How to Back Up Bullet Points in PowerPoint
By Shawn McClain
When you create PowerPoint slides for your business, you will often use bulleted lists to impart text-based information to the clients, partners or employees who will be viewing your slide show. These bulleted lists are broken down into levels, much like an outline, creating a visual cue that lets readers know the relationship between one bullet point and the rest of the points on the slide. If you set the level for a single point, and then decide to back it up one or more levels, PowerPoint 2010 gives you two different ways to complete the task.
Decrease List Level
Click on the slide that contains the text you want to alter, then click anywhere on the bullet point that you want to back up.
Click the "Home" tab and locate the "Paragraph" area of the ribbon.
Click "Decrease List Level" to back up the bullet point one level. Press this button multiple times to move back multiple levels.
Shift and Tab
Click on the PowerPoint slide where you want to change the level of a single bullet point.
Click anywhere on the bullet point to activate the text box, then click the space just in front of the first word in the bullet point to place the cursor between the word and the actual bullet point symbol.
Hold down the "Shift" key and press "Tab" to back up the bullet point by one level. Repeat this process to back it up further.
Tips
To move a bullet point forward one level, just click the "Increase List Level" button or press the "Tab" key without holding "Shift," depending on the method you chose to use.
References
Writer Bio
Shawn McClain has spent over 15 years as a journalist covering technology, business, culture and the arts. He has published numerous articles in both national and local publications, and online at various websites. He is currently pursuing his master's degree in journalism at Clarion University.