Creative Bullet Lists In Pages

You don't have to settle for little round black dots as bullets in Pages. You can use a variety of different symbols and colors, as well as choosing any character. You can also use multiple characters and symbols or emoji for bullets. Images can also be used as bullets, making the possibilities limitless.
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Video Transcript

So let's say you want to create a bullet list in Pages. Here I've got a list and I've selected the items. To create a bullet list what I would do is go to Format and then down in Format there's Bullets & Lists and I can select a type. So I'm going to choose a basic bullet style. Then I get these little bullets next to it. Not very exciting. There are some other options. For instance, you notice I've got some different bullets here. I can do dashes. I can do numbers. Things like that. 
But if you want to customize you can create some interesting types of bullets lists. The actual list of the different types are here. So you can do No Bullets, Text Bullets, Image Bullets, and Numbers. So let's look at different types of Text Bullets and Image Bullets.
Text are the easiest to create. That's what you get here when you choose the standard ones. You notice here it says Bullet and then there's the type of bullet. You can actually choose from a variety including little things like little stars. You can choose a checkmark or an arrow. Something like that. You can even change the color. So you can make them colorful and you can increase the size. So you can make them bigger or smaller. 
But this field here is actually editable. You can type whatever you want in there. For instance if I wanted to use a plus symbol as a bullet I could just type +. Them I'm going to hit Tab to delete that field and you can see it updates it there. Let's change the color to black so it's easier to see. I can even use multiple characters. So I want to do plus plus. You can see I've got those two ++. So I can do things like, you know, include a couple of colons or two colons and a greater than symbol. That kind of thing. I can create whatever it is I want here to be a bullet.
Now since you can put any character you want in there you can use symbols as well. So I'm going to use the emoji viewer here. I'm going to do Control, Command, and space to bring that up. Now I get to choose things. I can choose a smiley face and put that in. You can see that right in there. I could choose all sorts of different things. I can even use the search field to look something up. So I can look up Bullet to see what's available there. There's a few things that aren't available otherwise. I can do arrows. I can do, you know, anything I want to bring up some sort of symbol there. I can then go ahead and use these symbols as the bullet rather than something standard. So you can have a lot of fun with bullets. You don't have to settle for the standard.
You also can go to Image Bullets. When you switch to Image Bullets you can choose from a bunch of images in here. So I can choose some of these ones that are just in here by default. Some of these are in here because I've used them before. There's a variety of different ones. These are actual images. Here's a little pin one that's kind of neat. As you saw there, there's was actually one that was not standard. It was a custom image. You can choose Custom Image here. I can select this little apple. Now I can actually have a photo, is what it is, right there. So I can use that. I can increase the size if I want to make it bigger. Of course if it overlaps lines it's not going to look good. So, you know, perhaps I want to actually increase the size of these lines. 
But you can use any bullet type you want for anything. You can select it for a specific line. So I can make these two lines some different image than the other lines. Just select the lines and change the bullet image that you want there. So you can have all sorts of fun using different characters, different emoji and symbols. Coloring them. Changing their size or bringing in your own custom image clipart or a photo or anything you want in to make interesting bullet lists in Pages.

Comments: 11 Comments

    Ron
    7 years ago

    Very cool tip.

    Linda Lessard DesGroseilliers
    7 years ago

    Great info! I use Pages all of the time and find the bullets boring. I never knew they could be changed. Thanks for the information!

    Andrea Grasselli
    7 years ago

    Thank you Gary, very useful!

    Ruth Burig
    7 years ago

    Hi Gary...this is actually a cool tip that I understand and will use! 👍

    Robert Aucoin
    7 years ago

    Great video....Very practical advice.
    Keep feeding us with ideas

    Jimmy
    7 years ago

    Thanks for this very useful tip.

    dally messenger
    7 years ago

    One just doesn't know what treasures one has until Gary says to himself- " I don't think many would know about this". Good stuff!

    dally messenger
    7 years ago

    One just doesn't know what treasures one has in Pages until Gary says to himself- " I don't think many would know about this". Good stuff!

    Joan M
    7 years ago

    Thanks again Gary! Great examples of the many ways to customize bullets. Can you customize then add the bullet characteristics to paragraph style?

    Tony Staples
    7 years ago

    Gary, I just love your tips & tricks. Keep them coming.

    7 years ago

    Joan: You wouldn't add custom bullets to paragraph styles -- you add them to bullet styles. If you look at the bullet selection menu in the sidebar you can see it works like the character styles feature. There is a + button at the top and you can add the selected style as a new bullet style.

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