Category: PowerPoint Tips

Lorem Ipsum for Word and PowerPoint

Generating random text or Lorem Ipsum for Word and PowerPoint. Do you ever need filler or placeholder text for Word documents or PowerPoint text boxes? It’s quite handy when you want to plan the design and layout of your document…

Lorem Ipsum for Word and PowerPoint

Random text lorem ipsum

Generating Random Text for Word and PowerPoint

Generating random text or Lorem Ipsum for Word and PowerPoint. Do you ever need filler or placeholder text for Word documents or PowerPoint text boxes? It’s quite handy when you want to plan the design and layout of your document and check out different fonts and formatting options etc. Being an expert typist, I always used to type in double-encrypted blah, blah nonsense like this, “jkhj kefhkfh kjhjkhf hfshf jhkjhs” until I discovered random text functions. However, my typing speed has suffered, I was quite impressive typing “jkhj kefhkfh kjhjkhf” but now I’m back in the land of hunt and peck.

Random Text

shortcut for random text

To generate some random text, click on your document or on a PowerPoint text box, type in =RAND( ) and then press the ENTER key. Don’t forget the equals sign at the start and both the brackets at the end. You’ll get some paragraphs of random text. To control the number of paragraphs, enter a number inside the brackets. So, =RAND(5) gives you five paragraphs.

Lorem Ipsum

shortcut for lorem ipsum

If you have a classical bent then you may prefer some Latin, in which case type in =LOREM( ) and you get paragraphs of lorem ipsum.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Lovely!

sample of lorem ipsum
Movable type

What does the filler text “lorem ipsum” mean?

Ancient Roman

The History of Lorem Ipsum

PowerPoint Course

To see how to create great presentations, come along on our PowerPoint Introduction Course.

Call 020 7920 9500 for full details.

PowerPoint Introduction Course Outline

Related Posts

Cluttered PowerPoint Slides

Do you ever have to deal with those cluttered PowerPoint slides? You know; the ones crowded with layers of overlapping shapes and text boxes—and you need to change the one in the middle of the pile…

Cluttered PowerPoint Slides

Cluttered PowerPoint Slides

Cluttered PowerPoint Slides

Do you ever have to deal with those cluttered PowerPoint slides? You know; the ones crowded with layers of overlapping shapes and text boxes—and you need to change the one in the middle of the pile! You can’t see what you’re doing on these busy slides. Some people move all the other objects out of the way so that they can see the one they want. Then they make a few changes and then move them all back again in to, hopefully, their original positions.

There has to be a better way. You can use the keyboard shortcuts Tab and Shift+Tab to cycle forwards and backwards through the stack of objects until you can see that the selection handles are around the one you want. Or, you can press ALT+F10 and turn on the…

Selection Pane

ALT F10 Selection Pane

There’s a control to turn this on and off on the Home tab but it’s easily missed. The Selection Pane lists all the objects on your slide and you use it to identify and work on any object. Just click the Hide All button and then start clicking the eyes to the right to show selected objects, you’ll soon find the one you want. Make your changes, click the Show All button and you’re done. It’s so easy when you can see what you’re doing.

PowerPoint Selection Pane

PowerPoint uses its own fiendish naming scheme for all your objects. Name like Rectangle 5, TextBox 4 etc make perfect sense until you have to animate them and then you have real problems trying to identify specific objects. All you have to do is rename them according to their appearance or purpose and you’ll have a much easier time creating animations.

An object named something like “Black Heart” or “Red Star” is a lot easier to deal with than “Heart 4”. To rename an object, click the current name in the pane and replace the text.

There’s nothing wrong with having cluttered PowerPoint slides—you just need to know how to work with them easily.

PowerPoint Course

To see how to create great presentations, come along on our PowerPoint Introduction Course.

Call 020 7920 9500 for full details.

PowerPoint Introduction Course Outline

Related Posts