The Essentials - Microsoft PowerPoint 97 Ross Metherell and Shaun Raebel Shaun Raebel

Contents n What is Microsoft PowerPoint? n Basic features –Auto presentation wizard –Working with templates –Creating new slides –Formatting n Making your presentation catchy n Colour schemes that work n The readability test

–Slide Transitions –Catchy Vs. Distracting –Setting slide timing –Playing your show n Advanced Features –Packing your show for transport –Adding multimedia

What is Microsoft PowerPoint? n Microsoft PowerPoint is a powerful software tool which can be used by anyone; from novices to professional salespeople. n PowerPoint is used to create slide shows for any use. These slides can be formatted and personalised in many different ways. n The hardest part of creating any successful presentation is making it aesthetically appealing; PowerPoint makes this easy by the use of Colour Schemes.

Basic Features n Auto Content Wizard –This is an easy to use guide which will create, for you, a personalised presentation for a common purpose. –To use the Auto Content Wizard, open PowerPoint and choose File, New. Click on the Content tab. Then select acwiz.pwz. –First you choose the presentation type: generic, project overview, company meeting, marketing plan etc.

Basic Features –Choose output options –Choose the style: on screen, overhead, or slides. Do you want handouts? –Choose a title, your name and additional info. –Click finish - it’s that easy!

Basic Features n Working with templates –Templates are standard slide layouts and colours which can be used to create a catchy presentation quickly and easily. –To use a template, start PowerPoint and select File, New. Then select the Designs tab. Then browse through the list of templates until you see one that you like the look of. –Now you’re ready to enter your own text and hey presto! It’s that easy!

Basic Features n Creating new slides –Sometimes you will need to add new slides to a template or autocontent presentation, or to a presentation of your own. –To add a slide to your presentation, simply choose Insert, Add slide. –The slide will be inserted immediately after the current slide; ie if slide 6 is on the screen, the new slide will become slide 7.

n Formatting –Making your presentation catchy n To make a presentation catchy, it must have the following things –a theme ( uniform colours etc, with some deviation ) –a structured layout –appropriately sized text (note that this bullet point is smaller than headings above it?) –easy to read, with short bullet points, as opposed to long, slide filling paragraphs. –some form of animation, or sounds; be careful not to overdo it! Basic Features

–Colour schemes that work n PowerPoint makes it easy for you to choose a set of colours which look good together in a presentation. To facilitate this, PowerPoint includes colour schemes. Colour schemes are sets of colours which are automatically applied to different objects. These colour schemes help improve readability and continuity within a presentation. n To choose a colour scheme, choose Format, Slide Colour Schemes.

Basic Features n Slide Transitions –The “Page Up” and “Page Down” keys can be used to move backwards and forwards through the slides during a presentation or even when typing the presentation. –The space bar can be used to advance the to the next slide during a presentation. –When the presentation moves from one slide to the next, you can make the presentation look even more professional by adding what are known as slide transitions. –To add slide transitions, choose Slide Show, Slide Transition

Basic Features n Catchy vs. Distracting –When you are creating a presentation, it is easy to ignore the actual content. PowerPoint will no doubt blow you away with endless features which you will want to explore. –This is great, but DON’T LET THEM DISTRACT or DETRACT FROM THE CONTENT OF THE PRESENTATION. Slide transitions, fancy colour schemes and easy to read text are no good if you fail to ignore this point. –The best kind of presentation in our experience has been one which utilises SOME of the features; in style. Similar transitions and a constant colour scheme are best. Avoid distracting entrances of text, word by word!

Basic Features n Setting slide timing –Slide timing is used to automatically advance slides. This can be useful where the presentation will be left to run without manual interference, or at computer kiosks where the keyboard must be removed. –The best way to set slide timing is to use the rehearse slide timing option. –To do this, choose Slide Show, Rehearse Slide Timings. Then read the slides as if you were the audience - press enter about 3 seconds after YOU finish reading to allow for slow readers. Easy!

Basic Features n Playing your show. –Once you have set options and finished creating your presentation, you will obviously want to sit back and marvel at your laborious efforts. –To play your presentation, click on the button under the red dot as shown to the left.

Advanced Features n Packing your Show For Transport –This wizard helps you pack your entire PowerPoint presentation to give on another computer. By clicking on the “File” menu, and clicking on the “Pack and Go” button, you will activate the ‘Pack and Go Wizard”. From there, the wizard will guide you through packing your files. You can even include a PowerPoint Viewer so you can view a presentation on a computer that doesn’t have PowerPoint installed.

Advanced Features n Adding Multimedia –To enhance your slide show, you may wish to include multimedia or other OLE objects. OLE objects are objects which support a protocol known as Object Linking and Embedding, which basically means that these objects can be included within other documents across a number of client/server programs. –Examples of these OLE objects are Bitmap Image, Microsoft Equation, MS Org Chart, etc.

Advanced Features n To add an OLE object to your presentation, select Insert, Object. You can either create a new object and it will auto embed when you save, or you can choose the Create from File option to insert an existing object. n Below is an example of an embedded MS Excel Worksheet...

Now you know the essentials of Microsoft PowerPoint. Thankyou for your time, and happy showings! © Ross Metherell and Shaun Raebel 1999