Chapter 11
IN THIS CHAPTER
Designing a presentation
Creating a PowerPoint presentation
Using different views to create a presentation
Adding text
PowerPoint works as a visual aid for giving presentations. (If you never give presentations, you probably don’t need PowerPoint.) Instead of fumbling around creating, organizing, and displaying transparencies with an overhead projector, you can use PowerPoint on your computer to create, arrange, and display slides that organize information as text and graphics.
Besides displaying slides on the screen, PowerPoint also lets you add notes and turn your entire slide-show presentation into printed handouts so the audience can review your presentation with a printed copy of each slide. The next time you need to convince or inform an audience, use PowerPoint to create and deliver your presentation. (Just make sure that you never use PowerPoint to propose marriage, though.)
PowerPoint can make creating and delivering a presentation easy, but before you start creating fancy visuals with eye-popping graphics and colors, step away from your computer, put down your copy of PowerPoint, and place your hands in the open where anyone can see them.
Rushing into PowerPoint to create a presentation is likely to create a dazzling array of colors, fonts, and graphics that may look interesting but won’t convey your message effectively. The best way to create an effective presentation is to take some time to think about the following:
After you understand the purpose of your presentation, your audience, and what you hope your presentation will do, you’re ready to go through the physical steps of creating a presentation in PowerPoint.
A PowerPoint presentation consists of one or more slides where each slide can display text and graphics. Creating a presentation means adding slides and typing text or pasting graphics on each slide.
If you’ve been working on another presentation in PowerPoint and you need to start a new, blank presentation from scratch, follow these steps:
Click New.
PowerPoint displays different templates you can choose.
Click Blank Presentation.
PowerPoint displays a blank slide with a title and subtitle box, as shown in Figure 11-1.
After you create a new presentation, you need to fill it with content (text and graphics). PowerPoint gives you two ways to view, edit, and design your presentation:
Both views let you add, delete, rearrange, and edit slides. The main difference is that Normal lets you add graphics and modify the visual appearance of a slide. Outline view displays your entire presentation as an outline in which each slide appears as an outline heading, and additional text on each slide appears as a subheading. Outline view makes it easy to focus on the text of your presentation without the distraction of the visual appearance of your slides.
Slide view shows your entire slide show as thumbnails in the left pane and the currently selected slide in full-size view in the right pane, as shown in Figure 11-2.
To create a new slide within Slide view, follow these steps:
Click the Home tab.
The New Slide icon also appears on the Insert tab.
Click the New Slide icon in the Slides group.
PowerPoint inserts your new slide after the slide you selected in Step 1.
You can rearrange the order of your slides by following these steps:
Hold down the left mouse button and drag (move) the mouse up or down within the thumbnail pane.
PowerPoint displays a horizontal line between slides to show you where your slide will appear. If you drag the mouse to the top or bottom of the thumbnail pane, PowerPoint automatically scrolls up or down the list.
If you have a slide that you no longer want in your presentation, you can either hide or delete it. Hiding a slide keeps the slide but doesn’t display that slide when you give your presentation. You may want to hide a slide in case you need it later or so you can reference the information on this slide with the rest of your presentation.
To hide a slide, follow these steps:
Click Hide Slide in the Set Up group.
PowerPoint dims your chosen slide and highlights the Hide Slide icon.
If you’re sure that you want to get rid of a slide, you can just delete it. To delete a slide, follow these steps:
Press the Delete key.
PowerPoint deletes your chosen slide.
In the Outline view, each slide appears with one or more of the following:
The Outline pane only displays the text on each slide. Clicking a slide in the Outline pane displays the entire slide, including graphics, as shown in Figure 11-4.
The biggest advantage of Outline view is that it lets you rearrange and organize your slides by focusing on their content (title, subtitles, and text). To switch from Slide view to Outline view, click the View tab and then click the Outline View icon. To switch from Outline view to Slide view, click the View tab and then click the Normal icon.
In Outline view, each outline heading represents a slide. To create a new slide in Outline view, follow these steps:
Press Enter.
PowerPoint adds a new, blank slide to your presentation.
Outline view lets you create slides and add subtitles to each slide as well. To add a subtitle to a slide, follow these steps:
Press Enter.
PowerPoint creates a blank slide title underneath.
Press Tab.
PowerPoint indents your slide title and turns it into subtitle text under the preceding outline heading.
A large presentation consisting of multiple slides with subtitles can be hard to read. To simplify the appearance of your outline, PowerPoint lets you collapse or expand outline headings. To collapse or expand an outline heading, double-click the slide icon of a slide title in the Outline pane.
PowerPoint collapses any subtitles that appear under your chosen outline heading and displays a gray wavy line under your outline heading to let you know that its subtitle text is collapsed (hidden), as shown in Figure 11-5.
Outline view makes it easy to rearrange slides just by moving slide titles up or down. To move a slide title, follow these steps:
Move the mouse pointer over the slide icon that appears to the left of the slide title (or slide subtitle) that you want to move.
The mouse turns into a four-way-pointing arrow.
Hold down the left mouse button and drag (move) the mouse up or down.
PowerPoint displays a horizontal gray line to show where the new position of the slide will appear in your presentation.
Release the left mouse button.
PowerPoint moves your outline heading to its new position in your presentation.
To delete a slide in Outline view, follow these steps:
Most slides contain exactly one title and one subtitle text box. The title text box typically defines the information that the slide presents, while the subtitle text box displays supporting information.
When you create a new slide, both the title and subtitle text boxes will be empty, although they’ll both display the message Click to add title
or Click to add text
. (This text won’t appear on your slides if you don’t type anything there.)
To add text inside a title or subtitle text box, follow these steps:
Click in the title or subtitle text box, directly on the slide.
PowerPoint displays a cursor in your chosen text box.
A typical PowerPoint slide lets you type text in the Title text box or the Subtitle text box. When you type text in the Title or Subtitle text box, the contents appear as slide titles and subheadings within Outline view.
However, PowerPoint also offers you a third option for displaying text on a slide: You can create your own text box and place it anywhere on the slide.
To create and place a text box on a slide, follow these steps:
Click the Text Box icon in the Text group.
The mouse pointer turns into a downward-pointing arrow.
Release the left mouse button.
PowerPoint displays a text box, as shown in Figure 11-6.
You can format text that you type on a slide by choosing different fonts, font sizes, and colors. To change the appearance of text, follow these steps:
PowerPoint can align text both horizontally and vertically inside a text box. To align text, follow these steps:
Click the Align Text icon in the Paragraph group.
A pop-up menu appears, as shown in Figure 11-8.
Line spacing defines the space that appears between each line in a text box. To define the line space in a text box, follow these steps:
Click the Line Spacing icon in the Paragraph group.
A pull-down menu appears, as shown in Figure 11-9.
Select a line spacing value, such as 1.5 or 2.
PowerPoint adjusts line spacing in your chosen text box.
PowerPoint can display text as bulleted or numbered lists. The two ways to create such a list are before you type any text or after you’ve already typed some text.
To create a bulleted or numbered list as you type new text, follow these steps:
Click the Bullets or Numbering icon in the Paragraph group.
A pull-down menu appears, as shown in Figure 11-10.
Click a bullet or numbering option.
PowerPoint displays a bullet or number.
Type any text and press Enter.
As soon as you press Enter, PowerPoint displays a new bullet or number.
If you have existing text, you can convert it to a bulleted or numbered list. To convert existing text into a list, follow these steps:
Click the Bullets or Numbering icon in the Paragraph group.
PowerPoint converts your text into a list.
You can divide a text box into multiple columns, which can be especially useful if you need to display large lists on a slide. To divide a text box into columns, follow these steps:
Click the Columns icon in the Paragraph group.
A menu appears, as shown in Figure 11-11.
Click a column option, such as Two Columns or Three Columns.
PowerPoint divides your text box into columns.
PowerPoint lets you move text boxes anywhere on a slide. To move a text box, follow these steps:
Move the mouse pointer over the edge of the text box that you want to move.
The mouse turns into a four-way-pointing arrow.
To resize a text box, follow these steps:
Click the text box you want to resize.
PowerPoint displays handles around your chosen text box, as shown in Figure 11-12.
Move the mouse pointer over a handle.
The mouse pointer turns into a two-way-pointing arrow.
Hold down the left mouse button and drag (move) the mouse.
PowerPoint resizes your text box in the direction you move the mouse.
After you type text in a title or subtitle text box, you can rotate the text box on your slide. To rotate a text box, follow these steps:
Click the text box you want to rotate.
PowerPoint displays a rotate handle at the top of your text box, as shown in Figure 11-13.
Move the mouse pointer over the rotate handle.
The mouse pointer turns into a circular arrow.
Hold down the left mouse button and drag (move) the mouse to rotate your text box.
If you hold down the Shift key while dragging the mouse, you can rotate the text box in 15-degree increments.
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