Creating An Impress Presentation An Impress Presentation On How To Use Impress To Create An Impress Presentation

Creating An Impress Presentation Prepared for the Eastern Shore Literacy Council by Bob Wessel

What is Impress? Impress is the part of the OpenOffice.org (OOo) office suite which is used to create presentations. These presentations can contain any combination of text, graphics and photos, audio and video. Although there may be some loss of audio and video components, Impress presentations can be exported into PowerPoint, PDF and Adobe/Macromedia Flash formats.

What is OpenOffice.org (OOo) OpenOffice.org (OOo) is an office suite based on Sun Microsystems' Star Office. OOo is open source (i.e., free) and multi-platform, meaning it will run under many operating systems, including: Windows, Linux and Unix. Some of the major components of OOo are: a full-featured word processor (Writer), a spreadsheet (Calc), a presentation program (Impress), a database program (Base), and a vector graphics editor (Draw).

Why Use OOo? Literacy organizations and other community- based nonprofits are often underfunded and operate on a shoestring budget. Literacy learners and other customers of community-based nonprofits are frequently economically strapped and cannot afford to buy new computers and proprietary software. Using multi-platform, open-source software on donated computers can reduce the cost to that of an Internet connection and possibly an external modem or network card.

Obtaining OpenOffice.org OOo can be downloaded from the OpenOffice.org website ( Downloading instructions, manuals and so on can also be found here.

The Tutorial This tutorial shows how to use a subset of the tools contained in Impress to create a basic presentation. For information on other features and how to use them, please refer to the manual, which can be downloaded for free from the OOo website ( or search the Internet. [Note: If this tutorial spawns a community of users, a blog can be created which can allow them to share information on using OOo.]

Prerequisite Skills To use this tutorial, you need only basic word processing skills (i.e., writing and editing text, cutting and pasting, saving and retrieving a file). Skills required for creating and editing photos, graphics, audio and video are beyond its scope and will not be addressed.

Launching Impress Launch Impress as you would any other application. This can be done by clicking on the desktop icon or through the Windows Start Menu or its equivalent, when using another desktop environment.

The Presentation Wizard When the Presentation Wizard dialog appears, make sure Empty Presentation is checked and then left-click on Create. 1) Make sure Empty Presentation is checked. 2) Left-click on Create.

The Main Impress Window The main Impress window will now appear.

The Menu Bar And Toolbars The menu bar is located across the top of the screen. Its menus (File, Edit, View, etc.) should be familiar to anyone who has used a word processor. The toolbars located just beneath the menu bar should also be familiar. Some of the features specific to Impress will be discussed later in this tutorial. The drawing toolbar is at the bottom of the screen. This is used for drawing arrows, etc.

Drawing Toolbar Formatting Toolbar Standard Toolbar Menu Bar

Parts Of The Main Impress Window The main Impress window is divided into three parts: 1) The Slides pane contains thumbnail pictures of the slides in the order they will be presented. 2) The Task pane contains prepackaged slide layouts and a few other features. 3) The Workspace is where the various parts of a slide are assembled.

Workspace Slides Pane Task Pane

The Task Pane The Task pane contains 20 pre-packaged layouts. At the moment, it is not possible to add new layouts, so you must start with one of these. These layouts are very easy to modify and adapt, so you are not locked into them.

Layouts If you place the cursor over a layout thumbnail, a yellow popup containing a brief description of the layout will appear. Layout Thumbnail Description of Layout

The First Slide When you are creating a new presentation, the first slide will be blank.

The Title Slide To create a title slide for your presentation, left- click on the title slide thumbnail in the Layouts pane. This will change the Workspace slide layout. Left-click on title slide thumbnail. Workspace slide layout.

Adding The Title Left-click on Click to add title and type the title. Type the title.

Adding Text Left-click on Click to add text and type the text. Type the text.

Adding A New Slide To add a new slide, left-click on Slide in the standard toolbar. Left-click on Slide.

Adding A New Slide A blank slide will appear, immediately following the previous current slide. Previous Current Slide New Slide (Blue highlighting indicates it is current.) New Slide

Changing The Layout The new slide will have the same layout as the previous slide. To change the layout, left-click on one of the Layouts thumbnails. Title, Text Layout

Creating A Text Slide Type the title and then type the text.

Bullets Impress automatically inserts bullets in a text element. Text Element Bullet

Turning Bullets On and Off To turn bullets on or off, left-click on the Bullets On/Off icon in the formatting toolbar. Bullets On/Off

Adding An Image There are several ways to insert photos and other images in a slide. The simplest technique is to cut-and-paste the image from a file to the slide. This tutorial will demonstrate the simple technique. For information on using other methods, please refer to the Impress manual.

Preparing The Slide For this tutorial, the starting layout for slides containing images was Title, Text Above Object. Title, Text Above Object Layout

Type The Header And Text First, type the header and text.

Select The Text Element Left-click on the text inside the text element. A gray box will appear around the element. Text Element Gray Box

Select The Text Element Place the cursor anywhere over the gray box. A four-sided arrow will appear. Four-Sided Arrow

Select The Text Element With the 4-sided arrow visible, click the left mouse button. A box with 8 green handles will appear. Green Handle

Resize The Text Element Place the cursor over the bottom-center green handle, hold the left button down and move the handle up to reduce the size of the element. Bottom-Center Green Handle Move Up

Delete Object Element Left-click anywhere inside the object element to make the green handles appear. Object Element Green Handle

Delete Object Element Press the Delete key on the keyboard to delete the object element. Object Element Deleted

Copy Image Navigate to where the image is stored on your disk and right-click on the file's name. A menu will appear. Menu

Copy Image In the menu, place the cursor over Copy to highlight it and press the left mouse button. Copy Highlighted

Paste Image Return to the slide you are building and place the cursor inside the empty area beneath the text and click the left mouse button. Cursor

Resize The Image In this case, the image is large and covers the entire slide. Use the green corner handles to reduce the size of the image. Pull Green Handle Inward, Toward The Center Of The Image

Keep The Image Proportionate Be careful to move the green handle directly toward the center of the image, otherwise the image will become distorted.

The Drawing Toolbar Arrows, text and other explanatory graphics can be added to an image. This is done through the drawing toolbar, at the bottom of the screen. As these features are discussed in the tutorial on how to use OOo Draw, they are not included here.

Adding Audio To A Presentation Using a tool such as Audacity (see tutorial on Audacity), a spoken version of a slide's text can be recorded and inserted in a slide. The audio will then be played when the slide appears.

Adding Audio To A Presentation In the menu bar, at the top of the screen, left-click on Insert. In the menu that appears, left-click on Movie and Sound. Navigate to the location of your audio file and left- click on Open. A small speaker icon will appear in the middle of the slide.

Adding Audio To A Presentation In the menu bar, at the top of the screen, left-click on Insert. In the menu that appears, left-click on Movie and Sound. Navigate to the location of your audio file and left- click on Open. A small speaker icon, surrounded by green handles, will appear in the middle of the slide.

Adding Audio To A Presentation A few hints: To save disk space, the audio should be saved in MP3 format. The audio files need to be in the same folder as the Impress presentation. Name the audio files in a manner that clearly identifies their associated slides. Numbers aren't good, as the slides are renumbered when new ones are inserted later on.

Reposition The Speaker Place the cursor over the speaker icon, hold down the left mouse button, and drag the icon to an out-of-the-way place on the slide. Drag Icon

Reposition Speaker New Location of Icon

Viewing The Slide Show To view the slide show, either as you are creating it or as a formal presentation, left-click on Slide Show at the far right of the standard toolbar. The presentation will begin with the current slide. Use the keyboard Page Down or down arrow keys to move forward through the presentation. Use the Page Up or up arrow keys to move backward. To exit, click the right mouse button and select End Show from the menu that appears.

Saving The Slide Show Save the slide show as you would a text document in a word processor, either through Save or Save as... under the File menu in the menu bar or through the Save icon in the standard toolbar.

Other Formats Impress allows a presentation to be saved in other formats, such as Microsoft PowerPoint and PDF, allowing them to be viewed and edited in applications other than itself.

Export As PDF To save, or export, a slide show in PDF format, select Export as PDF... under File in the menu bar and follow the instructions that appear.

Save As PowerPoint To save a slide show in Microsoft PowerPoint format, click on Save as... under File in the menu bar. Under Save as type: in the window that appears, select Microsoft PowerPoint 97/2000/XP (.ppt) and then left-click on Save. A window will appear, warning about a potential formatting problem. Click Yes to save the presentation.

Editing A Saved Presentation To continue working on a saved presentation, either: (1) Navigate to the location of the presentation on your disk and double click on the file name. This will launch Impress and open the presentation. (2) Select Open existing presentation in the Presentation Wizard, navigate to the location of the file containing the presentation and click on Open.

Editing A Slide To edit an existing slide, left-click on the thumbnail for that slide in the Slides pane. A blue box will appear around the thumbnail, indicating it is the current slide. The slide will also appear in the workspace, where it can be edited.

Adding And Deleting Slides To add a new slide, go to the Slides pane and left-click on the thumbnail of the slide you wish to precede it. Then, left-click on Slide in the standard toolbar to create a new slide. The new slide will immediately follow the selected one. To delete a slide, go to the Slides pane and select the thumbnail of the slide you wish to delete. Then press the Delete key on the keyboard. The slide will be deleted.

The Impress Manual Using the information in the previous slides, you should be able to create a rather sophisticated presentation using Impress. You should now also have enough of an understanding of how Impress works to be able to easily use the manual. For more features and techniques, a PDF version of the manual can be downloaded for free from