If Slidewise is telling you that there are fonts used in a shape and that isn’t lining up with what you see in PowerPoint - this article shows you why and how to make sense of it.
Let’s start with this example, which has 5 fonts listed in Slidewise. Alongside each font is a label indicating what it is used for. The labels correspond to the following:
- latin = Latin text
- ea = Asian text
- cs = Complex script
- bu = Bullet font
When you look in the font combobox in PowerPoint you can only see 1 font. This is because this dropdown PowerPoint only tells you about the primary font used, in this case, Times New Roman.
The primary font will be Latin text when the proofing language is set to a Latin-based language. If you change the proofing language for the object to Japanese however, then it would show the font specified for Asian text instead.
To see which fonts are selected for Latin, Asian and Complex scripts you need to click the more options button in the bottom right of the Font group in the Ribbon.
When parts of the text in a single text box use different fonts then the font combobox in PowerPoint will be blank.
For example, this text box contains Latin text characters in both Times New Roman and Calibri Light.
If you select part of the text that uses just 1 of the fonts, that font will appear in the combobox again.
Bullet fonts
The other reason fonts display in Slidewise but might not be visible in PowerPoint is when they are specified to be used for Bullets. These are indicated in Slidwise with a ‘bu’ label. Bullet fonts can be specified by list level, so you can have up to 9 different bullet fonts in a single text box.
You can sometimes find the bullet fonts by clicking the down angle on the Bullets button in the Paragraph group, then Bullets and Numbering > Customize…
This only shows which font is set directly in the text box for the list level you selected, so a little trial and error is required to track down which level is set to use which font. You can quickly add a bullet for each level and then cycle through checking the font set in the bullets and numbering to track down the font you need.
Slidewise does not yet show you which levels a font is set to be used for.
The object may also have a default list style specified. This sets what font will be used if a particular list level is used and there is no direct font specified. There is no way in PowerPoint to view or edit these default list styles.
Objects without any text
It is possible to set default fonts to use on objects that don’t yet have any text content. This most often occurs when you use the Set as default text box or Set as default shape options. This writes all of the properties of the shape into the Theme. Once you have done this, any shapes you create will have that font specified, even if they don’t contain any text.
We plan to add more capabilities in this area to future releases of Slidewise. In particular, we are investigating the following:
- A clean fonts feature that would remove fonts from any objects that don’t contain any text.
- An option to completely remove default list styles from individual objects
- Showing bullet levels for fonts in the Inspector
If you have any comments or suggestions on what we describe above, please leave a comment below.