2. What is PowerPoint ?
PowerPoint is a complete presentation graphics package. It gives you everything you
need to produce a professional-looking presentation. PowerPoint offers word
processing, outlining, drawing, graphing, and presentation management tools- all
designed to be easy to use and learn. The following gives you a quick overview of
what you can do in PowerPoint:
When you create a presentation using PowerPoint, the presentation is made up of a
series of slides. The slides that you create using PowerPoint can also be presented as
overhead transparencies or 35mm slides.
In addition to slides, you can print audience handouts, outlines, and speaker's notes.
You can format all the slides in a presentation using the powerful Slide Master which
will be covered in the tutorial.
You can keep your entire presentation in a single file- all your slides, speaker's notes,
and audience handouts.
You can import what you have created in other Microsoft products, such as Word
and Excel into any of your slides.
3. PowerPoint is one of the simplest computer
programs to learn. It is the number 1 program
used worldwide for presentations. Anyone
can create stunning presentations that look
like they were designed by a professional.
PowerPoint presentations can be made into
photo albums, complete with music or
narrations, to distribute on CDs or DVDs. If
you are in the sales field, it involves just a few
simple clicks to add an illustrative chart of
data or an organizational chart of your
company's structure. Make your presentation
into a web page for emailing purposes or as a
promotion displayed on your company's
website.
4. Before You Create a PowerPoint Presentation
Before getting all caught up in the gee-whiz features of
PowerPoint, remember that the purpose of a presentation is to
present information — not overwhelm the audience with a
demonstration of all the software bells and whistles. In that
respect, using PowerPoint is similar to using a page layout
program. The software is merely a tool. Avoid the typical
pitfalls of PowerPoint presentations with purpose, simplicity,
and consistency.
1. Match Design to Purpose
Decide if your presentation is meant to entertain, inform,
persuade, or sell. Is a light-hearted or a more formal approach
most appropriate to the subject and your audience? Keep
colors, clip art, and templates consistent with your main
objective.
5. 2. Keep It Simple
As with any design, cut the clutter. Two font
families is a good rule of thumb. No more than one
graphic image or chart per slide is another good rule
(excluding any corporate logo or other recurring element
in the design).
3. Be Consistent
Use the same colors and fonts throughout. Select
graphic images in the same style. Templates go a long
way toward helping to maintain consistency.
6. The 10 Most Common PowerPoint 2010 Terms
1. Slide - Slide Show
Each page of a PowerPoint presentation is called a slide. The
default orientation of the slide is in landscape layout, which means that
the slide is 11" wide by 8 1/2" tall. Text, graphics and/or pictures are
added to the slide to enhance its appeal.
2. Ribbon
The ribbon, first introduced in PowerPoint 2007, is the strip of
buttons across the top of the main window, and it replaces the toolbar
in earlier versions of PowerPoint. Here on the ribbon you will find
access to anything the program has to offer. You no longer have to
hunt endlessly through many menus and sub menus to find the
command you want. Commands are located in logical places
now, unlike in earlier versions of all things Microsoft.
7. 3. Contextual Menus and Tabs
Contextual Menus or Contextual Tabs were introduced
in PowerPoint 2007. Instead of scrolling through the
longer menus as in previous versions of PowerPoint, once
a topic is accessed, the ribbon changes to objects
pertaining to that option.
For example - After choosing to insert a picture from
the Insert tab of the ribbon, the ribbon changes to show
more graphical options that can pertain to this picture.
Several style layouts are shown, but more options can be
seen by clicking the arrow to the right of the layouts. This
expands the selection choice. In many cases, you will see a
preview of your choice. It is not necessary to apply the
selection first.
8. 4. Slide Layouts - Slide Types
The terms slide type or slide layout can be used
interchangeably. There are several different types of
slides / slide layouts in PowerPoint. Depending on the
type of presentation you are creating, you may use
several different slide layouts or just keep repeating the
same few.
Slide types or layouts include -
title slides
title and content slides
comparison slides
picture with caption slides
9. 5. Slide Views
Normal View - is also commonly known as Slide View. It is the main working
window in the presentation. The slide is shown full size on the screen.
Outline View - shows all the text of all slides, in a list on the left of the PowerPoint
screen. No graphics are shown in this view. Outline View is useful for editing
purposes and can be exported out as a Word document to use as a summary
handout.
Slide Sorter View - is a window in PowerPoint that displays thumbnail versions
of all your slides, arranged in horizontal rows. This view is useful to make global
changes to several slides at one time. Rearranging or deleting slides is easy to do in
Slide Sorter view.
Reading View - is similar to slide show view. The difference between the two views
is that while slide show view takes over the whole screen, the slide in reading view is
also shown in full screen, but you will also see the PowerPoint title band at the top
of the screen and the PowerPoint status bar and the Windows task bar displayed at
the bottom of the screen. The ribbon and the slides/outline pane are no longer
visible.
Notes Pages - shows a smaller version of a slide with an area below for notes. Each
slide is created on its own notes page. The speaker can print these pages out to use
as a reference while making his presentation. The notes do not show on the screen
during the presentation.
10. 6. Design Theme
Think of a design theme as a coordinated packaged
deal. When you decorate a room, you use colors and
patterns that all work together. A design theme acts in
much the same way. It is created so that even though
different slide types can have different layouts and
graphics, the whole presentation goes together as an
attractive package. The background color / images and
fonts are all coordinated to achieve a cohesive look.
11. 7. Transition or Slide Transition
Slide transitions are the visual movements as one
slide changes to another.
8. Animation or Custom Animation
In Microsoft PowerPoint, animations are visual effects
applied to individual items on the slide such as
graphics, titles or bullet points, rather than to the slide
itself.
Preset visual effects can be applied to
paragraphs, bulleted items and titles from a variety of
animation groupings, namely Subtle, Moderate and
Exciting.
12. 9. Animation Painter
The Animation Painter is new to PowerPoint 2010. It
is a tool that works similarly to the Format Painter, which
has been part of any Office product for many years.
The Animation Painter will copy all the animation
features of an object to: another object, another
slide, multiple slides or to another presentation. This is a
real time-saver as you do not have to add all these
animation properties separately to each object. The added
bonus is many fewer mouse clicks.
13. 10. Slide Master
The default design template when starting a
PowerPoint presentation, is a plain, white slide. This
plain, white slide is the Slide Master. All slides in a
presentation are created using the fonts, colors and
graphics in the Slide Master. Each new slide that you
create takes on these aspects.
Each design theme has a number of different
slide masters, unlike some earlier versions, which
contained only an additional Title Master. Another
nice feature of slide masters in PowerPoint 2010 is
that you can create your own text placeholders. This
was not possible in version 2003 and earlier.
14. Use Keyboard Shortcuts to Speed Up PowerPoint Presentations
How to Use the Keyboard Shortcut List
When the instructions show the keystroke combination Ctrl + C for
example, it means to hold down the Ctrl key and then press the letter C,
holding both at the same time. The plus sign (+) indicates that you need
both of these two keys. You do not press the + key on the keyboard.
Letter case does not matter when using shortcut keys. You can use either
capital letters or lower case letters. Both will work.
Certain key combinations are specific to PowerPoint, such as the F5 key
playing a slide show. Many other shortcut combinations however, such as
Ctrl + C or Ctrl + Z are common to a number of programs. Once you
know these common ones, you will be surprised at how often you can use
them.
Here are just a few examples of shortcuts that can be used for most
programs
Copy
Paste
Cut
Save
Undo
Select All
15. The Most Commonly Used Keyboard Shortcuts
Ctrl + A - Select all items on the page or the active text box
Ctrl + C - Copy
Ctrl + P - Opens the Print dialog box
Ctrl + S - Save
Ctrl + V - Paste
Ctrl + X - Cut
Ctrl + Z - Undo last change
F5 - View the complete slide show
Shift + F5 - View the slide show from the current slide forward.
Shift + Ctrl + Home - Selects all text from the cursor to the start
of the active text box
Shift + Ctrl + End - Selects all text from the cursor to the end of
the active text box
Spacebar or Click the mouse - Move to next slide or next
animation
S - Stop the show. Press S again to restart the show
Esc- End the slide show
16. Alphabetical List of letter keys that can be used with the Ctrl key as a
keyboard shortcut to common tasks in PowerPoint.
Ctrl + A - Select all items on the page or the active text box
Ctrl + B - Applies bold to the selected text
Ctrl + C - Copy
Ctrl + D - Duplicates the selected object
Ctrl + F - Opens the Find dialog box
Ctrl + G - Opens the Grids and Guides dialog box
Ctrl + H - Opens the Replace dialog box
Ctrl + I - Applies Italics to the selected text
Ctrl + M - Inserts a new slide
Ctrl + N - Opens a new blank presentation
Ctrl + O - Opens the Open dialog box
Ctrl + P - Opens the Print dialog box
Ctrl + S - Save
Ctrl + T - Opens the Font dialog box
Ctrl + U - Applies Underlining to the selected text
Ctrl + V - Paste
Ctrl + W - Closes the presentation
Ctrl + X - Cut
Ctrl + Y - Repeats the last command entered
Ctrl + Z - Undo last change
17. Other keyboard shortcuts using the CTRL Key
Ctrl + F6 - Switch from one open PowerPoint presentation
to another
• See also Alt + Tab Fast Switching for Windows
Ctrl + Delete - Removes the word to the right of the
cursor
Ctrl + Backspace - Removes the word to the left of the
cursor
Ctrl + Home- Moves cursor to the beginning of the
presentation
Ctrl + End - Moves cursor to the end of the presentation
18. Advantages Of PowerPoint
Can easily input images
Templates are built in for different appearances
Can add notes pages
Can easily add media and recordings
More exciting than a simple word document or
hand written presentation
Master slides make presentations consistent
19. Disadvantages Of PowerPoint
Some features such as animations and backgrounds can
distract the audience from the actual information in the
presentation
File size can become quite large on medium to large
presentations
Some of the features can be quite complicated to use and
even the simple features require some getting used to
When at work, you cant rely on someone else's computer or
laptop to run your presentation, there are too many
software conflicts and disk space barriers.
Takes quite a bit of time to create a complete presentation