How to Rotate Text and Change Text Direction in Microsoft PowerPoint?

PowerPoint is the most powerful and useful app for creating presentation slides. You can easily create any type of presentation either from the scratch or using one of the default templates. However, most of us use the default horizontal text direction while adding text content in the slides. Do you know that you can rotate text and change the direction? In this article, we will explain how you can do that.

Text Direction in Microsoft PowerPoint

Using traditional horizontal text occupy large space especially when you have large amount of text content in a single slide. The best option is to use headings in vertical direction to save space. Similarly, there are situations you need to point out some text on an image or shape. In this case, you can rotate the text to certain angle and position it exactly where you want to display.

There are multiple ways to rotate text in PowerPoint:

• Using the object rotator
• Creating vertical text boxes
• Rotate and flip objects
• Rotate text direction to desired angle

You can use these options depending upon the need.

1. Using Object Rotator

Whether you insert a text or an image, PowerPoint will show draggers around the object. You can anytime select the object to see the draggers appear around all the sides. In addition, you can also see a rotator pivoted to the top of the object. You can simply hold the rotator and move to the direction you want to change the text angle.

If you are struggling to exactly align the text 90 degrees vertical, we recommend enabling the gridlines in PowerPoint. Go to “View” menu and enable “Gridlines” option under “Show” group. This will help you to see the background grid to align the objects perfectly.

2. Creating Vertical Text Boxes

If you do not want to rotate manually rotate the text, PowerPoint has plenty of menu options to quickly create text with desired angle. The easy option for creating vertical text boxes is to use the menu item. Go to “Insert” menu and click “Text Box” in the ribbon. Now, select “Vertical Text Box” option and draw the text box anywhere on your slide. This will automatically create a box where you can enter text to display in vertical direction.

Note: You can also create a vertical text box from “Basic Shapes” available under “Insert > Shapes” menu.

3. Rotate and Flip Text Objects

The next option is to rotate an existing horizontal or vertical text box. First, select the text box you want to rotate and go to “Home” menu. Click on “Arrange” option available under “Drawing” group. This will show you a dropdown menu and hover over “Rotate” menu from the list. You can select one of the preset options to rotate the selected text box to rotate 90 degrees left/right or flip the text box in horizontal/vertical directions.

Clicking on “More Rotation Options…” menu will open the “Format Shape” settings in PowerPoint. We will explain this later in this article.

4. Rotate Text Direction to Preset Value

If you have noticed, all the above methods actually rotate the text box as a whole and not the text inside the box. The correct ways to change the text direction in PowerPoint is to use “Text Direction” option available under “Home” menu (under “Paragraph” group). This helps to rotate the text to one of the preset styles like staked, horizontal or vertical. You can hover on the menu items to see the selected text box shows live preview. Selecting “More Options…” from the menu also will open the “Format Shape” settings where you can select custom text direction.

The good part with the latest Microsoft 365 version of PowerPoint is that you can use the search box to find the relevant menu items instead of searching in the ribbon. For example, if you want to find “Text direction” menu, simply type in the search box and select the desired option without going to the actual menu.

5. Use Format Shape for Setting Custom Text Direction

The last option is to use the “Format Shape” settings in PowerPoint to set custom rotation angle for your text box. As mentioned above, you can access format shape settings by clicking on “More Options” from “Home > Arrange > Rotate” or from “Home > Text Direction” menu items. This will open the settings in the right sidebar which has two sections – Shape Options and Text Options.

Go to “Shape Options” and click the “Size” heading to expand the available settings. Make sure you have selected the correct text box and enter the custom angle in the “Rotation” box. In this way, you can arrange the text box to any custom direction with precise angle.

You can also change the text direction from either shape or text options section. Go to “Shape Options” and move down to see “Text Box” settings. Or go to “Text Options” where you will only see “Text Box” settings. Click the “Text direction” dropdown and select one of the preset values (same as explained in method 4 above).