PowerPoint is a complete presentation development package. It gives you everything you need to produce a professional-looking presentation, including; text handling, outlining, drawing, graphing, clip art, audio, image import, etc. PowerPoint makes you, the presenter, an independent producer of your own high-quality presentations.

Don't worry about consistency in design and color. PowerPoint can help you. If you don't consider yourself a designer, just apply one of the PowerPoint templates to your presentation. And choose from among the thousands of color schemes available. Whether you're making black-and-white overheads or putting together an electronic slide show, PowerPoint is easy to use.

Here's what you'll be making in PowerPoint:

Presentations
Slides
Handouts
Speakers' Notes
Outlines

A PowerPoint presentation is a collection of your slides, handouts, speaker's notes, and your outline, all in one file. As you create slides, you're creating a presentation, you're designing how your presentation should look and giving it a format that carries through from beginning to end.

Slides are the individual "pages" of your presentation. Soon, you'll be creating slides with PowerPoint. Slides can have titles, text, graphs, drawn objects, shapes, clip art, drawn art, and visuals created with other applications and more. You can print slides as black-and-white or color overhead transparencies or have 35mm slides made using a film or service bureau.

To support your presentation, you have the option of providing handouts for your audience. Handouts consist of smaller, printed versions of your slides either two, three, or six slides per page. If you want, you can print additional information such as your company name, the date, and the page number on each page.

You can create and print speaker's notes. You'll see a small image of the slide on each notes page, along with any notes you type on the notes pages.

As you're working on a presentation, you have the option of working with your presentation in outline form. In the outline, your titles and main text appear, but not your art or the text typed with the Text tool. You can print your outline too.

Creating a new presentation

When you create a new presentation, you have choices about how to proceed. You can use the AutoContent wizard to help you organize what you want your presentation to say. You can use the Pick a Look wizard to help you apply a template and set up the masters. You can also start with a "blank" presentation if you want to use the default presentation ¾either the PowerPoint default or one that you set up.

To create a new presentation

1. Double-click the PowerPoint icon to open the application.

The PowerPoint startup dialog box appears.

2. Choose the way you want to create your new presentation.

To begin by following along with a wizard, select the button of the wizard you want, and then choose OK. The wizard you selected appears on the screen. Follow the instructions and enter the information requested.
To start with a template and establish a particular look for your presentation, select the Template button, and then choose OK. The Presentation Template dialog box appears. Choose the template you want, and then choose Apply.
To begin with the blank default presentation, select the Blank Presentation button. Then choose OK.

Saving a Presentation

You use the Save As command to name a presentation when you save it for the first time. You can also use this command to save an existing presentation with a new name.

To save a presentation for the first time

1. From the File menu, choose Save As.

The Save As dialog box appears.

2. Type the name of the presentation.

Because this is the first time you're saving the presentation, you need to give it a name in the File Name box.
You can save your presentation on another disk drive and in any directory.

3. When you've typed the presentation name and placed it in the directory, choose OK.

To save an existing presentation with a new name

1. From the File menu, choose Save As.
2. Type the new name you want to use for the presentation in the Save As box.

3. When you've typed the new name and located the directory or folder you want, choose OK.

Your presentation stays on the screen with the new name in the title bar.


Saving a presentation with embedded fonts (Windows)

In many presentation software products, presentations created on a computer with one set of fonts may not look the same when opened on another computer with different fonts. PowerPoint solves this problem by letting you embed a presentation's fonts into a presentation when you save it. When the presentation is opened on another "viewing" computer, the fonts appear just as when the presentation was saved, even if the fonts are not available. This capability is only available when using PowerPoint for Windows.

To save a presentation with embedded fonts

To embed a presentation's fonts:

1. From the File menu, choose Save As. The Save As dialog box appears.
2. Check the With Fonts box.
3. Choose OK.

The file is saved along with all embeddable fonts used in the presentation. If, for some reason, a font cannot be embedded (for example, it is not marked as editable or installable), an alert will appear and tell you why the font cannot be embedded.
Remember these points about embedding fonts:

· A font is a single variant of a font family. For example, Arial Narrow Bold and Arial Narrow Italic are two different fonts.
· Embedded fonts make a big difference in the size of the presentation file. For example, if you embed Century Gothic Bold, the file size will increase by about 60K.

Closing presentations

To close a presentation

1. From the File menu, choose Close.

- or -
Double-click the presentation's Close box
- or -
Press CTRL+F4
If you've made changes to the presentation since you last saved it, PowerPoint asks whether you want to save your changes before closing.

2. Choose Yes (Windows) to save your changes and close the presentation.

If you don't want to save your changes, choose No and PowerPoint will close the file without saving your changes.
If you change your mind about closing the file, choose Cancel.

Entering summary information

You can enter information in the Summary Info dialog box that records the title, the subject, and other key information that helps you keep track of your presentations.

To enter summary information

1. From the File menu, choose Summary Info.

The Summary Info dialog box appears.

2. Enter information in the dialog box as appropriate:

· In the Title box, type a name for the presentation. This title can be longer and more descriptive than the presentation's file name.
· In the Subject box, type a brief description of the presentation's contents.
· In the Author box, type the name of the presentation's author. By default, this is the name you typed when installing PowerPoint.
· In the Keywords box, type words that you associate with the presentation so you can find it using Find File. You can copy and paste the titles of your slides into the Keywords box, if you want.
· In the Comments box, type any comments you feel are appropriate.

3. Choose OK.


Creating a new slide

PowerPoint offers you a variety of AutoLayouts every time you create a new slide.

To create a new slide

1. From the Insert menu, choose New Slide.

- or -
Click the New Slide button on the status bar.
- or -
Press CTRL+M
The New Slide dialog box appears.
Use the scroll bar to see more layouts.

2. Select the layout you want, and then choose OK.

The new slide with placeholders for title and/or text and/or objects appears on your screen. Notice how the placeholders correspond to the layout you selected.



Changing a layout for a slide

As you create a presentation or as you edit an existing presentation, you may want to change the layout of a slide. You don't lose any text or graphics when a slide adopts a new layout. You can resize the text or graphics boxes to conform to the new layout.

To change a slide's layout

1. While in Slide view, from the Format menu, choose Slide Layout.

- or -
Click the Layout button on the status bar.
The Slide Layout dialog box appears with the current layout highlighted.

2. Click the new slide layout you want, and then choose Apply.


Deleting a slide

You can delete one or more slides from your presentation in several ways. If you only have one slide in your presentation, it can only be deleted in Slide Sorter or Outline view.

To delete a slide

· In Slide or Notes view, from the Edit menu, choose Delete Slide.

- or -
In Slide Sorter or Outline view, select the slide or slides you want to delete, and then, from the Edit menu, choose Delete Slide, or press the BACKSPACE or DELETE key.

Changing the order of your slides

When you're in Outline view or Slide Sorter view, it's easy to change the order in which your slides appear in your presentation.

To change the order of your slides in Outline view

· To move a slide from one location to another in Outline view, select the slide, and then drag the title icon from its present spot to its new spot.

While you're dragging the icon, a horizontal line appears to make it easier for you to place the slide just where you want it.

To change the order of your slides in Slide Sorter view

· To move a slide in Slide Sorter view, drag the selected slide from its present location to its new location.

As you drag the slide, a slide icon appears above the pointer. When you reach a spot between two slides where you can place the slide, an indicator shows you where the slide will appear in the presentation.

Adding transitions to a slide show

Transitions are the visual special effects you see when you go from one slide to the next in an electronic slide show. You have lots of choices available. Here's how you set up transitions.

To add transitions to your slide show

1. Click the Slide Sorter button on the lower left side of the document window.

Working in Slide Sorter view lets you set transitions for all of your slides without changing views.

2. From the Tools menu, choose Transition.

The Transition dialog box appears.

3. In the Effect box, select the transition you want.

The transition you select is applied to the picture in the preview box. Click the picture to watch the transition again.

4. Choose how fast you want the transition to take place by selecting the Slow, Medium, or Fast option button.

The speed is applied to the picture in the preview box.

5. Choose OK.

The transition is applied to the current slide. The transition icon is added below the slide in Slide Sorter view to show that you've set a transition for this slide.


Setting slide timings

You can set separate timings, if you want, for all of the slides in your slide show. You can have the first slide appear for 10 seconds, the second slide for 15 seconds, the third for 8 seconds, and so on. There are two ways to set slide timings. You can type a number under Advance in the Transition dialog box (choose the Transition command from the Tools menu), or you can have PowerPoint set timings by using the Rehearse New Timings option in the Slide Show dialog box (choose the Slide Show command from the View menu).

To set slide timings manually

1. Click the Slide Sorter button on the lower left side of the document window.

Working in Slide Sorter view lets you set the slide timings for all of your slides without changing views.

2. From the Tools menu, choose Transition.

The Transition dialog box appears.

3. Under Advance, select the Automatically After [blank] Seconds option button.

Select Automatically After [blank] Seconds to advance to the next slide after a preset time. Type the number of seconds that you want the slide to be on the screen before advancing to the next slide.

4. Choose OK.

The slide timing is applied to the current slide.

To set slide timings while rehearsing

You can adjust the timing for your slides during a slide show by choosing Slide Show from the View menu, and then selecting Rehearse New Timings. Cycle through the slides while you rehearse your presentation. PowerPoint keeps track of the length of time each slide is displayed and sets the timing accordingly.

1. From the View menu, choose Slide Show.

The Slide Show dialog box appears.

2. Choose Rehearse New Timings under Advance, and then choose the Show button.

When your slide show appears on the screen, you'll find a button in the lower left corner. The clock advances to show you how long the slide has appeared on-screen.

3. When you're ready to go to the next slide, click anywhere on the slide or on the clock.

Repeat this process for the rest of your presentation.

4. When you're finished, choose Yes if you're happy with your slide timings, or choose No if you want to try again.


Adding clip art

There are several ways to open the ClipArt Gallery so you can find and copy the image you want. Use the method that seems easiest for you.

To add clip art to your slides

1. Click the Insert Clip Art button on the Standard toolbar.

- or -
Double-click a clip art placeholder on an AutoLayout.
- or -
From the Insert menu, choose Clip Art.
The ClipArt Gallery opens.

2. Select the image you want by double-clicking it or by selecting it and choosing OK.

The image appears on your slide.

Paste imagaes from other applications

You can paste pictures or text from other applications like the World Wide Web or Bookshelf 95'.

To past images in your slides

1. Highlight the image that you want to copy and past

2. Go to the Edit pull-down meny and select copy

3. Return to the Powerpoint Presentation app, click on the slide you want to work with and click the paste icon on the standard toolbar.

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Last Tableized Thursday, 5 Jul 2001