Christian Heilmann

Quick tip: stop Powerpoint from breaking words into a new line

Wednesday, October 28th, 2015 at 6:03 pm

With my talk decks needing more re-use in the Windows/Microsoft community, I am trying to use Powerpoint more and wean myself off the beauty of Keynote (and its random crashes – yes, all software sucks).

One thing I realised today is that Powerpoint thinks it is sensible to break words anywhere to go to a new line, not by word, or even syllable, but by character:

default line break setting
Words are broken into new lines at any character, which makes alignment a not enjoyable game of “find the breakpoint”

This is the preset! To get rid of it, you don’t need to summon the dark lord, but all you need to do is to unset the default. You can find this in:

Format ➜ Paragraph ➜ Line Breaks and Alignment ➜ uncheck: “Allow Latin text to wrap in the middle of a word”

Here’s a recording to show the difference:

fixed line break setting
By unsetting the preset you can do what you want – line breaks are now only possible after full words

Why this would be a preset is beyond me. Now I can breathe freely again.

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