How to Add Text & Bullet Points in Google Slides Presentations (2023)

You have to add text and bullet points to Google Slides to add your content. But if you've never worked with Google Slides before (or if it's been a long time since you did), maybe you're not quite sure what to do.

Don't worry. We can help.

Text and bullet points are important. Adding text to your presentation allows you to share information with your audience. Bullet points break up the text and add an element of interest to your slides.

If you have a presentation due soon, but aren't sure how to work with text or bullets, this tutorial will explain exactly what you need to do. We'll show you the basics of how to add text and bullet points to your Google Slides presentation. We'll also cover some text formatting basics and explore several different types of bullets available in Google Slides.

Also, if you need a quick primer on working with Google Slides, you may want to read through our beginner's guide:

• How to Use Google Slides in 2020 (Quick Start Guide)Rebecca Tarnopol29 Jul 2020

Otherwise, let's get jump into today's tutorial:

How to Add Text and Bullet Points in Google Slides (Screencast)

For a quick look at how to add text and bullet points into your Google Slides presentation, watch the screencast below.

For more detailed information about adding text and bullets to Google Slides presentations, review written steps in this tutorial.

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1. How to Add Text to a Google Slides Presentation

You're ready to create your Google Slides presentation. You need to add text to the slides and format that text once you've added it. These steps will take you through the process:

Step 1. Insert Text

Open Google Drive. Start by opening the Google Slides presentation you want to work with:

Add a new slide to the presentation by clicking the down arrow next to the plus symbol in the left corner of the screen. Various slide layout options display:

Click a slide layout to select it. For this example, I select the Blank layout. A new blank slide appears in the presentation:

Since we used a blank slide, we need to add a text box to it before we can add text. Click the Textbox icon in the toolbar (it looks like the letter T in a box). Then, click anywhere in the blank slide. The cursor should look like a cross hair:

Hold and drag the cursor diagonally to create a text box on your slide. A text box appears outlined in blue.

When the text box has been drawn, click in it and begin typing your text:

As you can see, we've added some text to the text box. But the text isn't formatted yet.

Next, we'll take a look at how to format your text.

Step 2. Format Your Text

In this step, we'll look at three ways that you can format your text:

• change the font type and size
• change the vertical and horizontal text alignment
• change font attributes

To begin formatting text in Google Slides, drag your cursor over the text to select it:

The selected text should appear to be highlighted in blue.

Change Font Type and Size

Let's start by learning how to change the font type and size of the selected text. To change the font type, click the arrow to the right of the Font tool in the toolbar. A drop-down menu listing various fonts displays:

Click on a font to apply it to the selected text. Now you're ready to change the size of your text.

First, make sure your text is still selected. Next, click on the arrow to the right of the Font Size tool in the toolbar. A drop-down menu appears showing various font sizes:

Click a font size to apply it to your selected text. Next, let's take a look at how to change vertical and horizontal text alignment.

Note: In the example above, I've changed the font to 30 pt Verdana.

Change Text Alignment

Click on the text box to select it. A blue outline should appear around your text box.

If you cannot see the Text Alignment icon, click the More button. You'll see a drop-down toolbar:

Click the arrow to the right of the Text Alignment icon to see the various alignment options. Click on an alignment option to apply it to the text. In the example below, we've centered the text horizontally and vertically:

Now that we've centered the text on the Google Slide, we're ready to add some bold and italics to it.

Change Font Attributes

To add font attributes to the various parts of your text, start by selecting those parts of the text you want to change. If you cannot see the Font Attributes icons, click the More button. You'll see the drop-down toolbar:

The drop-down toolbar includes the Bold (B), Italics (I), and Underline (U) font attributes. Click on a font attribute to apply it to the selected text. In the illustration below, we've applied the Italics attribute to the words "Travel and tourism" and the Bold attribute to the words "several billion US dollars:"

Note: Font attributes are a great way to break up text and add interest to a slide. They can also add emphasis to a specific word or words.

Now that we've changed some font attributes on the Google Slide, let's look at adding a hyperlink to our text. Hyperlinks are particularly helpful in webinars and other online presentations where the audience can click on the link to go to a related URL.

Step 3. Add Hyperlinks

To add a hyperlink to your Google Slides presentation, highlight the text where you want to insert the hyperlink:

If you cannot see the Hyperlink icon, click the More button. From the drop-down tool bar, click on the Hyperlink icon to open the dialog box:

In the dialog box, type the URL you wish to link to in the Link field. Click the Apply button when you're done. Here is the completed slide with a hyperlink added:

As you can see, the hyperlinked text is colored and underlined so that the reader knows that there is a hyperlink in the text.

Now it's time to learn how to delete text.

Step 4. Delete Text

There are basically two ways to delete text in a Google Slides presentation:

1. delete selected text
2. delete an entire text box

First, let's look at how to delete selected text. Start by highlighting the text you wish to delete:

Click Edit > Cut to remove the selected text. The text is deleted. In this case, we deleted the words, "each day."

Now, to delete the entire text box, click on it. It should be outlined in blue:

Right-click to bring up the sub-menu:

Click the Cut option. The text box is deleted from the slide.

Note: Without a text box on the slide, you cannot add text to it. To add text to this slide, you will have to re-add a text box.

2. How to Add Bullets to a Google Slides Presentation

Bullets are helpful in a Google Slides presentation for defining a list. They can break up large chunks of text and add visual interest. Numbered lists can also be used to indicate an order to a list of items.

In this section, we'll look at how to create three types of lists:

1. bulleted lists
2. numbered lists
3. lists with special characters

We'll take a look at each type separately, starting with bulleted lists.

Add a Bulleted List

Now let's learn how to put bullet points in Google Slides. First, open the slide with the text you wish to convert to a bulleted list. Select (highlight) the text you want to be bulleted:

If you cannot see the Bulleted list icon, click the More button:

Click the Bulleted list icon on the drop-down toolbar to apply bullets to the selected text. Your slide should look something like this:

Add a Numbered List

The process for adding a numbered list is nearly the same as the process for adding a bulleted list. Start by selecting the text you want to be bulleted.

If you cannot see the Numbered list icon, click the More button. The Numbered list icon is to the immediate left of the Bulleted list icon.

Click the Numbered list icon to apply it to your selected text. Your slide should look something like this:

You've now learned how to put bullet points in Google Slides. You've added both regular bullets and numbered bullets.

Note: When adding numbered lists to a Google Slide, remember to consider the order of the bulleted items carefully. Because there are numbers your audience may believe that there is an order to the listed items.

However, sometimes you might want to create a bulleted list with unusual characters. Let's explore how to do that in Google Slides next.

Add a List With Special Characters

The process for adding a list with special characters to a Google Slides presentation is nearly the same as the process for adding any other type of bullets. Start by selecting the text you want to be bulleted.

If you cannot see the icon, click the More button. Click the arrow to the right of the Bulleted list icon to display the various bullet options:

As you can see, there are a wide variety of bullet options ranging from circles to check boxes to arrows. For this example, I select check boxes. The resulting Google Slide appears below:

Note: A bulleted list with check boxes could be used as a checklist or to do list.

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Conclusion

It's not hard to work with text and bullet points in a Google Slides presentation once you know what to do. In this tutorial, we've covered the basics of adding both text and bullets to Google Slides.

If you experiment a little, you'll find that there are many ways to use text and bullet points to enhance the appearance of your presentation. Learn more in our quick start guide to Google Slidesor jump into our comprehensiveGoogle Slides tutorial series.

You may also wish tobrowse through ourbest Google Slides templates, if you need a quick design jumpstart to your next presentation.