ordered or unordered list
  3. Delete all sub-levels other than the first level
  4. Click the text box placeholder for the bullets to select all
  5. Go to Home > Line Spacing > Line Spacing Options...
  6. Make the following updates to Indentation, Spacing Before, Line Spacing and At:
  7. Click OK

That's all there is to it.

Depending on the size of the text and the fonts used, you might find it helpful to modify the Spacing Before and the Multiple values. Use those settings as starting points and modify from there.

What's next?

In the next lesson we'll look at renaming and applying our new layouts.

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