1. Introduction to PowerPoint for Administrators
Chester N. Barkan
Registrar
Long Island University/C.W. Post Campus

2. Part I. Getting Started with the Basics
You've been asked to put together a presentation using PowerPoint, and you have no idea how to begin.
Goal is to prepare you with the basics — how to put content on slides and get ready to present a show. The bells and whistles can come later.

3. Goals of the Session After completing this course you will be able to:
Put text and pictures on slides.
Navigate in the PowerPoint window.
Apply a design template.
Arrange slide content by using layouts.
Print handouts and notes.
Prepare to give the show.

4. Getting Acquainted with PP Environment
A blank slide can be daunting; don't let it be. Soon you'll feel comfortable filling it up.

5. In the slide pane, type text directly onto the slide, within the placeholder. On the left is a thumbnail version of the slide you're working on. This area is the Slides tab, and you can click the slide thumbnails here to navigate among slides.
  The notes pane. Type notes that you'll use when presenting. You can drag the borders of the pane to make the notes area bigger.

6. PowerPoint Window
The window that first opens in PowerPoint has a big working space in the middle, with smaller areas around it. That middle space is the slide area, officially called the slide pane.
Working in this space, you type text directly onto the slide. The area you type into is a box with a dashed border called a placeholder. All the text that you type onto a slide resides in a box like this.
Slides include one or more placeholders for titles, body text such as lists or regular paragraphs, and other content such as pictures or charts.

7. Inserting New Slides
When PowerPoint opens, there's only one slide in the show. It's up to you to add the rest. Add them as you go or several at a time, as you prefer.
Two quick methods for adding a slide. On the Slides tab in the left of the window, either
Click the slide thumbnail that you want the new slide to follow, and then press ENTER. Or:
Right-click the slide thumbnail that you want the new slide to follow, and then click New Slide on the shortcut menu.

8. Use the Slides tab, the area on the left where the slide thumbnail is, to add new slides.
  Right-click the thumbnail that you want the new slide to follow, and then…
  …click New Slide on the shortcut menu.

9. Entering Text
Text is typed within a body text (as opposed to a title) placeholder. If you don't want a bulleted list, select the placeholder by clicking its border. Then click the Bullets button. Other buttons on the Formatting toolbar, such as the Center button, are handy for positioning text.
The indent buttons, such as Decrease Indent , help you position text at the right level of indent, and you can also use keyboard methods.
Automatic text fit    If you type more text than fits in the placeholder, PowerPoint reduces the text size to fit it all in. You can turn this behavior off, if you prefer.
This placeholder typically has five levels of text indents available, each with its own bullet style and ever-reducing type size. You'll rarely need so many indents, but PowerPoint offers them.

11. Navigating the Presentation
Once you have several slides in the show, you'll need to move among them as you add content. Here are three good ways to do that:
1. Click the slide thumbnail on the Slides tab to display that slide.
2. Next to the slide, at the bottom of the scrollbar on the right, click the Previous Slide or Next Slide button. Or:
3. Press the PAGE UP or PAGE DOWN key.
Ways to navigate:
  Click the slide thumbnail…
  …to display that slide, or…
  click the Previous Slide or Next Slide button.

12. Speaker Notes
As you put text on your slides, type your speaker notes (if you want any) in the notes pane, below the slide.
As the picture shows, you can enlarge the notes pane so that it's easier to work in. Your notes are saved in a notes page, which you can print before the show.
Suggestion    Use notes to embellish or elaborate on the points on the slide. This helps you keep from overloading the slide, and your audience, with text.
Warning and tip    If your notes exceed the space on the notes page, they will get cut off when you print. To prevent this, you can either:
Change the layout of the notes page. Or:
Send the presentation to Microsoft Word before printing.
Both these methods are detailed in the Quick Reference Card.

13. Design and Layout
When you've nailed down the text for your slide show, lift the presentation out of its black-and-white doldrums by applying a design template.
A template provides color, style, and decorative accents.
Slide won't always contain only text, and you'll need a way to arrange all that you put onto it — this is where slide layouts come in.
Inserting extra graphical elements — pictures, charts, and tables — onto slides.

14. A design template, a layout, and decorative Clip Art give a boost to the look of your show.

15. Design Template
Design template determines the look and colors of the slides, including the slide background, bullet and font styles, font color and size, placeholder position, and varied design accents.
Apply a template at any stage of creating the show. If you decide later that you'd rather use a different design template, you can apply another one.
Slide Design task pane is the place to go. PowerPoint has many templates to choose from. In the pane, choose to install even more PowerPoint templates if you like, or go directly to Microsoft Office Online for additional ones.
Note    Though the default look of your slides is blank, there is a template applied.

17. Slide Layouts
Issue of where to place the things you want. PowerPoint tries to help you here by displaying slide layouts to choose from each time you add a slide.
Layouts, arranges content to fit into a specific combination of placeholders. The picture shows some of the layouts available in the Slide Layout task pane. One of the choices there enables you to insert new slides that use that thumbnail's layout.
Make your best guess on a slide's layout as you go; you can apply a different one later, though this can sometimes mean that you need to adjust the content.
For example, if you know you'll have text on the slide and you also want a picture or graphic of some kind, choose a layout that supplies the placeholder types and arrangement that you want.

19. Placeholders
Whenever you type within a placeholder, you're working within the layout because placeholders — what type of content they're for and how they're arranged — make up the layout.
The picture shows the effect of applying a layout that has a text placeholder on the left and a content placeholder on the right. Each has built-in properties that support the type of content.
A default bulleted list and the AutoFit Options button that accommodates overflow text.
Content placeholder has its own built-in behavior. It will position a picture or other graphical element in that space, and it provides icons that you can click to insert pictures, charts, or tables. It also will automatically reposition content in some cases when you introduce a new element onto the slide.
Using an icon in a layout is one way to insert, and it's described in more detail next.

21. Content
The icons are one method for inserting content. The next picture illustrates how you'd use one of the icons in the layout to insert a piece of Clip Art.
The piece of art would automatically be sized to fit this layout, although you could change its size. With something like a banner, you might also want to rotate it.
You don't have to use the layout icons to insert pictures and other things. See the next section for another method that gives you a few more options.

22. Insert by using the layout icon

23. Inserting by Menu
Another way to insert an item like a picture or chart is through the Insert menu. As long as you have the placeholder selected before you insert, the item will be placed in the correct area of the layout. It will also benefit from the automatic-layout behavior built into the placeholder.
The picture shows options on the Insert menu. When you point to Picture, there are a variety of additional choices that go beyond what you get by clicking an icon in the layout.
Caution about pictures    Pictures, particularly high-resolution photographs, can quickly inflate the size of your presentation. Be mindful of ways you can optimize such pictures to make them as small as possible. See the lesson Optimize pictures for more information. There are additional resources in the Quick Reference Card, too.

24. Copying other slides into the show
You may need to use slides from an existing presentation in your show. That's no problem. Just remember that those slides are probably using a different design template than the one that's in your presentation. PowerPoint will adapt the inserted slides to the current design—or not, if you tell it not to.
Two methods. Either:
1. Use the Slide Finder dialog box (on the Insert menu, click Slides from Files), pictured here. Or:
2. Copy and paste the slides, and then use the commands on the Paste Options button to get the design you want. The Paste Options button will appear under the slides you've pasted. Point to the button, click the arrow that appears, and make your formatting choices.

26. Slide Show View
As you create a show, preview it at any time in slide show view. As shown in the picture, this view fills the computer screen with your slides. This is an approximation of how the slides will look when projected.
To navigate through the show, you have several choices:
Click the mouse.
Press the DOWN ARROW key.
Click the Next arrow on the Slide Show toolbar (see the arrow selected on the computer screen in the picture).
By default, PowerPoint assumes that the show will be presented by a speaker and projected on a screen. But there are other ways to present: You'll see how to set these up in the practice session.
For in-depth instructions about navigation in a slide show, see the course Navigation know-how.

27. Proof, print, prep for the show
You've finished creating your slides. What are the next steps?
Start with previewing the show on your computer. Run a spelling check.
Then use print preview to see how your notes and handouts will look, and select the right printing options for them.
Next, package your presentation file and then either copy it to a server or burn it to a CD to make it available when you present.
Last, get some pointers for preparing to present the show.
Proof, print, prep for the show

29. Slide Show
As you create a show, preview it at any time in slide show view. This is an approximation of how the slides will look when projected.
To navigate through the show, you have several choices:
Click the mouse.
Press the DOWN ARROW key.
Click the Next arrow on the Slide Show toolbar (see the arrow selected on the computer screen in the picture).
By default, PowerPoint assumes that the show will be presented by a speaker and projected on a screen. But there are other ways to present.

30. Check spelling, make printouts
Rrun a spelling check by clicking the Spelling button. Your slides and notes are checked.
What are your choices for printed handouts? The picture shows you the options as they appear in print preview.
The ones that you're concerned include:
Printing the slides, one to a page.
Printing a handout, which includes choices ranging from one to several slides per page (see the example in the picture).
Printing notes.
Print preview: This is a great way to prepare the show for printing. You get to it by clicking the Print Preview button
In print preview, check out the printing choices available by clicking the Options button:
Color. This reproduces all the colors of the show on your printout. If you are printing to a black and white printer, this option becomes Color (On Black and White Printer). In this version, the show's colors are rendered in blacks, whites, and grays.
Grayscale. You get a modified version of the show's colors in blacks, whites, and grays. If you're printing in black and white, this option saves your ink cartridge while giving a somewhat artistic result.
Pure Black and White. This is the default. You get less gradation here  — fewer grays — and you lose the dimension that shading offers, while gaining some economy.
Tip    In this view, you can also adjust headers and footers on the printouts. These include slide and page numbers and other text, such as the date. For details, see the course The small print: headers and footers.

32. Package the presentation
As preparation for presenting, package your presentation to a folder or burn it to a CD) and be sure that you have access to it from the presenting computer.
"Package" refers to the process of copying your presentation file and any other files the presentation needs.

33. Presenting

34. Before Presenting
1. Go to the room where you'll be presenting, make sure that you can access your presentation from the computer you're using.
2. Run through the slide show.
3. Take your printed notes with you so that you can practice referring to them while you practice clicking through the show.
4. You might also ask someone else to go along, listen, and give feedback.

35. Tips that could Prevent Woe
Fonts    Odd text-wrapping in the presentation on the presenting computer, it's likely that the computer lacks a font you used in the original presentation.
To see if there's a font missing, on the Format menu, click Replace Fonts. Click the Replace list and look for a question mark before any font names in the list, which indicates that that font is missing. You can either try to install the font or replace it with another font.
To help avoid this problem, be sure the option to embed fonts is selected when you package a presentation for a folder or CD. Unfortunately, there are legal restrictions against embedding some fonts, so while this option can help, it won't guarantee you'll have all your fonts.

36. Tips that could Prevent Woe
When you choose a font color, select one that has a strong visual contrast to the background color. This makes a great difference for people who are color blind or visually impaired.
Display    You'll have the best results if you set the screen resolution on the computer to the same as the projector's resolution.

37. Part II. Special Features of PowerPoint
1. Browse to insert a customized template into a presentation.
2. Use the title master to add a unique design to title slides.
3. Optimize picture images to make your presentation file smaller.
4. Package one or several presentations to a CD or folder (see also "Before you begin" on this page).

38. 1. Design Templates
PowerPoint comes with a number of design templates:
Available from the Slide Design task pane.
Each template has unique font and bullet styles; a background design; a color scheme; a layout—all the basic style elements for a slide.
But part of the fun of PowerPoint is being able to tinker, and a typical example of this is customizing an existing template (such as the basic blank design) with your own fonts, colors, and background.

39. Browsing the Slide Design Task Pane
The Browse link in the Slide Design task pane enables you to apply a customized design from a file in any of these formats:
File format
What it is ppt? pps? pot?
A regular presentation file. A pps is a presentation file that always displays in Slide Show mode when you open it from Windows Explorer . A PowerPoint template file. Ideally, when you customize a design template, you should save the file as a .pot; that way, you can browse and apply it, and it is then added permanently to the templates in the Slide Design task pane.
But, that's "ideally." Browse is great because it lets you also apply template designs you've customized and saved in .ppt or .pps files. The difference is that these design templates, when applied, will live only in the current file; they're not a permanent part of your template collection.

41. Selecting the Design Template
Open the presentation you want to apply the design template to. Then select the slide thumbnail or thumbnails you want to get the styles, and click Browse.
Important    Keep these basic rules in mind when you're selecting the slide thumbnails:
1. Select one slide: The design template is applied to all the slides that currently use the same template as the selected slide.
2. Select multiple slides: The template is applied to just those slides.

42. Steps in Applying Template
When you click Browse, the Apply Design Template dialog box opens to the default location for templates (.pot files). If you're after a .ppt or .pps file, browse to the folder it's saved in.
All you do is select the file you want and click Apply; the design is applied to your presentation.
Only the design is applied
When you apply a design template through Browse, only the slide's styles (fonts, background, colors, bullets, layout) are applied; none of its content. And that should be your goal in using Browse: you want a slide's design only.
Note    If the file you apply contains multiple design templates, the first template is applied to your file, and you're prompted with a message asking if you want the rest of the templates added to the presentation. These don't automatically apply to any slides; they just become available in the task pane.

43. Working with the Title Master
The title master slide exists for this type of situation. It controls the styles (such as fonts, color scheme, art, and layout) on the title slides in a presentation. Any change you make to it shows on every title slide, but no other slides.
For every design template you apply in a presentation, there is a slide master. You can see this slide at any time if you open Slide Master view in PowerPoint (you'll get more about this view later in the lesson).
The slide master stores the styles for the template—such as font styles, layout (where the text, headers, and footers are positioned), background design, and color scheme. It's a place where you can make global style changes to your slides. For example, if you want the font to be a different color throughout the show, change it on the slide master.
The title master
For the most part, the templates included in PowerPoint have both a title master and a slide master. Although it too stores styles from the design template, the title master's layout and design differ slightly from the slide master's. This makes your title slides stand out from the other slides and also enables you to make changes that will affect all but your title slides or nothing but your title slides.

45. Benefits of Title Master
1. Title master makes it possible for you to customize your title slides to your liking without affecting the rest of your slides.
2. Customize the title master itself, to make it stand out even more, with a different font color, for example; or a piece of art that you want only the title slides to have.
3. Customizing the title master is especially beneficial if you plan to use the title slide multiple times in your show.
A typical example is with header and footer options; you can choose not to show date and time, slide number, or footer text on title slides, to keep those cleaner. (You'll see how to do this in the practice.)
. For instance, you could use title slides to introduce new sections in the show. All the customizations you've made to the title master show up on each title slide

47. Changing the title master
Displaying the title master, on the View menu, point to Master, and click Slide Master. This opens Slide Master view. Click the second slide thumbnail in the left of the window to display the title master.
The title master might look a little intimidating at first; it just takes some getting used to.
Color scheme, background, font style and color, shapes, art, and some animations can be changed or added here to make title slides unique.
For example, to change the font style for the title, you'd select the boilerplate text and change the style, but you wouldn't type text here.

48. 2. Pictures

49. Working with Pictures
Only certain image types can be optimized and they have to be inserted onto the slide in a way that makes them editable by PowerPoint. Don't copy and paste or drag images in.
Inserting the image
Use the Insert menu, Picture command, and insert either from the Clip Art task pane or from a file, scanner, or camera. This stores the image natively in PowerPoint; whereas, if you do a copy and paste, PowerPoint treats the image as an object, which it cannot optimize.
Eligible file types
High resolution images such as photographs are good candidates for optimization. Eligible file types include PNG, JPEG, TIFF, BMP, and GIF.
Ineligible file types
Pictures you can't optimize have a drawing type of format ("vector") and have file extensions such as WMF, EMF, CDR, and EPS.
Tip    If you use Clip Art to insert the picture, restrict your search to include only the "Photographs" media type because, for the most part, other types of clips can't be optimized.

51. Compress Pictures to Save Space
When you click Compress Pictures on the Picture toolbar, you see the dialog box shown on the left.
1. Reduce resolution
2. Reduce color format
Note the area in the middle of the dialog box called Change resolution. Use this when you don't need every single pixel in the current image to get an acceptable version of it for your slide show or Web presentation or your printed output. This can be effective with images you've scaled to be smaller, as their "dots per inch" actually increase in that case.
Changing the resolution can affect image quality. Before saving your file, look at your images in Slide Show mode after reducing the resolution. If you're not happy with the reduced resolution, select that picture in normal view, and use the Reset Picture button on the Picture toolbar to restore the original resolution.
Depending on how many colors are used in the image, sometimes its color format can be reduced to make its file size smaller. The Compress pictures option (within the Compress Pictures dialog box) does this, making color take up fewer bits per pixel. There's no loss in quality.

53. Pictures
Another option you have in the Compress Pictures dialog box is to delete "trimmings" from an image that you have cropped. Using this option, Delete cropped areas of pictures, can significantly reduce the size of an image file.

54. 3. Package to a CD
You've been waiting for it—an easy way to package your presentation files and carry them to present elsewhere or give them to someone else to view. Now you can bundle your presentation, all the files that link to it, related files of your choice, and the PowerPoint Viewer onto a CD or into a shared folder.
And, you have choices. The viewer, which runs presentations on a computer without PowerPoint, is optional. If you don't have a CD burner, package all your files to a folder instead, and copy the folder to a system that has a CD burner, or share it on a server.
The requirements for this feature are detailed on this page.

55. If you're an experienced presenter, you know that just because your presentation looks great on your computer, and all your sounds and movies run without a hitch, that's not a guarantee that it'll run fine when you copy it somewhere else.
One issue is your media files. Videos (such as an .mpg) and many types of sound files are only linked to your presentation; they don't travel with it, and so you have to be sure they're available from the presenting computer.
Another issue is the typical file size of a .ppt; these are large files. If you want a friend or colleague to see a presentation, attaching it in an message is not a great option.
And there's the case in which a computer you're presenting on or a person who will be running your show doesn't have PowerPoint. The PowerPoint Viewer solves that problem, running the show and doing so automatically. But you need a way to include the viewer with everything else.
PowerPoint offered "packaging" options in earlier versions that were similar to Package for CD, they just didn't do as much for you. Now you can forget about copying to floppy disks; put several shows and their related files on a CD, and hand it or send it to a friend. He or she can either view the shows automatically with the viewer or open them in PowerPoint and review and edit them.
There are also several benefits to packaging to a folder—an alternative option of this feature. More about this follows.

56. Packaging to a CD
1. Open the presentation you want to package. Then, on the File menu, click Package for CD.
2. You can use the Copy to Folder option if you want to share your presentation on a server.
3. If you copy to a CD, the CD must be readable and writable. If it's only readable, PowerPoint will request a different CD. If it's writable but already has data on it, PowerPoint will ask if you want to replace the existing data.
4. Once copying is done, a message asks if you'd like to copy the package to another CD; repeat the copy operation as many times as you need to.
Files you add to the package can include just about anything you want to have along—they don't have to be part of the presentation.

57. Packaging to a CD Name the CD or folder.
  To include files besides the current presentation and its linked files, click Add Files.
  By default, Options include the PowerPoint Viewer and linked files (more on these, next section).
  If you click Copy to Folder, you then specify its path, and the files get copied there.
  If you click Copy to CD, your CD burner is accessed and the copying begins.

58. 4. Options
Options dialog box opens from the Options button shown on the preceding screen.
Viewer    You only need to include the viewer if PowerPoint won't be installed on the presenting computer.
Linked files    Your linked files (such as sounds and videos) get copied into the folder or onto the CD when you package. Better yet, the links in your presentation update to reflect the files' new location.
Passwords    If you want to limit who can open and change your presentation files, give the files a password. If any of the packaged files already has a password, you're prompted about whether you want the password you've specified in Package for CD to override the password that's already applied to a file. If you click No, then the password required to open the packaged version of that file is the same as the file's original password. If you click Yes, the password for the packaged file changes to what you currently specify—but the original file keeps its original password.
When you set a password in Package for CD, the password applies to .ppt, .pot, .pps, and .mht (presentations saved as a Web page) files in the package. The password applies to the packaged versions of the presentations only and does not affect passwords you may have set in the original files (using the Security tab of the Options dialog box, Tools menu). (Note that in the packaging, .mht files are converted to .ppt files, as PowerPoint cannot protect a Web page.)

60. Conclusions
Now that you have learned the basics – you can all begin to create your own presentations.
If you have any questions, you can always me at
Have a Great Holiday Season