Finding and Replacing Words or Phrases

If you need to quickly find every occurrence of a certain word or phrase within your presentation or on even just one slide, you will find the commands you need on the Home tab. By typing the word or phrase you want to find, you can have PowerPoint 2007 search the entire presentation and highlight every occurrence of the word or phrase it finds. You can easily quit the process by clicking the Close button whenever you want.

You can locate and change specific text in a presentation by using the buttons in the Editing group on the Home tab to do the following:

1. Click Find to locate each occurrence of a word, part of a word, or a phrase. In the Find dialog box, you enter the text, and then click Find Next. You can specify whether PowerPoint should locate matches with the exact capitalization or case that is, if you specify person, PowerPoint will not locate Person and whether it should locate matches for the entire text that is, if you specify person, PowerPoint will not locate personal.
2. Click Replace to locate each occurrence of a word, part of a word, or a phrase and replace it with something else. In the Replace dialog box, you enter the text you want to find and what you want to replace it with, click Find Next, and then click Replace to replace the found occurrence or Replace All to replace all occurrences. Again, you can specify whether to match capitalization and whole words.
3. In the Replace list, click Replace Fonts to find and replace a font in a presentation. In the Replace Font dialog box, you specify the font you want to change and the font you want PowerPoint to replace it with.
4. Click a text placeholder on a slide, click Select in the Editing group, and then click Select All to select all the text in that placeholder. If you select the placeholder itself, clicking Select and then Select All adds all the other objects on that slide to the selection. You can then work with all the objects as a unit. Clicking Select and then Selection Pane displays the Selection And Visibility task pane, where you can specify whether particular objects should be displayed or hidden.

You might want to hide an object if you are using the slide in similar presentations for two different audiences, one of which needs more detail than the other.

To find and replace words and phrases, follow these steps:

1. Click Find in the Editing group and then type the text you are seeking in the Find What box.
2. Select the Match Case check box if you want an exact match between capitalized and lowercase letters, and select the Find Whole Words Only check box to ignore words that include only a portion of the text you are seeking.
3. Click Find Next.

To replace text, do this:

1. Click Replace in the Editing group and then type the text you are seeking in the Find What box.
2. Select the Match Case check box if you want an exact match between capitalized and lowercase letters, and select the Find Whole Words Only check box if you want to ignore words that include only a portion of the text you are seeking.
3. Type the replacement text in the Replace With box and then click Find Next to find the next occurrence of the word you are seeking.
4. Click Replace and then click Find Next if you want to replace the word and move to the next occurrence. Alternatively, click Replace All if you want PowerPoint 2007 to find and replace all occurrences of the word.
5. Click Close.

A cool tool that is easy to find and use in PowerPoint 2007 is the Character Spacing button. This lets you tighten or loosen text in a single word, sentence, or paragraph in order to make it fit perfectly in a text box. When you cannot resize a text box on your slide and need to just squeeze in a few letters, for example, this is the button to use. Here is how to work with character spacing:

1. Highlight the text for which you want to change the spacing and then click the Character Spacing button in the Font group on the Home tab. (The button displays AV with a double-headed arrow.)
   
   
    
2. Click a spacing option, and you are done. You can also click More Spacing for customized choices. Click OK when you have customized character spacing to your satisfaction.