In PowerPoint, add bullets to a list of text items to emphasize key points of information. For a list to be most effective, you'll keep it moderate in length, and the list items will be brief and scannable.

Another aspect of lists concerns their formatting—font size, line spacing, margins, indentation of bullets and text, and bullet type. As you create bulleted lists, think of their effectiveness in terms of both what they say and how they look.

Let's go over some list basics. All the content layouts in PowerPoint include bulleted list formatting. To remove the bullets or add them, you select the content placeholder and click “Bullets” on the “Home” tab. To add a new item and drop down another level, press “Enter” and click “Increase List Level,” or press “Enter + Tab.” To move an item up one level, place the insertion point at the start of the text and click “Decrease List Level,” or press “Shift + Tab.”

Be careful in your use of text levels. For example, this agenda list with first- and second-level items is much easier for an audience to take in if you limit it to the top-level points, as in the list here.

As you create a list, you'll want to work with how it looks. If you want a certain theme, apply it early on so you know what its list styles look like. Then make other adjustments.

To learn more, see the other movies in this course called “Change font size, line spacing, and indentation” and “Change list formatting on the slide master.”

UP NEXT: Change font size, line spacing, and indentation.