P o w e r p o i n t

1. Powerpoint

2. Introducing Powerpoint • Powerpoint is the presentation tool in the Microsoft Office suite. • Some features will be familiar from Word, Excel and so on. • Other features are very different. • If you are taking a powerpoint presentation elsewhere, Powerpoint 4 is the most common version. However, Powerpoint 97 gives more possibilities for animation. • Although some say you can take it too far.

3. When you open Powerpoint, you are presented with a dialogue box. Blank Presentation lets you design a presentation from scratch. AutoContent Wizard takes you through the process of creating a presentation. Template gives you a standard layout amd appearance to your slides. Starting a new presentation

4. Designing the First Slide • Whenever you add a new slide to your presentation, you are given a choice of “Autolayouts”. • You can change the arrangement afterwards, but to keep things simple, select the one which is closest to what you intend. • PowerPoint provides layouts tailored for text with graphs, charts, tables and clip art.

5. Filling In the Blanks • When the PowerPoint main window appears, you will see your blank slide with empty text boxes (and, depending on the “Autolayout”, clip art boxes etc) waiting to be filled in. Each box has a prompt, e.g. “Click to add text”. • When you click on an empty text box, the prompt disappears, and you can now enter your text. • All text in PowerPoint is contained in text boxes.

6. Manipulating Text Boxes • To change the dimensions of a text box, select it by clicking and then drag the resize handles which will appear on the edges and corners. • To duplicate a text box, keep the CTRL key depressed whilst dragging it to a new location. • For more complicated text arrangements (e.g. to make it flow around an inserted object), use two overlapping text boxes (remove bullets by releasing the “Bullet On/Off” toolbar button).

7. Views • The View menu lets you see your slide show in different ways • You can use the Slide Sorter to reorganise your show. • Outline view lets you see your presentation as a whole. • Notes page lets you create speaker notes for each slide. • Slide Show lets you see your presentation as it will appear.

8. The Toolbars • Through View | “Toolbars...” you can select which toolbars to display. The most useful are “Standard”, “Formatting”, “Drawing” and “Animation effects”). • Most functions on these toolbars are fairly familiar from Word, but note particularly buttons to: • Insert tables/Excel sheets/graphs/charts/clip art • Increase/decrease font size (preserving font differences) • Promote/demote paragraphs (which produces the hierarchical effect of variable indents and font sizes)

9. The Insert and Format menus • As well as “New Slide...”, the Insert menu provides functions for inserting date/time/page numbers, tables/graphs/charts/pictures, and a wide variety of “objects” produced by other software. • Most of the Format menu functions are fairly self-explanatory, but note particularly: • “Line Spacing...” to specify not only line spacing, but also gaps before or after paragraphs. • “Background...” to select a background colour (including variable shading if required).

10. Transitions • When you have more than one slide you can determine which effect you are going to use for the transition between slides. • The option for this is on the Slide Show menu. • You can also set transitions when in Slide Sorter view

11. Powerpoint can liven up a presentation

12. To get animations you need the Animations toolbar. You can set animations for text elements or images. Custom animation lets you determine an effect for each text element, image or whatever. Animations determine how an element will appear on the screen Animations

13. Using the Drawing Toolbar you can get special effects such as WordArt. Autoshapes are an easy way to get other special effects Special effects Like this callout box And this one And this banner

14. The Tools and Slide Show menus • The Tools menu contains a spellchecker, and an option for globally replacing fonts (something which cannot be done using Edit | “Replace...”). • To specify a common transition sequence for the entire presentation, use Edit | “Select All” in the slide sorter before applying the transition. • “Hide Slide” on the Slide Show menu omits the slide from the presentation.