PowerPoint Tip – Vertical Text
Sometimes on a diagram or graph you will need to make text go vertical instead of the default horizontal direction. Let’s look at how you can do that. There would be two scenarios that you might have. First, you want to have simple text go vertical instead of horizontal – it can up or down. The easiest way to accomplish this is to first create a text box with your text in it (click Insert -> Text Box and type in the text). Then, you can use the green rotation handle located above the text box to rotate the entire box. Grab it with your mouse and drag it around either direction until the text looks like you want it to. If you want to restrict your rotation to increments of 15 degrees (so you can have it perfectly vertical, or even at a perfect 45 degree angle), hold the Shift key down while you drag the rotation handle. An alternate method is to right-click on the text box and select Format Text Box from the menu that pops up. In the Format Text Box dialog box, click on the Size tab. You can then set the rotation setting to an exact degree of rotation (they measure in a clockwise direction, so text going vertically up is 270 degrees rotated). The second scenario is when you want to rotate text inside a shape. If you want only the text rotated but the shape to stay the same, use the above method to add a separate text box and rotate it outside the shape. Then drag the text on to the shape. If you want the text and shape to rotate together, right-click on the shape and select Add Text from the menu that pops up. This allows you to add text in the shape that is now connected to the shape. Then you can use the green rotation handle for the shape to rotate the combination of text and shape together (same directions as described above).