Administrative Assistant / Secretary: Using Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint is included as part of Microsoft Office and is used for creating slide show and multimedia presentations. PowerPoint presentations are commonly used in meetings, sales presentations, for training classes, and for webinars.

PowerPoint Views
The PowerPoint software allows you to view your presentation in several different ways. You can select different views using the View menu:
- Normal View is used for designing the look of the slides. Here you can work with the various fonts, colors, backgrounds, drop shadows, and so on.
- Outline View is best for working with text only. You can see your presentation in context, since you see the text of a number of slides at once. Also, Outline View gives you a sense of the relative importance of the various points you’re making. Finally, you can easily add, rearrange, or delete slides in this view.
- Slide Sorter View allows you to see all the slides in reduced size. This view is used for arranging slides in the sequence you want as well as setting transitions, builds, hidden slides, and other features.
- Notes Page View allows you to compose notes about each slide. The notes can be used to print a script for yourself or handouts for your audience.
To view your slide show, use the Slide Show menu. This is the view you use to present your presentation if you are going to do so on a computer screen or computer projector. In this view, since there are no toolbars or menus available, you primarily use keys to operate the show. For example, use the SPACEBAR to move to the next slide. After reaching the final slide in a presentation, the program exits from Slide Show View and the screen returns to the view you had before running the slide show.

Normal View
When you are in Normal View (where you’ll likely be most of the time when you are creating a presentation), you can move through the slides by using the scroll bar on the right. You can click on the small slide images along the left side of the screen.

Microsoft PowerPoint in Normal View.



Using Zoom
While working with slides in Normal View, you can change the size of the image to make it more convenient to work with. The Zoom icon is located on the View ribbon bar and looks like a magnifying glass. When you click the Zoom icon, you are presented with a small menu that allows you to select the amount of magnification. To return to the Normal View after zooming, click the FIT TO WINDOW icon on the View menu ribbon bar.

Working with Multiple Presentations
Like many Windows programs, PowerPoint permits you to work with more than one file at a time. You can open several presentation files at once in PowerPoint, and copy and paste information between them. Each presentation opens in its own instance of PowerPoint. You can switch between presentations by clicking the PowerPoint icon on the Windows taskbar, and then select the presentation you want from the small preview images that appear.

Notes Page View
In Notes Page View, you can create notes about each slide in your presentation. These notes can be printed to serve as a script or as a handout for the audience. To switch into Notes Page View, click the Notes Page View button.
The slide appears on a representation of a sheet of paper, with an area below it for notes. To type a note, you can click inside the notes box to make a cursor appear. However, at this size it will be difficult to read your note as you type it. To solve that problem, you can use the Zoom icon on the View tab.

Notes Page View in Microsoft PowerPoint.



Outline View
You can access the Outline View on the View menu by clicking the Outline tab on the left just under the Presentation Views group. From Outline View, you can focus on the text of your presentation and work quickly from slide to slide (Figure 21-3).

Slide Sorter View
In Outline View, you can concentrate on the content of the presentation—the text and arrangement. To work with the appearance of the presentation, you’ll use Slide Sorter View. To switch to Slide Sorter View, click on the Slides tab just below the ribbon bar on either the Home menu or View menu.
This view shows you the appearance of the slide, permitting your visual inspection. From here you can see if the colors are what you want, and if the general look and feel of the slide is proper.

PowerPoint Templates
A template is a presentation whose color schemes and layout formats can be applied to a slide presentation. PowerPoint comes with dozens of professionally designed, pre-built templates you can use when creating your own slide shows (Figure 21-4). In fact, new presentations can be patterned after a default template called “Blank Presentation. pot,” or you can select from a variety of templates.

Outline View in Microsoft PowerPoint.



Microsoft PowerPoint templates.



After creating your presentation, you can even save its look and feel and use it again in another presentation by applying the template to the new file.

Changing a Template
Changing a PowerPoint template that you have chosen is a powerful way to instantly reformat your entire presentation. When you change templates, all formatting revisions you’ve made to the Slide Master, including font types and sizes, colors, and text position, are reset. However, changes that you made on individual slides will remain intact. Again, any formatting changes you made to individual slides will remain even though you changed templates.

Working with Slides in PowerPoint
After creating your slides, you can easily change the order of the slides in the presentation, copy information from one side to another, reformat text on a slides, and add or delete slides.

Adding a New Slide
You can add a new slide by selecting where you want the new slide to be and clicking on the NEW SLIDE button on the Home tab ribbon bar. Another way to create a new slide is to begin a new line in the outline at the top level. You begin a new line by pressing ENTER at the end of the previous line. The first text you type will be the title of the slide. When you press ENTER, you will start a new line of text.

Moving Text for Slides
If you need to move text from one slide to another, you can easily do it by selecting the text and dragging to another slide in the Outline View. When you release the mouse button, the text will be pasted into the second slide.
In Normal View, you can move text between slides by using the copy and paste feature on the Home tab.

Adding More Text to a Slide
If you need to add some text to an existing slide while in Outline View, the easiest way to do that is to press CTRL and ENTER at the end of the title line. This will automatically make a bullet appear and allow you to enter the next line.

Demoting and Promoting Text Lines
One of the most common features of a PowerPoint presentation is the bulleted text or numbered lists that accompany the slides. You can also have lines of text that are indented below another line. Indenting text is called demoting. Moving indented text out to be even with the rest of the lines or the bulleted list is called promoting. For example, if you need to demote a new line to become an item under the title, you can do that by clicking on the DEMOTE button.
As you might guess, you can promote items using similar methods (except you use the PROMOTE button, of course). If you promote an item all the way to the top level, it creates a new slide and becomes the title of the slide.
The Promote and Demote icons are available on the Home tab in the Paragraph group.

Rearranging Slides
To change the sequence of a slide, you should switch to Slide Sorter View. You can do this by clicking the View menu and then clicking SLIDE SORTER. This gives you a thumbnail view of the various slides in your presentation. To rearrange the order of your slides, you simply drag a slide icon to the new position. For example, if you wanted to move slide number 3 to the second position, you would click on the icon for slide number 3 and drag it until a horizontal line appears beneath slide 1.

Slide Sorter View in Microsoft PowerPoint.



Deleting Slides
To delete a slide in Slide Sorter View, you select it and press the DELETE key. As with most Windows applications, you can undo a deletion (or any action) by using the Undo button in the top left corner of the screen. It looks like a curved arrow.

Using Transitions and Animation
The Transitions menu allows you to create transitions between the slides in your presentation. These transitions can take the form of fades, or dissolves and wipes, and are applied to the “incoming” (next) slide in a sequence.
Animation can be applied to the elements within a slide by selecting the element and then clicking the Animation menu.
For both transitions between slides and animations of elements within a slide, you can select an option from the ribbon bar. The Timing group of icons allows you to control the speed of the transition or animation.

Using Build Effects
In PowerPoint terminology, a build is a sequence of slides that displays each point, one at a time, in a bulleted list. While you could create each slide individually, using a build effect allows you to concentrate on other aspects of your presentation.
To reveal a series of bulleted text items one at a time during your presentation, select the text box, then click the Animations menu. Select one of the animations on the ribbon bar, then click the Effect Options icon and from the Sequence list, select BY PARAGRAPH.

Saving a Presentation
Once you’ve created a presentation, you’ll want to save it. If you’ve used any Windows applications before, you already know how. You click the Save icon in the top left corner of the screen or you can click the File menu and then click SAVE or SAVE AS.

Previewing the Slide Show
One nice feature about PowerPoint is that you can run your slide show at any time while you’re in the process of creating it. It’s so simple to preview the show at any time that you may find yourself running the slide show often just to be certain that the effects come out right and the look is just what you want.
To run your slide show, click the Slide Show menu and then select one of the icons on the toolbar to start the presentation either from the beginning or from the currently selected slide. Your screen will go blank for a few moments while PowerPoint prepares to run the slide show. To move from slide to slide, use the space bar. Because different computer systems work at different speeds, you may experience a slight delay in getting to the first slide. Just be patient.
Here is a list of keyboard commands you can use while in the Slide Show. This table is taken from the online help screen, which you can display by searching for “keyboard shortcuts.”
 

Slide Show Keyboard Commands
 

Using Fonts and Color in Your Presentations
Fonts are usually thought of as the specific typeface designs for letters, numbers, and other characters that make up the text of a presentation. Windows supports an almost unlimited array of fonts, so using the correct one for the job is a fairly important matter.
Picture the front page of a typical newspaper for a moment. Headlines appear in larger, bolder fonts than the text that follows, designed to catch your eye as you read. Smaller subheads may punctuate sections of an article, allowing the reader to browse the piece quickly and grasp the meaning at a glance. The text of the presentation is in a smaller, less dramatic font so that reading the article won’t become tiring on the eyes.
The point is that fonts should be used as a design element to make your presentation more easily absorbed by the audience. When you make presentations with a tool like PowerPoint, you want your material to be both easily understood and have enough pizzazz to keep everyone’s attention. Fonts can go a long way toward getting your point across to an audience.

Changing Fonts
When you choose a template, an appropriate font is selected for you. But you can easily change the font for the entire presentation by making the change on the Slide Master. As a general design rule, though, you should stay with one font for all of the presentation. A single font will give your work a cleaner, more consistent look. If you mix fonts, you may end up with tacky-looking slides.
Although there are many different styles of fonts available, they fall into two basic categories, called serif and sans serif. A serif is a short line or stem at the end of the strokes of individual letters. This little “tail” lends a particular flair or style to the typeface design. Sans serif means “without the serif.” A sans serif font has letters with no end strokes.
Studies show that serifs help guide the eyes and make text easier to follow. For this reason, publications with dense text, such as books, magazines, and newspapers, almost always use serif fonts. Typical examples of serif fonts include Times Roman, Times New Roman, New Century Schoolbook, Bookman, Palatino, and Courier (typewriter font).
For screen design, where text is kept to a minimum, a sans serif font may provide a cleaner look to your presentation. This is why television commercials and magazine ads frequently use sans serif fonts. Examples of sans serif fonts include Helvetica, Swiss, Arial, Avant Garde, and Modern. At least a few, if not all, of these fonts should be available on your particular computer system.
For presentations, you might use either a serif or a sans serif font, but you should avoid mixing them.

Changing the Font Size and Color
Each font style is available in a number of sizes, measured in units called points. The title of the slide is usually in a larger point size than the body text. To see the point measurement for the font size, simply look at the ribbon bar on the Home menu.
To increase or decrease the size of the text, simply click on one of the font size buttons until you get the font size you want. Each time you click the font size button, the text will become a bit smaller, shrinking to the next smaller point size available on your system. The other button will do just the opposite—that is, it will make the selected text get just a bit larger.
Color is an important aspect of character formatting. Here you have to be careful. The chosen template uses appropriately coordinated colors. To help protect you from choosing an inappropriate color, the template uses a color scheme. A small drop-down box appears with several colors shown. There’s a reason so few colors are shown—these are colors matched to the color scheme you’re using for the current slide, and they will blend in easily. Other colors are available, in case you need them, from the MORE FONT COLORS option.

Changing Alignments
With PowerPoint, you can use various paragraph alignments to reposition text. You can change the alignment for any text area, or for any individual paragraph, to centered, left, right, or justified.
While text is an undeniably important aspect of your presentation, the way your text is presented is also very important. PowerPoint allows you to modify the background to use a wide variety of colors and gradients, or fill patterns, to make your presentation as visually appealing as possible.

Changing the Slide Background
Shading means displaying a color that ranges from lighter to darker. Sometimes, shading is performed by adding what is called a gradient, which means a gradually changing range of colors. Gradients can display a color from light to dark, or one color to another, and in general add to the visual depth of your presentation.
You can change the background by selecting the Design menu and then selecting BACKGROUND STYLES.

Changing the Color Theme
Changing the color theme can dramatically influence the look of your presentation. Unlike a template, a color theme can be applied to individual slides as well as to the entire presentation.
You can change the color theme by selecting the Design menu. A list of various color themes is available on the ribbon bar as small preview icons. Holding your mouse over one of the icons will automatically change the color theme of your current page.
If you right-click one of the themes, a pop-up menu will allow you to choose whether you want to apply the theme to a single slide or all the slides in your presentation.
There may be instances when you want to use different schemes for different slides as a sort of color coding. In the absence of careful planning, however, varying schemes may cause problems with visual consistency, which may in turn annoy or distract your audience.

Using the PowerPoint Masters
PowerPoint lets you look at different masters that correspond with different ways of viewing your work. There’s a Slide Master, a Notes Master, and a Handout Master.
The master shows you sample text to indicate the area size and placement of the title and body text. This helps you eye the layout of the template and gives you a way to reformat text on the master level.

Slide Master
The Slide Master controls the format for each slide in your presentation. For instance, when you want to change the size of the title on each slide, you simply change the title area one time on the Slide Master. You can access the Slide Master by clicking the View menu and then click the Slide Master icon.

Notes Master
The Notes Master gives you the ability to format your speaker notes. You can see your slide and type notes into the area shown to help remind you of important items to be covered in that slide, and any other related issues that may not be shown on the slide. You can access the Notes Master by clicking the View menu and then click the Notes Master icon.

Handout Master
The Handout Master is used to add text and artwork to your audience handouts. You can access the Handout Master by clicking the View menu and then clicking the Handout Master icon.

Inserting Visuals
Visual media, which include graphics, photographs, movies, and animations, can be added to multimedia productions in a wide variety of ways. These can come from commercial sources, such as computer clip art, or CDs or DVDs of images, or from photographic or computer supply companies. Clip art is one of the most commonly used sources of images for PowerPoint.

Clip Art
When PowerPoint is first installed, the clip art files are placed in a subdirectory on your hard drive. To open any of these files, click the Insert menu and then select CLIP ART. PowerPoint may take a few moments to compile available images the first time you use the INSERT > CLIP ART command. The Clip Art Menu will display. Enter search criteria that best describe what you are looking for, then click the GO button.
Each clip art category contains a number of images related by subject, as suggested by the titles. The Microsoft Clip Gallery is actually a miniature application within PowerPoint. You’ll be able to add your own images and create your own categories, to better organize your clip art collection.
You can use the Clip Gallery program to preview clip art you wish to use in a presentation. Each image is represented by a thumbnail, or tiny version of the real thing. You might not be able to see all the detail in each picture, but you can get an overall idea about content, layout, and colors used from the thumbnail.
Once you’ve found the clip art that complements your presentation, you may find that a small amount of tweaking is needed to get it just right. PowerPoint allows you, like many other Windows-based drawing programs, to resize and move your graphics in almost any way you need.
Once a clip art image is pasted onto your slide, you can manipulate it by moving it or resizing it to fit your needs. Also, as a general rule, you should avoid using more than one image per slide. Too many images can clutter a slide and detract from your message.

Charts and Tables
Since your presentations cannot be dependent on clip art alone, it’s nice to know that you can insert other types of graphic images into your slides. Charts and tables can communicate mathematical relationships in a visual way. PowerPoint actually has a graphing module built into the program. Just select the Insert menu and then click CHART.
When the datasheet is on the screen, you’re actually using Microsoft Chart, a program included with PowerPoint. You could think of it as a (much) scaled-down version of Excel, or some other Windows-based spreadsheet application.

Smart Art
Another type of visual you can add to your PowerPoint presentation is Smart Art—colorful graphs and charts that you can customize with your own text for displaying bulleted text, conceptual diagrams, and organizational charts. You can access the Smart Art by clicking the Insert menu and then selecting SMARTART.

Original Artwork
In addition to using clip art, you can create graphics from scratch on the computer by using simple paint programs, such as Microsoft Paint, or more complicated drawing programs, such as Adobe Photoshop. Art can also be created outside the realm of the computer by way of pen, pencil, paint, crayons, photography, or any other medium, and then brought into the computer for editing and incorporation. You can digitize images with a scanner, shoot photos with a digital still camera, or have your camera film processed and the images digitized.

Drawings with Shapes
Another special tool, called Shapes, gives you the ability to create less conventional shapes, such as stars and arrows. You’ll find this tool on the Insert menu of the ribbon bar.
The Shapes tool can be handy when you need something other than a simple rectangle or oval, and PowerPoint treats the shape as it does any other object. You can move and resize the shapes, type text onto them, or copy them for use elsewhere in your presentation. Using the SHIFT key will constrain your drawings—rectangles will become squares, ovals will become circles, and so on. Use the SHIFT key whenever you want symmetrical images.

Videos
You can incorporate videos into your presentations as simply as you can place graphics on the screen. Videos can be shot with a digital camcorder and transferred to the computer using a special cable or a video capture card. You can then edit the video using a program such as Windows Movie Maker and export it for use in the PowerPoint presentation.

Sound Media
In addition to still images and video, sound is another powerful medium. Audio in a multimedia presentation, just as graphics, can originate from a wide variety of sources, from commercial prerecorded music or historical speeches, to stand-alone sounds or part of a video, to narration recorded with a microphone connected to your computer.

Planning a Presentation
Consider the following as you plan your PowerPoint presentation.
- Determine your goals and objectives. Begin by defining your goals. What do you hope to accomplish? Is your goal to persuade or merely to inform? Persuasion may require getting your audience emotionally involved in your argument—getting them to care. On the other hand, if you are simply making a report, you may want your audience to remain objective, clear-headed, and somewhat emotionally detached. Define your objectives. What topics will support your thesis?
- Consider the subject matter. Are you presenting a training seminar, a presentation to managers or employees, or a sales presentation? This will determine the scope of your presentation and the tone you want to set.
- Consider your audience. Will it be employees, customers, business people, professionals, or mixed? Conservative or progressive? Formal or informal? Are they people you know personally or total strangers? Consider the audience’s familiarity with the subject matter. If they are unfamiliar, or if the subject is somewhat technical, present one concept at a time and move in progression. Both subject matter and audience should help you determine the tone of your presentation. Do you want a lot of humor, or a more subdued approach?
- Consider the size of your audience. Larger audiences may dictate the need for more structure and formality. A smaller audience may be less formal, giving you more room for improvisation and one-on-one interaction.
- Consider the environment. Where will your presentation be viewed? Is it an office, small conference room, or hotel meeting room? How visible is the screen from each part of the room? If visibility is questionable, you may want to include handouts with printed versions of each slide. If you’re not familiar with the equipment, try to arrange time for setting up and rehearsing your presentation before delivering the real thing.
- Keep it simple. Regardless of the purpose of your presentation, always keep it simple and focused. A simple, clear message can be delivered with greater impact and is more likely to achieve results. A complicated or muddled message will leave your audience confused and frustrated, which may hinder your chances for success. Keep the number of topics to a minimum. When expounding on each topic, make sure the information on each slide is clear and easy to understand.
- Design for flow. Outline your content in a topical format, with a beginning, middle, and end. Keep your ideas focused, organized, and directed toward reaching a logical conclusion. While sound reasoning and logic are not the only ways to effectively communicate or persuade, they are tried-and-true methods.
- Design for drama. Timing is everything. Design your presentation with a dramatic curve in mind. That is, build anticipation until you pique your audience’s interest toward the end and deliver the central conclusion.
- Think and plan ahead. Do you need to prepare slides, overheads, or handouts? If you plan to distribute handouts, consider whether you want to give them out before or after the presentation. If before, the audience can follow along, write notes on the handouts, and have an immediate reference, should they have trouble seeing the screen. Yet, saving the handouts until the end may help you avoid giving away any surprises you may have planned.
- Practice. Practice delivering the presentation to a coworker or friend. Your friends can offer helpful critiques by letting you know if your presentation is clear and focused, if your style and manner are tasteful, and if your treatment is interesting enough. They can also help you smooth over some of the rough spots.

Making Your Presentation
When the day arrives for your presentation, there is a set of steps you might follow to ensure success. These guidelines will help you become a better developer and presenter. It’s really true—practice does make perfect in the world of multimedia development. And post-presentation follow-up is an essential part of this process.
Step 1: Set up. The first step is to set up the necessary equipment.
Step 2: Test run. Make a test run through the presentation. This is especially necessary if the presentation was prepared on a different computer.
Step 3: Backup plan. Develop a plan B. If the computer breaks or does not make it to the room in which the presentation will take place, what will you do? Having a backup plan is always a good idea!
Step 4: Deliver. Deliver the presentation. This may seem obvious, but don’t be afraid to just do it! If everything goes perfect, you will be lucky. If not, relax, smile, and work through the problems.
Step 5: Evaluate. Take time to reflect on the experience now that the presentation is over:
- What went well?
- What needs to be improved?
- What was frustrating?
- What was exciting?
- What did you learn from the process?