Microsoft Powerpoint.

Do you use PowerPoint?  Do you like endless slide-shows with fancy animation?

As a trainer and facilitator, PowerPoint is regular part of my toolbox.  We've all seen horrendous presentations, though (and been guilty of a few of our own).

Some companies are absolutely insistent on consistency, even in their PowerPoint presentations.  They have a proscribed "pitch" that all associates are supposed to use that includes exact font sizes, formats, symbols, "take-away" boxes, and other details too numerous to mention.  Suffice it to say that when you do a pitch outside of a company's parameters, everybody notices.

It can feel really irritating at first.  Why should I use landscape format if portrait fits my content better?  Why use Ariel if half of the work is already done in Times Roman?

Some of the rules that companies follow may be restrictive but, there are a few things that I've learned from watching, and creating, hundreds of presentations with, and without, standardization.
 

1. Limit your words!

If all you have are words, you don't have a presentation.  Who wants to read a book (or worse yet, listen to you read a book) on a screen?  I've learned to keep the text to a minimum.

2. Don't be ridiculous

Too many slides with just two or three words is just as silly as slides with too many words.  Seek balance.

3. Ditch the generic clipart

We've all seen it.  The palette's too small to keep repeating the same pictures of action sports figures and conductors raising a baton.   It's worth the extra effort to find something different.
 

4. Be consistent

Sure, it might grate on you to follow a format from someone else--but even if you create your own format, stick with it for the whole presentation.  Unless your point is to create disoriented feelings, why create the visual dissonance that breaking form causes?

5. Cool the animation!

Just like the built-in clipart, we've seen it all before.  Honestly, wouldn't an eight-hour night shift on the loading dock be better than watching flying letters accompanied by the sounds of a typewriter?  Typewriter??? 

6. Use Light Backgrounds, Dark Print

The reverse is deeply out of style and is hard to read for those of use who are visually challenged.  Red print on a black background is enough to send me out of the room! 
 

7. Tell the story

A presentation is there to help you, but won't help if you don't have a story.  What's your compelling reason for speaking?  What's your objective?  What do you want people to leave the room with?  Answer those questions before you even open your first slide. 
 

8. Give it the readable test

Bob Pike has a great way to test the font size: put a slide on the floor.  If you can't read it while you are standing up, the font's too small.

9. Proofread!

Try this--let your "finished" presentation sit overnight, and then carefully read it again.  Better still, ask a fearless friend to proof read it for you.  Misspellings, cultural gaffes, and outright mistakes look really yucky in movie screen proportions.

10. Test the room

Practicing in front of your bathroom mirror is fine--you're on the right track, but go the extra step and practice in the room where you'll be doing the presentation.  After all, when do you want to be surprised (by bad acoustics, bad lighting, bad sight lines, you name it) during rehearsal, or during the presentation?

Those are just a few things I've learned using PowerPoint.  Here's the best, a "bonus" tip: "modularize" your presentations.  If you can use pieces of one presentation in another event it can save you lots of time.  Of course, that's easiest if you stick with a fairly uniform presentation style. 

Hmm…maybe that standard formatting that some my company insists on is a good idea after all… 

PowerPoint Tutorial

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:
 

Now that you know what features PowerPoint offers it's time to learn how to work in PowerPoint.

Please note this the images are from an older version of powerpoint but these are only examples

This tutorial is unlike the others you have seen in class. The PowerPoint tutorial will be text based. To get the most out of this tutorial it is best to run PowerPoint, so that you can experiment with the concepts that are mentioned in the tutorial.

  Find and open PowerPoint.
  When the Tip of the day dialog box appears,
  Read it and click on the OK button.

The following PowerPoint dialog box should appear, asking you how you want to create your new presentation.


Here is a brief description of the options under the Create a New Presentation Using title.

 

 Select Blank Presentation and click on the OK button.

 In the New Slide dialog box select the Title Slide option.

Your screen should look as follows:


This is your title slide you can enter the title and sub-title here. Note that if your toolbars are not visible, choose Toolbars from the View menu and make your selections.

 Experiment with your title slide by entering in text, changing the color of the text, changing the font size etc.

Now that you have been introduced to a slide, it is time to learn about PowerPoint's different Views.

PowerPoint gives you four views in which you create and organize your presentation. As you create a presentation, you can switch among the four views as you work.

The four PowerPoint views are:

Slide View-
To be in Slide view you click on the following button located in the bottom-left hand corner of any slide: ().
The Slide view shows a single slide. In Slide view, you work on one slide at at time. Here, you can type your slide title and body, add other text to the slide, draw shapes, add clip art, choose a color scheme, make a graph, etc. In Slide view, you have access to all the tools on the Tool Palette as well as buttons on the Toolbar.

Outline View-
To be in Outline view you click on the following button located in the bottom-left hand corner of any slide: ().

The Outline view shows all the titles and body text in your presentation. In Outline view, you can move slides around within your presentation and also edit your text.

 Click on the Outline view button (), to view your title slide in this view.

Slide Sorter View-
To be in Slide Sorter view you click on the following button located in the bottom-left hand corner of any slide: ().

The Slide Sorter view shows you a minature of each slide in your presentation. You can drag slides around on the screen to reposition them in this view. You can also select and copy multiple slides should you want to use them in other presentations.

 Click on the Slide Sorter view button (), to view your title slide in this view.

Notes View-
To be in Notes view you click on the following button located in the bottom-left hand corner of any slide: ().

The Notes view lets you create speaker's notes. Each page corresponds to a slide in your presentation and includes a reduce image of the slide. You can draw and type in Notes view the way you can in Slide View.

 Click on the Notes view button (), to view your title slide in this view.

You now know all of PowerPoint's views. There is one more button located in the bottom- left hand corner of any slide:(). This is the Slide Show button. The Slide Show button runs a slide show starting from the currently selected slide.

Now that you know all of PowerPoint's views it is time to learn how to work within a slide. In general, presentations will be based on a Master Slide. The next topic in the tutorial will focus on understanding PowerPoint Masters.
 

Slide Masters

A PowerPointSlide Master contains objects that you want to appear on each slide in your presentation. With a Slide Master, you only have to create an item once and PowerPoint will automatically include them on every slide. Some things are set up by PowerPoint (for example; place for slide title and text) so you don't have to create them each time. If you want to add additional items to a master, you can at any time. The Slide Master has boxes already set up for the slide title and text. They're called the Master Title and the Master Body object. The format of these objects determines the way your text will look on each slide. You can always make slides look different from the Slide Master, but a Slide Master gives you a consistent starting point.

The Slide Master is flexible. You can move objects around, add art, add headings or labels, change colors and fonts.

As you create a slide, you have the option of using or not using the elements from the Slide Master. To change the entire presentation, you simply change the format of the Slide Master. PowerPoint will then change all your slides accordingly.

 

PowerPoint Templates

PowerPoint also offers templates. A template is a presentation containing PowerPoint masters and a color scheme. PowerPoint offers 160 pre-designed templates to help you get started quickly. Applying a template to a presentation you are creating means the design work is already done for you.

You can apply a template when you are just starting a presentation, or you can create a presentation and apply the template later.

Now that you have learned about PowerPoint masters and templates it is time to learn create a slide.
 

 With PowerPoint running, choose Master from the View menu, then select Slide Master from the Master submenu.

This is your slide master. Let's start with formatting the Master title style.

 Click on the Title Area for AutoLayouts.

 Choose Font from the Format menu, and change the font style, color, and size of the text.

This formatting will be the same on each new slides Title Area .

To observe this,

 Click on the New Slide button () located in the bottom right corner of the screen.

 Choose a slide that contains a title area.

 Click in the title area of your new slide and type some text.

The text format should duplicate that of the Master Slide.

Let's format the bullets that will appear on each slide, by formatting them on the Master Slide.

 Choose Slide Master from the View menu.

 Highlight the first line of text in the Object Area for Autolayouts.

 Choose Bullet from the format menu and pick a different style bullet.

You now know how to format items on the Master Slide.

In addition to formatting text and bullets you can also format the following:

 

Experiment with these on your own.

PowerPoint also has a number of features you can use to display your slides when you are giving a slide show. This will be the last topic covered in this tutorial.

When you display your presentation electronically as a slide show, the slides take up the full screen. All the tools, menus, and other screen elements are hidden so as not to detract from your show. Your computer becomes the equivalent of a slide projector.

PowerPoint offers a number of features you can use when you run your slide show:
 

In this part of the tutorial we will discuss transitions and builds.

 

Build Slide

A build slide is a slide that starts with the first major bullet point and shows more major bullet points as the presentation proceeds. You decide whether you want to dim previous points on the slide as new points appear and what effect you want to use when the bullet points appear (for instance, bullet points can fly in from the right, left, top, or bottom).


 

Transitions

Transititions moves one slide off the screen and brings the next one on. Fading from black and dissolving from one slide to another are two examples of transitions. You have a choice of transitions for each slide, plus you can vary the speed of each transition.

A transition refers to the way one slide moves off the screen and the next slide appears. When you set your transitions, you can also set how long you want each slide to appear on the screen.

To set transitions and timing:
 Choose Transition from the Tools menu.

 Choose the transition from the drop-down list.

 Click how fast you want the transition to take place- Slow, Medium, or Fast.

 Decide how you want to advance to the next slide and, if need be, set the timing.
If you want the slide to advance automatically, you need to decide how long the slide should appear on-screen before advancing to the next slide:

Only on Mouse Click- The slide advances manually with a mouse click.

Automatically After [N] Seconds- Type the number of seconds you want the slide on the screen. During the presentation, the slide advances automatically when the time is up.

 Click the OK button.

A build slide is one that seems to build on itself, showing progressively more information as the presentation proceeds.

To create a build slide:

To start you must have a slide which contains bullets.

 Choose Build from the Tools menu.

 Choose the options you want to use in building the slide.

 Click on the OK button.

You have successfully completed the PowerPoint tutorial!
 

Office XP Is Here

Spend less time formatting your presentation and more time developing your message.

Find the Tools You Need, When You Need Them
The task pane allows you to quickly preview slides and apply a variety of design templates and colour and animation schemes.

Multiple masters allow you to create distinct sections within the same presentation, or combine multiple presentations in one file.

Visualize Your Outline
Switch between outline and thumbnail views of your presentation while working on your slides.

Preview Your Printed Work
Get printed slides and handouts right the first time. A new Print Preview feature shows you exactly how your presentation will look on paper.