A Guide to PowerPoint
PowerPoint
PowerPoint is a part of the Microsoft Office package.
It is a presentation software program that has many of the functions available in Microsoft Word.
PowerPoint Continued
To display a presentation, you need:
A computer (desktop or laptop)
LCD projector
White board or screen for projection
Seeing (and Hearing)
Is Believing
PowerPoint presentations can enhance understanding and retention of concepts.
Audiovisual aids should be relevant to the speech topic.
Designing Presentation Aids
Do not add too much content.
Keep bullets short
Visual aids should:
Reinforce
Support
Summarize what you say
Simplicity
Designing Presentation Aids
Use the same design throughout your presentation
Continuity
Designing Presentation Aids
Maintain continuity in:
Colors
Fonts
upper and lowercase letters
Styling
Boldface
Underlining
Italics
Continuity
Designing Presentation Aids
Typeface:
a specific style of lettering
Arial
Times Roman
Courier New
Tahoma
Monotype Corsiva
Typeface
Designing Presentation Aids
Fonts:
sets of sizes (called the point size)
24 point
20 point
18 point
16 point
10 point
upper and lower cases
Font Size
Designing Presentation Aids
Check that your lettering stands apart from your background.
Use a typeface that is simple, easy to read, and doesn’t distract from your message.
Don’t overuse boldface, underlining or italics. Use upper-and lowercase type.
Typeface Style And Font Size
Designing Presentation Aids
Use bold, bright colors to emphasize important points.
Use softer, lighter colors.
Avoid dark backgrounds.
Color
A How-To Guide for Using Microsoft PowerPoint as a Presentation Aid
How-To Guide to PowerPoint
This guide offers straightforward advice that will help you use Microsoft PowerPoint to create effective and enjoyable presentations.
You don’t want your slides to look like this:
Title too small
Font is small and hard to read
Texts overlap and have strange formatting
Clip art is too large; only one piece is necessary
Colors on the slide are distracting
Let’s Begin!
PowerPoint is a Microsoft application.
If you are proficient in programs such as Word and Excel, you are already familiar with over 100 common commands used by Microsoft Office software.
Let’s Begin!
NOTE: All of the icons, example buttons, and toolbars shown in this slide show are taken from the PC version of PowerPoint. The Macintosh version is similar, yet slightly different.
To Use PowerPoint
Become familiar with the toolbars
Select your presentation option
Learn how to create a slide
Learn how to organize design elements
Learn how to balance design elements
Learning the Toolbars
View buttons
Common tasks toolbar
Format-ting toolbar
Menu bar
Standard toolbar
Drawing toolbar
Learning the Toolbars
The Menu bar
The Standard toolbar
The View toolbar
The Drawing toolbar
The Formatting toolbar
The Common Tasks toolbar
Learning the Toolbars
The Menu bar contains the commands for which shortcuts exist on the toolbars.
For instance, under File you can find the option to Save your presentation, which is also available on the Standard toolbar.
In the Formatting menu, you can click on Alignment and change the flow of text on your screen. You can also click one of the alignment icons on the Formatting toolbar to perform the same task.
Learning the Toolbars
The Standard toolbar contains a number of useful shortcuts:
New presentation
Open a new or existing presentation
Save
Print
Spelling
Learning the Toolbars
The Standard toolbar also includes a number of other shortcut features:
Insert a Microsoft Word Table
Insert a Microsoft Excel Table
Insert a Chart
Insert Clip Art
The Office Wizard. When you click this and type a question, it will search the Help index for possible answer.
Learning the Toolbars
The View toolbar gives different options for viewing slides:
Slide View: shows slides one by one
Outline View: shows an outline of all slide text
Slide Sorter View: places all the slides on one screen in slide format
Note Pages View: allows you to add and read notes below each slide
Slide Show: allows you to see the presentation
Learning the Toolbars
The Drawing toolbar gives shortcuts to:
AutoShapes: draw lines, arrows, rectangles, and ovals; access the AutoShapes menu
Text boxes: draw these where you wish to add text on a blank slide or add text to an existing slide
Line color, font color, and fill color options, with menus
Dash style and 3-D options
The Draw button presents a menu of other ways to manipulate your text and clip art, including rotation, alignment, and alterations to AutoShapes.
Learning the Toolbars
The Formatting toolbar allows you to:
Change font
Change font size
Add boldface, italics, underlining, and shading to text
Create animation effects
Change paragraph alignment
Learning the Toolbars
The New Slide button inserts a new slide directly following the slide currently being viewed.
The Slide Layout button gives choices of layouts for different pre-designed text box and clip art formations.
The Apply Design button gives pre-designed slide aesthetic options.
Learning the Toolbars
Finally, on the View menu you can choose which toolbars are available at any give time:
Click View
Scroll down to Toolbars
Select or deselect your preferences
Select Presentation Option
When PowerPoint launches you will see the screen above.
Here you select how you would like to create your presentation.
Select Presentation Option
The AutoContent Wizard is useful for those who are unfamiliar with PowerPoint or who need extra help.
It sets up an index of slides with preloaded titles, points, subpoints, and designs.
Select Presentation Option
The Template option provides moderate flexibility in designing presentations.
You choose from 28 templates to organize your points, subpoints, and design.
Select Presentation Option
The Blank Presentation option offers the most flexibility.
Users customize every aspect of the design for each individual slide.
The following slides will teach you how to work from Blank Presentation.
How to Create a Slide
Click New Slide to select a layout for the title slide.
To change the color of the slide either right-click it and select Slide Color Scheme or select Format and then Slide Color Scheme from the Menu bar.
How to Create a Slide
You choose the color scheme and format of the slide, and if you wish you can also apply these choices to all of the following slides.
You can change the color scheme of one or all of your slides at any time.
How to Create a Slide
To change the order of the slides, first select Slide Sorter View ( ) from the View toolbar. You can move slides by cutting and pasting or dragging and dropping
To delete a slide, either click on it while in Slide Sorter View or go to it in Slide View ( ), then select Edit from the Menu bar and click on Delete Slide.
Organizing Design Elements
Text
Clip art and pictures
Animation effects
Balancing the elements
Organizing Text
As you can see from this slide, text boxes can be put anywhere.
Click on the icon on the Drawing toolbar.
With the cursor, draw the approximate size you need for your text.
Organizing Text
You can expand the box to include more text or make it smaller to make room for other design elements on the slide.
The pre-designed selections from the Slide Layout screen offer the most logical and often-used layouts.
Organizing Text
Use a readable font and font size for each different aspect of the page (a good size range is between 20-60 points).
Be consistent from slide to slide with fonts and font sizes.
Choose colors that will ensure that your text is readable and your slides do not appear distracting.
Organizing Text
Don’t use too many different fonts.
DON’T USE ALL CAPS.
Avoid fonts that are distracting:
Braggadocio
OzHandicraft BT
Shelley Volante BT
Organizing Text
Don’t include your entire speech on the slides. Instead highlight important points.
To determine what information is best to include in your presentation, you should:
Review your speech outline.
Identify points that can be illustrated, such as key terms and their definitions, statistics, or charts and graphs.
Organizing Clip Art and Pictures
To insert clip art onto your slide you can:
Select a slide layout that has a set space for clip art. When working on that slide, simply double-click on the clip art space and it will take you to the Microsoft Clip Gallery.
Use the Insert menu, click Picture, and then select Clip Art.
Click on the shortcut icon:
Organizing Clip Art and Pictures
To insert your own photos or graphics rather than ones from the gallery, click Insert, scroll to Picture, and select From File.
Here you can browse your computer and choose art from your own files.
Organizing Clip Art and Pictures
If you cannot find what you need in the gallery or your own resources, you have another option. Downloads of more images are available free from Microsoft via the Internet.
In the gallery, click on the icon in the bottom right corner.
Search by key word to find what you need.
Organizing Clip Art and Pictures
PowerPoint can incorporate graphs and charts as well.
On the Standard toolbar, there are shortcuts for inserting Microsoft Word tables and Microsoft Excel worksheets and graphs .
Change the numbers and labels on the graphs or charts to fit your information.
Organizing Clip Art and Pictures
Remember: use clip art, pictures, charts, and graphs only to illustrate points, not as fillers.
Organizing Animation Effects
PowerPoint has a variety of different ways that text and art can be animated.
For example:
Blinds Vertical
Fly from Bottom-Left
Box Out
Spiral
Checkerboard Across
Crawl from Right
Dissolve
Peek from Bottom
Stretch from Top
Appear
Wipe Right
Zoom In
Organizing Animation Effects
These effects can be interesting additions to your presentation, but they can also be distracting. Use them sparingly to add emphasis.
To animate, right-click on the text or image and select Custom Animation from the menu.
Select the effect you want to use, determine the order of the animations on the slide, and make sure to preview.
Organizing Animation Effects
Take time while in this screen to determine how your animation effects will appear.
Clicking on the Timing menu gives you options so that your textboxes, clip art, and other animation elements can be presented on a mouse click, automatically, or automatically after a preset length of time.
Balancing the Elements
Even if you follow all the suggestions for setting up your slide and its elements, you still may find that your presentation is hard to follow.
It is important to go back through your completed presentation and make sure that the overall experience of watching it is pleasant as well as educational.
Balancing the Elements
Defining a balanced slide may seem like a matter of opinion, but there are concrete criteria, including:
Clip art and text must fit together well. No element -- title, points, graphics -- should overpower the others.
Headings should be consistent in size and placement. They should be large and clear.
Easy to understand.
Example of a Balanced Slide
The clip art illustrates the slide and is well placed on the layout.
The title is large and clear.
Good use of contrasting colors on slide and in font.
Text is easy to read and well sized.
Example of an Unbalanced Slide
Title and color scheme are still fine.
Text is too small.
Clip art is too large.
This slide is hard to read and places unnecessary emphasis on the artwork.
Giving Your Presentation
Practice your speech
Time yourself.
