Under the Home tab the Bullet function is the first button located in the Paragraph box. To create a bulleted list you would select the Bullet button and a bullet point appears and both the bullet and text is indented.

To change the bullets for your list, first click on the down arrow next to the bullet button to view the drop down menu. On the drop down menu is listed:

• Recently Used Bullets


• Bullet Library


• Document Bullets


• Change List Level


• Define New Bullet

Bullet Library shows the bullets that are available to use. To choose a bullet from the library, click on it. This can be done before typing your bulleted list or after by highlighting your list before choosing the new bullet.

Selecting Define New Bullet opens up the dialogue box. Under Bullet Character are Symbol, Picture and Font to choose from. Below that are Alignment and then the Preview box which shows what your new bullet will look like.

Selecting Symbol opens the Symbol window showing how each character of the font looks when selected from the drop down menu. To select a character, click on the character then click Okay. Back at the Define New Bullet window you can see the preview of your bullet. Choosing Font opens the Font dialogue box where you can now change the color of your bullet, size; add an effect like drop shadow, and as you make each change you will be able to see how it looks in the Preview window.

The last option in the Bullet Character section is Picture. Selecting Picture opens the Picture Bullet window showing all the picture bullets available with Word. There is a Search box at the top to help you find what you are looking for, maybe squares or nature images. An option to show images from Office online is available or you can import an image of your own by selecting the Import button at the bottom and then choosing your image.

The last function in the Bullet dialogue box is Change List Level. This would be used if you wanted to change the size of the indent(s) in your bulleted list. First selected your bulleted list or the part you would like to indent more or less than it is. Once selected click on the down arrow on the Bullet button and move your cursor to the Change List Level option, which opens a drop down menu showing all the options of indents you can choose from. The default bullets that will first show are circles and squares, but you can change that after you choose your list level by going back to the Bullet Library where you can then choose the bullet to use.

Stepping back to the Symbol window, you can choose fonts such as wing dings or web dings which gives a large selection on shapes and symbols to use. So depending on the list you are bulleting, you could choose a star, heart, spider, sale tag, diamond, etc. You can see from the image that I created a number of new bullets to add to my library. Now, while it is good to draw attention to your bulleted list, be careful not to take the attention away from the points of your list by having too many different bullet styles and colors -- just a little can go a long way!