Indents and tab stops help you align text on a slide. For numbered and bulleted lists, preset indents exist for five levels of bullets or numbers and body text. When you type plain paragraphs (not using bullets or numbers), an initial indent and default tab stops help you indent the text. You can change and add to indent and tab stop positions.
Indents and tab stops appear on the horizontal ruler. When you display a new slide and either click the text area in a placeholder or click a text box you've added, the default indents and tab stops appear.
First-line indent marker
This shows the position of the first line of a paragraph, or, in a bulleted or numbered list, the position of the bullet or number for an item in the list.
Left indent
marker
This shows the position of the second line of a paragraph, or for a bulleted or numbered list, the indent of the text next to the bullet or number.
Default
tab stops
These appear as small gray markers underneath the numbers on the ruler. You can drag these to new positions. Use them for text that's not in a bulleted or numbered list.
Customized tab stops
Further customize your tap stops by setting left 
,
right 
,
center 
,
or decimal 
tab stops.
A typical example of changing an indent is when you want to adjust the space between a bullet in a list and the text it goes with — moving the first-line indent and left indent either closer together or farther apart. For a special tab stop, you might have numerical data in a list that you want to line up by the decimal point. Use the decimal tab to do this.