Jan's Working with Presentations

Step-by-Step: Create from Blank Slides

Start with:  (PowerPoint open to a blank document)

Open Blank Presentation

1. If necessary, close and reopen PowerPoint to a blank presentation.

   The Title slide is the only slide in the presentation at this point, as you can see at the left in the Slides tab.
   

2. If necessary, insert your Class disk into the disk drive. 
   

3. Click on the Save button on the Quick Access Toolbar.
   Since this presentation has never been saved, you will see the Save As dialog or pane.

   New Name or Location: When you want to save with a new name or different location, you must use the command  Save As... on the Office button menu or on the File tab menu. Those three dots ... tell you that the command will open a dialog.

   Reduce File Size: Saving in a new location or with a new name can reduce the file size, sometimes dramatically.

4. Save to your Class disk in the folder powerpoint project1 as  worldtraveloffers-Lastname-Firstname.pptx
   

   It is a good practice to save your work as you begin, especially if you are modifying an existing file and want to keep the old version, too.

Add Text to Placeholders

1. 

   Click in the Title placeholder (where it says "Click to add title") and type:
   World Travel Inc.
   

2. Click in the Subtitle placeholder (where it says "Click to add subtitle" and type:
   Report: Special Anniversary Trips  
3. Save.
   [worldtraveloffers-Lastname-Firstname.pptx]
   

Insert New Slide

The easy way to insert a new slide is to use the New Slide button. Duh! But be careful exactly where you click.

1. On the Home tab, click the New Slide button on the icon part , not on the text.
   A new blank slide is inserted after the current slide with the default slide layout - Title and Content.

   If you click the bottom part of the button, the arrow opens a list of layouts and you must chose one. This is how you pick a layout at the same time you add a new slide.

   The Navigation pane at the left now shows 2 slides - the Title slide and a blank slide.   

2. On the Home tab click on the Layout button on the Home tab to open list of layout.

   This is how you pick a new layout for an existing slide.

   For this slide, the default Title and Content layout will work fine. Do not click on any of the layouts.
   
   

3. Type in the Title placeholder on the slide:  Goals    
4. Type in the Text placeholder the list items:
    
   
   Offer to 200 frequent/high volume customers
   Schedule 100 people
   Schedule 40 other trips as a direct result of offer
   Total sales of $250,000

   When you press the Enter key to create a new line, PowerPoint automatically adds a bullet. Handy!!   

5. With the Goals slide selected, insert another new slide by clicking the New Slide button.
   A blank slide appears after the selected slide.
   
6. Type in the Title placeholder: Success? Yes!
   

7. Type in the text placeholder:

   # people > Goal by 24
   AND
   Total sales > Goal by $19,000!  

   Hmmm. This information does not really need to be in a bullet list. You can remove the bullets.

8. Save.
   [worldtraveloffers-Lastname-Firstname.pptx]

Remove Bullets

Bulleted text is the default for a content placeholder. That's not always what you need! But there is no standard layout that has a placeholder for non-bulleted text. It's a good thing that you can remove some or all of the bullets easily.

1. Put your cursor in the first bulleted line.
   
2. Method 1: Toggle Bullet button
   On the Home tab click on the Bullets button.
   The bullet toggles off and you have a plain text paragraph.
   
3. Put your cursor in the second line, which still has a bullet.
   
4. Method 2: Apply style = None
   Click the arrow beside the Bullets button.
   A palette of bullet styles appears, including a choice None.
   Click on None.
   Your second text line no longer has a bullet.
5. Put your cursor between the bullet and the text in the third line.
   
    
6. Method 3: Backspace
   Press the Backspace button once.
   The bullet vanishes.
7. Save.
   [worldtraveloffers-Lastname-Firstname.pptx]

Text Table

When your information needs to be in rows and columns, you can either insert a table or create a text table using tabs and spaces. You will create a text table on a slide, just to see what that involves. A regular table is usually a better choice. However, the contents of a normal table will not show up in the Outline of the presentation.

1. Insert another new slide.
   
2. Title the slide: Results
   
3. 

   Enter the text below in the bullet list placeholder. Use tabs and blank spaces to get the text columns to line up neatly. This is harder to do than in Word because there is no way to see where the tabs and blank spaces are. No Show Marks button!
   

   Trip	# Trips	# People	Total sales
   Tahiti	6	50	75,000
   NZ	5	30	90,000
   World	2	4	24,000
   Other	6	40	80,000
   Totals	19	124	$269,000

   Bullets galore! You don't need bullets for the column titles or the totals! Let's remove those.
   

4. Remove the bullet from the first and last rows.
   The columns titles shift. They may no longer be lined up with their columm. How annoying!

   Your slide may have different spacing than the illustration, especially in a version that uses the widescreen format, 16:9.
    

5. Adjust the spacing by typing in or deleting blank spaces to make the columns line up again. A tiny change caused a lot of work.
   (A regular table would not behave this way!)  
6. Save.
   [worldtraveloffers-Lastname-Firstname.pptx]
   

Change the Order of Slides: Thumbnails

The last slide you created should really come before the Success slide. You need to change the order of the slides, which is easy to do using the Slides thumbnails.

1. If necessary, in the Navigation pane at the left with the slide thumbnails showing, click on the 4th slide (Results) to select it.
   The slide thumbnail is highlighted.
   
2. Drag the thumbnail of the last slide up.
   PowerPoint 2007, 2010: A line indicates where the slide will be put if you drop.
   PowerPoint 2013, 2016: The slides rearrange as you drag.
   

3. Position the line between slides 2 and 3 and drop. The slide is moved and now comes before the Success slide.

   Click the illustration at the right to see an animation of the action in PowerPoint 2010. The animation will run 5 times. Click again to run it again.

4. Save.
   [worldtraveloffers-Lastname-Firstname.pptx]
   

View Outline

1. Show the Outline:
   
   PowerPoint 2007, 2010: Click on the Outline tab in the Navigation pane.
   PowerPoint 2013, 2016: On the View ribbon tab, click the Outline View button.
   The panes change dimensions to give you more space for the outline.
   
2. Read the outline.
   Your text table data is all here. Is that a good thing? That would depend on your table, wouldn't it?  
   If the pane is too narrow, the data won't be neatly lined up.

3. Experiment: Navigation Pane width
   Drag the right edge of the navigation pane to the left, making the pane narrower.
   What happens to your outline text?

   When you are ready to continue, drag the pane back wide enough for the Results table to be readable in the Navigation pane.

Spell Check

Before you decide that you are done for the day, you had better check your spelling! PowerPoint will not check your grammar. You won't usually use complete sentences on your slides anyway.

To see how this works, let's make sure that there are some errors to find! If you have mis-typed other words, you will find them now. This is a good thing!

1. In the outline, delete the letter l  from the titles of the first three slides, making them read:  Word Trave Inc. ,  Goas ,  Resuts 
   PowerPoint puts a wavy red line under the words that it thinks may be wrong.

   Problem: No wavy red lines?
   This feature is controlled from the Options dialog: Office button or File tab > Options > Proofing. Be sure there is a check mark beside Check spelling as you type.  
   

2. In the outline click to the left of the title on the first slide to select it so that Spell Check will start at the beginning.
    

3. On the Review tab click the Spelling button .
   PowerPoint starts checking from the first slide.

   PowerPoint 2007, 2010: The Spelling dialog opens.
   

   PowerPoint 2013, 2016: The Spelling pane opens.
   

   The first error PowerPoint finds is  Trave .

   Wait! What about  Word  that is supposed to be World? Since 'Word' is an actual word, PowerPoint does not see it as an error. Spell Check will not find this type of error, only words that aren't in its dictionary.
   

4. Click on the Change button to accept the highlight suggestion,  Travel .
   The word is changed. and the next spelling error is displayed.
   For PowerPoint 2007 and 2010 the next error is  Goas 
   
5. Correct Goas:
   PowerPoint 2007, 2010: Scroll the list of suggestions until you can select the word  Goals  from the list of suggestions.

   Click on the Change button.

   This time the correct word was not the first suggestion. Always look at the list!

   The next error appears.

   PowerPoint 2013, 2016: Goas is an actual word, a type of gazelle. The new dictionary knows this. Once again the error resulted in an actual word.
   
   Click in the slide and edit the title to read Goals.
   The Spelling pane changes when you edit the word.
   
   Click the Resume button.
   The Spelling pane shows the next word it does not know, Resuts.
6. Click on the Change button to accept the first suggestion,  Results .
   A message box appears to tell you that PowerPoint thinks it is done.
7. Correct the first slide's remaining error to  World .  
8. Save.
   [worldtraveloffers-Lastname-Firstname.pptx]
   

View: Slide Show

It is important to know what your audience will see. The Slide Show view does just that.

Read all of the directions before you start the slide show, which will cover this page unless you are using a second device to read the directions.

1. If necessary, click slide #1 (the Title slide) to select it.
   
2. Click the Slide Show button on the Views bar at the bottom right of the PowerPoint window.
   The presentation opens starting with the selected slide. The presentation covers the whole monitor screen.
   

3. Advance to the next slide by clicking on the slide or by pressing the spacebar.

   After the last slide, the screen goes black. At the top is the instruction "End of slide show, click to exit."

4. Click the slide or press the spacebar and your PowerPoint window reappears.
   
5. Close the presentation without closing PowerPoint:
   
   PowerPoint 2007: Click the Office button and then on Close at the bottom of the menu.
   PowerPoint 2010, 2013, 2016: Click  the File tab and then on Close.