Microsoft PowerPoint

PowerPoint is the powerful and ubiquitous presentation program from

Microsoft. It gives you the facility to create stunning presentations that

incorporate video and PowerPoint animations. The image editing capabilities

that PowerPoint offer get better and better with every new version.

New Slides

There are a couple of ways to add a new slide. In each way, the slide that is

currently selected is important as the new slide will be placed after the selected

one. This means that if you want to insert a slide before the end of the

presentation, you will need to select the slide that appears before the one you

want to insert. To select the slide, just click on it. You can select the slide in

whichever view you happen to be using, whether it's Slides View or Outline

View.

Once you have selected a slide, click Home > Slides > New Slide. You'll

notice that the New Slide button is in two halves.

Computer Skills 1 Dr. Mohammad Aldabbagh

If you click the top half of the New Slide button, the default Title and Content

type slide will be added. If, instead, you click the bottom half of the button,

you will be able to select what type of slide is added.

Computer Skills 2 Dr. Mohammad Aldabbagh

Once the new slide has been added, you can click into one of the editable

content boxes to make your changes. The keyboard shortcut for adding new

slides is ctrl-m.

Creating A New PowerPoint Presentation from Scratch

There are a variety of ways of creating your PowerPoint presentation, and one

of them is to start from scratch. In doing so, you are creating your presentation

from a blank presentation, and you have much more flexibility over how it

looks. In another tutorial, we will look at how to create a presentation using

templates, but for now, to start from scratch click the File tab > New, and the

following panel will be displayed

Ensure that Blank presentation is selected. You can click on the thumbnail

image to select it if it isn't, and then click Create. A new presentation based

Computer Skills 3 Dr. Mohammad Aldabbagh

on a blank presentation opens for you to start work on. As soon as you can,

save the presentation so you don't lose any changes.

If you want to sacrifice flexibility for speed, you may prefer instead to create

a presentation using a template.

Save Time and Effort By Using a PowerPoint Template

One way of creating a presentation is to start from scratch. However, you can

save time and effort if you base your new presentation on a template. A

template defines the background, font styles, colours and sizes for your

placeholders, as well as selected bullets that match the template. Using a

template means that you don't need to worry about defining those aspects

yourself. PowerPoint comes with a number of stylish templates built in that

you can use immediately, and you can download additional ones from

office.com.

To create a PowerPoint presentation using a template, click the File tab >

New, and the following panel will be displayed.

Computer Skills 4 Dr. Mohammad Aldabbagh

Clicking on a template category will display thumbnail images of all the

templates within that category. When you find a template you like the look of,

click on its thumbnail to select it and you will see a preview of it on the right

of the panel. You can then click Create to create your PowerPoint presentation

based on this template.

Computer Skills 5 Dr. Mohammad Aldabbagh

Sometimes you just can't find a template that precisely matches what you

need, and in these circumstances, what many people do is use a template that

is the closest fit and then modify it.

There are many free templates available from within PowerPoint, and also

freely downloadable from other websites on the internet. In addition to using

those that ship with PowerPoint, you can also purchase stylish and

professionally designed templates for PowerPoint presentations from vendors

like SmileTemplates.

The Six Different PowerPoint Views

There are 6 different views you can use to look at your PowerPoint

presentation and each one has its advantages over the others. The default view

in PowerPoint is normal view. This means that when you start PowerPoint,

and as long as you don't change the view, you will be working in Normal

View. There are two place to change to a different view: at the top of the left

side panel and at the bottom of the workspace to the right (next to the zoom

slider). OK, make that three, as you can also see the presentation views on the

View tab!

To change to Slides View or Outline view, click the corresponding tab at the

top of the left side panel. To change to any of the other PowerPoint view, use

Computer Skills 6 Dr. Mohammad Aldabbagh

 the small toolbar at the bottom. Here is an explanation of how you should use

the different views:

PowerPoint
Description
View

This is a great place to view the slides in your presentation as

thumbnail-sized images while you edit. The thumbnails make

Slides View it easy for you to navigate through your presentation and to see

the effects of any design changes. You can also easily

rearrange, add, or delete slides here

This is a great place to start writing your content, to capture

your ideas, plan how you want to present them, and move slides
Outline View
and text around. The Outline tab shows your slide text in

outline form.

Normal view is the main editing view, where you write and
Normal View
design your presentations.

Slide Sorter Slide Sorter view gives you a view of your slides in thumbnail

View form. This view makes it easy for you to sort and organize the

Computer Skills 7 Dr. Mohammad Aldabbagh

 sequence of your slides as you create your presentation, and

then also as you prepare your presentation for printing.

Use reading view to deliver your presentation not to an

audience (via a large screen, for example), but instead to

someone viewing your presentation on their own computer. Or,

use Reading view on your own computer when you want to

Reading View
view a presentation not in full-screen Slide Show view, but in

a window with simple controls that make the presentation easy

to review. You can always switch from Reading view to one of

the other views if you want to change the presentation.

Use Slide Show view to deliver your presentation to your

audience. Slide Show view occupies the full computer screen,

Slide Show exactly like an actual presentation. In this view, you see your

View presentation the way your audience will. You can see how your

graphics, timings, movies, animated effects, and transition

effects will look during the actual presentation.

Computer Skills 8 Dr. Mohammad Aldabbagh

Adding Transitions to Your PowerPoint Presentation

In Microsoft PowerPoint, slide transitions are motion effects that occur in

Slide Show view when you move from one slide to the next during a

presentation. You can control the speed, add sound, and even customize the

properties of transition effects. To add a transition first of all select a slide in

the left hand panel that contains the Slides and Outline tabs. The transition

will occur immediately before the selected slide is displayed. Click

Transitions > Transition To This Slide, and then click on the transition you

want to use. If you want to see a larger selection of transitions, click on the

more button (the down arrow at the bottom right of the group.

When you hover over a thumbnail image of a transition, you can see a live

preview of it applied to your slide. When you move the cursor away, the

preview is removed.

Computer Skills 9 Dr. Mohammad Aldabbagh

If, after having applied a transition to the selected slide, you decide that you

want the transition applied to all slides, click on the Apply To All button in the

Timing Group on the same tab.

Animation For PowerPoint

To add a custom animation to an object in Microsoft PowerPoint, first of all

select the object, then click animation in the ribbon to see all the animation

options we have at our disposal. We can see a few thumbnail images

representing entrance effects in the animation group.

That's not a very big selection of effects. To see more effects, click on the

dialogue launcher at the bottom right of the Animation group. A more

comprehensive selection of effects is then displayed in a thumbnail gallery, in

the categories of:

Computer Skills 10 Dr. Mohammad Aldabbagh

  Entrance - this kind of animation brings the object onto the PowerPoint

slide from a location off the slide

 Emphasis - once the object is on the slide, you can give it some

emphasis with this kind of animation

 Exit - animations in this category remove the object from a slide

 Motion Paths - applying this kind of animation allows us to plot a path

for the object to follow

Computer Skills 11 Dr. Mohammad Aldabbagh

Previewing Animations

When you hover your mouse over the thumbnail image of an animation, you

can see a preview of what that animation would look like if applied. The

animation plays once. You also get to see what the animation looks like when

you actually apply it to the object. If you want to see a preview of the

animation at any other time, click the Preview button to the far left of the

Animations tab. All slides that include an animation display a whooshing star

next to the slide in slide view and slide sorter view to remove an animation

from an object, click on the dialogue box launcher and select None at the top.

Computer Skills 12 Dr. Mohammad Aldabbagh