In this In this article by J.J. Sylvia IV, author of the book Mastering Prezi for Business Presentations - Second Edition, we will see how to edit a figure and to style symbols. Also we will see the Grouping feature and brief introduction of the Prezi text editor.

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)

Editing lines

When editing lines or arrows, you can change them from being straight to curved by dragging the center point in any direction:

This is extremely useful when creating the line drawings we saw earlier. It's also useful to get arrows pointing at various objects on your canvas:

Styled symbols

If you're on a tight deadline, or trying to create drawings with shapes simply isn't for you, then the styles available in Prezi may be of more interest to you. These are common symbols that Prezi has created in a few different styles that can be easily inserted into any of your presentations. You can select these from the same Symbols & shapes… option from the Insert menu where we found the symbols. You'll see several different styles to choose from on the right-hand side of your screen.

Each of these categories has similar symbols, but styled differently. There is a wide variety of symbols available ranging from people to social media logos. You can pick a style that best matches your theme or the atmosphere you've created for your presentation.

Instead of creating your own person from shapes, you can select from a variety of people symbols available:

Although these symbols can be very handy, you should be aware that you can't edit them as part of your presentation. If you decide to use one, note that it will work as it is—there are no new hairstyles for these symbols.

Highlighter

The highlighter tool is extremely useful for pointing out key pieces of information such as an interesting fact. To use it, navigate to the Insert menu and select the Highlighter option. Then, just drag the cursor across the text you'd like to highlight. Once you've done this, the highlighter marks become objects in their own right, so you can click on them to change their size or position just as you would do for a shape.

To change the color of your highlighter, you will need to go into the Theme Wizard and edit the RGB values. We'll cover how to do this later when we discuss branding.

Grouping

Grouping is a great feature that allows you to move or edit several different elements of your presentation at once. This can be especially useful if you're trying to reorganize the layout of your Prezi after it's been created, or to add animations to several elements at once. Let's go back to the drawing we created earlier to see how this might work:

The first way to group items is to hold down the Ctrl key (Command on Mac OS) and to left-click on each element you want to group individually. In this case, I need to click on each individual line that makes up the flat top hair in the preceding image. This might be necessary if I only want to group the hair, for example:

Another method for grouping is to hold down the Shift key while dragging your mouse to select multiple items at once. In the preceding screenshot, I've selected my entire person at once. Now, I can easily rotate, resize, or move the entire person at once, without having to move each individual line or shape.

If you select a group of objects, move them, and then realize that a piece is missing because it didn't get selected, just press the Ctrl+Z (Command+Z on Mac OS) keys on your keyboard to undo the move. Then, broaden your selection and try again. Alternatively, you can hold down the Shift key and simply click on the piece you missed to add it to the group.

If we want to keep these elements grouped together instead of having to reselect them each time we decide to make a change, we can click on the Group button that appears with this change. Now these items will stay grouped unless we click on the new Ungroup button, now located in the same place as the Group button previously was:

You can also use frames to group material together. If you already created frames as part of your layout, this might make the grouping process even easier.

Prezi text editor

Over the years, the Prezi text editor has evolved to be quite robust, and it's now possible to easily do all of your text editing directly within Prezi.

Spell checker

When you spell something incorrectly, Prezi will underline the word it doesn't recognize with a red line. This is just as you would see it in Microsoft Word or any other text editor.

To correct the word, simply right-click on it (or Command + Click on Mac OS) and select the word you meant to type from the suggestions, as shown in the following screenshot:

The text drag-apart feature

So a colleague of yours has just e-mailed you the text that they want to appear in the Prezi you're designing for them? That's great news as it'll help you understand the flow of the presentation. What's frustrating, though, is that you'll have to copy and paste every single line or paragraph across to put it in the right place on your canvas.

At least, that used to be the case before Prezi introduced the drag-apart feature in the text editor. This means you can now easily drag a selection of text anywhere on your canvas without having to rely on the copy and paste options. Let's see how we can easily change the text we spellchecked previously, as shown in the following screenshot:

In order to drag your text apart, simply highlight the area you require, hold the mouse button down, and then drag the text anywhere on your canvas.

Once you have separated your text, you can then edit the separate parts as you would edit any other individual object on your canvas. In this example, we can change the size of the company name and leave the other text as it is, which we couldn't do within a single textbox:

Building Prezis for colleagues

If you've kindly offered to build a Prezi for one of your colleagues, ask them to supply the text for it in Word format. You'll be able to run a spellcheck on it from there before you copy and paste it into Prezi. Any bad spellings you miss will also get highlighted on your Prezi canvas but it's good to use both options as a safety net.

Font colors

Other than dragging text apart to make it stand out more on its own, you might want to highlight certain words so that they jump out at your audience even more.

The great news is that you can now highlight individual lines of text or single words and change their color. To do so, just highlight a word by clicking and dragging your mouse across it. Then, click on the color picker at the top of the textbox to see the color menu, as shown in the following screenshot:

Select any of the colors available in the palette to change the color of that piece of text. Nothing else in the textbox will be affected apart from the text you have selected. This gives you much greater freedom to use colored text in your Prezi design, and doesn't leave you restricted as in older versions of the software.

Choose the right color

To make good use of this feature, we recommend that you use a color that completely contrasts to the rest of your design. For example, if your design and corporate colors are blue, we suggest you use red or purple to highlight key words. Also, once you pick a color, stick to it throughout the presentation so that your audience knows when they see a key piece of information.

Bullet points and indents

Bullets and indents make it much easier to put together your business presentations and helps to give the audience some short, simple information as text in the same format they're used to seeing in other presentations. This can be done by simply selecting the main body of text and clicking on the bullet point icon at the top of the textbox.

This is a really simple feature, but a useful one nonetheless. We'd obviously like to point out that too much text on any presentation is a bad thing. Keep it short and to the point.

Also, remember that too many bullets can kill a presentation.

Summary

In this article, we discussed the basic mechanics of Prezi. Learning to combine these tools in creative ways will help you move from a Prezi novice to master. Shapes can be used creatively to create content and drawings, and can be grouped together for easy movement and editing. Prezi also features basic text editing which are explained in this article.

Resources for Article:

Further resources on this subject:

• Turning your PowerPoint into a Prezi [Article]
• The Fastest Way to Go from an Idea to a Prezi [Article]
• Using Prezi - The Online Presentation Software Tool [Article]