How-To

How to Turn Off AutoFit in PowerPoint

By Adam Davidson

Updated October 3, 2023

PowerPoint automatically fits text to text boxes and placeholders. If you want to disable this feature, learn how to turn off AutoFit in PowerPoint here.

When you first create a blank presentation in PowerPoint, you’re usually presented with two text boxes—one for your title and one for your subtitle. If your title turns out to be quite long, however, it may be too large to fit in the text box.

This is where something magic happens. PowerPoint uses the AutoFit feature to resize your text and ensure that your title will fit inside the text box, no matter how long it is. Whilst this can often be useful, there are some good reasons why you might not want this to happen.

We’ll explain how to turn off AutoFit in PowerPoint and why you might want to do it in the first place below.

What is AutoFit in PowerPoint?

AutoFit is a feature in PowerPoint that automatically resizes your text when the current size of the text means that it will not fit within the current text box or placeholder. As you enter your text, it will remain at your selected size until the point where the text box is completely full.

With AutoFit on, instead of any additional text spilling out of your text box, the text is automatically resized. This ensures that all of the text remains inside the text box.

If you decide to delete some of the text in your text box, AutoFit will increase the size of the text again. It shouldn’t get any larger than the original size of your text.

Why Might You Want to Turn Off AutoFit?

This seems like a very useful feature at first glance. After all, why would you want to have text spilling out of your text boxes? However, AutoFit can make it all too easy to commit one of the cardinal sins of creating good PowerPoint presentations: adding too much text to your slides.

A small amount of text in a large font is easy for people to read, even if they’re a reasonable distance away from the presentation screen. Too much small text, however, becomes very hard to read. It makes your presentation difficult to follow even for people who are relatively close to the presentation screen.

The trouble with AutoFit is that you can easily get carried away with entering text. You may not really notice that your text is getting smaller and smaller the more text you add. With AutoFit turned off, you get a clear indication that you’ve added too much text because it will no longer fit inside your text box.

This is a hint that you either need to reduce the amount of text or spread it across more slides. Turning AutoFit off can stop you from adding too much text to your slides and ensure that they’re easy to read for everyone.

How to Access AutoFit Options in Your Slide

If you only want to turn off AutoFit for the text box or placeholder you’re currently working on, you can easily access the AutoFit options from within the slide.

To turn off AutoFit via the AutoFit options menu:

1. Click the text box or placeholder containing your text.
2. To the side of your text box, click the AutoFit Options button.
   
3. Select Stop Fitting Text To This Placeholder.
   
4. The text will return to its original size. This may cause the text to spill outside the placeholder.
   
5. If the text does continue outside the placeholder, you may want to consider using less text. You could also move some of it to another slide.
6. To turn AutoFit back on, click the AutoFit Options button again and select AutoFit Text To Placeholder.
   

How to Turn Off AutoFit via the Format Shape Options

You can also turn off AutoFit by using the Format Shape options for the placeholder.

To turn off AutoFit through the Format Shape options:

1. Right-click on the placeholder that you want to edit.
2. From the context menu, select Format Shape.
   
3. In the Format Shape pane, click Text Options.
   
4. Click the Text Box icon.
   
5. Select Do Not AutoFit.
   
6. To turn AutoFit back on, repeat steps 1-4 and select Shrink Text On Overflow.
   

How to Turn Off AutoFit for the Entire Presentation

If you don’t want to have to turn AutoFit off for every placeholder in your presentation, you can opt to turn the feature off for your entire presentation. This is done through the AutoCorrect options, which can be accessed in a couple of different ways.

To turn off AutoFit for your entire PowerPoint:

1. Click one of your placeholders.
2. Click the AutoFit Options icon to the side of the placeholder.
   
3. Select Control AutoCorrect Options.
   
4. You can also access the AutoCorrect Options by clicking the File menu.
   
5. Select Options at the very bottom of the left-hand menu.
   
6. Click the Proofing tab in the left-hand menu.
   
7. Click the AutoCorrect Options button.
   
8. Once you’re in the AutoCorrect Options, uncheck AutoFit Title Text To Placeholder and AutoFit Body Text To Placeholder.
   
9. Click OK.
   
10. AutoFit is now turned off by default throughout your document.
11. To turn it back on again, repeat steps 1-7 and recheck AutoFit Title Text To Placeholder and AutoFit Body Text To Placeholder.
    

Creating PowerPoint Presentations

Learning how to turn off AutoFit in PowerPoint ensures that your text will only change size when you want it to, not when PowerPoint decides that it should. It can help you to ensure that you don’t add too much text to your slides or make the font too small to be readable.

With PowerPoint presentations, the mantra of ‘less is more’ is always a good rule of thumb. It applies equally to the amount of text and the number of fancy animations and transitions you want to add.

Want to customize your presentation further? You can learn how to remove animations from your PowerPoint presentation if you’ve forgotten to follow the ‘less is more’ rule. You can learn how to make all images the same size in PowerPoint to give your presentation a more uniform look.

Or you might want to learn how to embed fonts in PowerPoint to help you avoid using the same fonts over and over again.