Microsoft PowerPoint - Flying Text and Classical Music
Written: Oct 10 '08
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Powerful presentation tool that will help you get ahead!
Cons: Advanced tools can be difficult to get your head around
The Bottom Line: Microsoft PowerPoint is very powerful, provided you know how to use it!
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| rapoob2's Full Review: Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 Full Version (License On... |
Understanding how to use Microsoft PowerPoint is no longer a luxury and a perk that you can put on your resume, it has become a necessity in order to excel. PowerPoint is used to put together presentations and is a very useful way of presenting data - whether it be on one slide or in a whole presentation. Understanding what PowerPoint has to offer can only help you. I have chosen to review PowerPoint 2003 for the same reason that I chose to review Excel 2003 first - a majority of corporations use the Office 2003 suite, so while there are subtle differences between 2007 and 2003, it is important to get your arms around 2003 first.
Overview
PowerPoint is a very powerful presentation tool that can help you present your findings in a clear, concise manner. Not only that, it can also help you break the ice during presentations (assuming you are in a setting where that's acceptable). Flying words. Disappearing text. Slide transitions. Music in a presentation. These are only a handful of things that I can teach you about.
Getting Started: The First Slide
When you create a new presentation, the first slide (the one that is there) is the title slide, where you enter things such as the title of your presentation and any subtitles, like your name or a catchy phrase that is sure to lure any clients in!
Getting A New Slide
This is something that seems so simple and straightforward when you do it, but may not be the easiest thing to figure out on your own (especially if you are not comfortable with computers). To insert a new slide (and this one will be in your default format for the rest of the presentation - e.g. not title slide format), take your mouse up to Insert and click on the first thing in the drop-down, Insert New Slide. The keyboard shortcut to do this is CTRL+M (hold down control and hit M).
Entering Text
Entering text is as simple as point, click, type. Anywhere on the slide where you see "Click to enter ...", just click on there, you will see a cursor appear, and you can start to type.
You Said Something Before About Default Slide Options? How Can I Change Those?
Ahh yes, changing the default slide in a presentation. This is something that is very useful to know. For example, you want to have page numbers on each slide - do you want to have to insert a text box at the bottom of each slide and type the page number manually? NO! What happens if you move around the slide order? You have to change it all! No way! Enter the Master Slide.
To see the Master Slide, take your cursor up to View, select Master, and then select Slide. This is where you can edit what will be on every page. So if you want the page number in every corner, to Insert / Slide Number. If you want every slide to be blue, go to Format / Background and choose a color. If you play around with the Master Slide you can get the hang of it. Just keep in mind that anything you do on the Master Slide will show up on every slide - so don't do any typing unless you want to see it a lot! To get out of the Master Slide, hit Close Master View on the Slide Master View pop-up.
Printing Slides Versus Handouts
This is important for all of you in college who are getting presentations for class - do you really need all of the slides to be on their own page when you print them out, or can you deal with two per page? How about 3 with note lines? How about 6 slides on each page? When you go to print, there is an option on the left of the print screen that says Print What: The default option is Slides, but you can change this to be Handouts (which will then bring up the area to the right and you can select how many slides you would like to see per page), Notes Pages (where you can print out any notes that you have next to your slides), and Outline. The two that I used the most in college was Slides and Handouts.
Fancy Stuff: Slide Transitions
Alright, now we're onto the good stuff: slide transitions. This will be what you see when you go from one slide to the next (when you are giving a presentation). So if you want the slide to melt into the next one, this is the place for you to figure out how to do that. Right-click on the picture of the slide that you have in mind on the left and select Slide Transition. On the right, a Slide Transition box should appear, and you have the ability to select from any of these. As you click on each one of these, you will see a quick preview on your screen. If you want to slow it down, change the speed in the selection area below. You can also select a sound to go with your slide transition, although I wouldn't really suggest it because that can get real old real fast. Believe me.
Fancy Stuff: Flying Text
And who doesn't like when you can have flying text? Communists, that's who. To create flying text, highlight the text that you would like affected and select Slide Show from up top and then Custom Animation. Here you have the ability to do many things to your text (not just flying, but appearing and other cool things like that!). Select Add Effect and then Motion Paths and then Draw Custom Path and then Scribble (because flying around is best done freehand). You can also decide if you would like things to happen on a timer or on a click (or when the previous things ends - so if you have one thing start on a click and the next start when the first ends, not a bad idea!).
Fancy Stuff: Inserting Music
Inserting music into your presentation can either make it really interesting, or really strange. Normally it goes towards the latter, but it's your funeral. To put music in, select Insert and then Movies and Sounds and then Sound From File. So if you are doing a presentation on classical music, you can have a clip of classical music that you can play during the presentation. As you probably guessed, you can do that for movies too (I'm assuming that you guessed from the Movies and Sounds).
Testing Out Your Presentation
This is one of the most important things - you always want to see your presentation the way that other people are going to see it and not how it looks where you can type. Maybe you can see all of the text, but take this time to think about people in the audience. Select Slide Show and then View Show and your slide show will start (you can also just press F5).
Overview
PowerPoint 2003 is a very powerful tool that can help you look professional and excel at your job. I know that I did not touch on a lot of topics in here, so if you have questions about how to do something in PowerPoint, please post a comment or feel free to email me! I will update this with people's questions - because if you have the question, chances are someone else does too!
If you haven't had a chance to read my overview of Office 2007, please do so!
I also wrote a piece on Excel 2003 called Excel Tips, Tricks, Shortcuts, and Help: How To Use Microsoft Excel - this answers virtually any question that you have about Excel.
Recommended:
Yes
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