Jan's Working with Presentations

Step-by-Step: Open & Close

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What you will learn:

to open PowerPoint from Start menu/Start screen to a blank document to open a second blank document and switch windows to open a presentation from a disk to use Save As and Close a presentation without closing PowerPoint to open a presentation from the Internet to close a presentation to close PowerPoint

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Start with: , (Windows Desktop with no applications open.),  resource files installed

WinXP, Vista, Win7, Win10: Start Menu

This method works when you have installed any version of Microsoft Office or just PowerPoint by itself.

1. Click on Start  >  All Programs or All apps  >  Microsoft Office  > PowerPoint
     PowerPoint 2007, 2010: A new blank document appears in PowerPoint by default.

   PowerPoint 2013, 2016: Opens to a dialog offering you various templates and recently opened files. If you have saved custom templates from this version, you will see FEATURED and PERSONAL pages. The suggested search keyword 'personal' does NOT bring up your custom templates.

   Click the blank workbook template or press the ESC key.

   

   PowerPoint opens with a blank presentation.

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Win8, Win8.1: Start Screen

1. If necessary, switch to the Start screen by
   pressing the Windows key on the keyboard.
2. Click the tile for PowerPoint.
   
     PowerPoint 2007, 2010: PowerPoint opens with a new blank document.
   
   

   PowerPoint 2013, 2016:
   Opens to a pane offering you various templates and recently opened files. If you have saved custom templates from this version, you will see FEATURED and PERSONAL pages. The suggested search term 'personal' does NOT bring up the custom templates.

   Click the blank workbook template or press the ESC key.

   PowerPoint opens with a blank presentation.
   

Initial blank presentations:

Slide Proportions
The proportions of the default slide presentation in PowerPoint 2013 and 2016 are Widescreen 16:9 instead of the previous default proportions, Standard 4:3. These numbers are the aspect ratio. For 16:9 this means that for evey 16 units wide the slide is 9 units tall. HD televisions, wide screen movies, and most LCD monitors have 16:9 proportions. While you can change the slide size, you should probably stick to one of these common aspect ratios. Some projectors are very picky about what proportions they will even attempt to project! Converting old presentations to the new proportions can be tedious.

Problem: Win8, 8.1: No icon for PowerPoint on Start screen
Are you sure that PowerPoint is installed on the computer? A normal installation of Office will put shortcut tiles on the Start screen. But these can be deleted or moved around.
Solution: If you know PowerPoint is there somewhere, you can look at the All Apps screen or just start typing powerpoint.
The Search results pane opens. Click on the PowerPoint item.

If you do not see PowerPoint in the search results, make sure that PowerPoint has been installed. It should definitely show up immediately.

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Open a Second Document and Switch Windows

What happens if you open more than one document?

1. Repeat the steps you used above to open a second blank presentation.
   Another window with a blank document appears.
   How can you tell that it is new and not the same one you opened in the first step? The next step shows how!
   

2. Click on the View tab in PowerPoint and then on the button Switch Windows.
   A list appears of the presentations that are currently open. A check mark shows which one is the current document.

   The name is Presentation2, not Presentation1. Did you expect that?

3. Close the window holding Presentation2 but leave open Presentation1.

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Open Existing Presentation: from disk

Now that PowerPoint is open, you need to see how to open an existing presentation.

You are going to open a resource document and save it with a new name to a new location. If you do not have a local copy of the resource files yet, read the directions in the following article first: resource files .

Start with: resource files installed, (PowerPoint open)

1. Open dialog:
   
   PowerPoint 2007: Click the Office button and then click on Open.
   PowerPoint 2010: Click the File tab and then click on Open.
   PowerPoint 2013: Click the File tab and then click on Open.
   Next you must pick a location: Click on Computer and then click on the Browse button.
   The Open dialog opens to the last folder you used.
   

   PowerPoint 2016: Click the File tab and then click on Open. In the middle column, click on Browse.
   The Open dialog opens to the last folder you used.
   

2. In the Open dialog, navigate to wherever you saved the resource files and open the folder presentations resources.

   For this section it is important to use a path to a file on your computer and not to an Internet location.

   The illustration shows the files on a Windows 10 computer in the Dropbox folder, which marks files with a checkmark icon when they have been uploaded to Dropbox.

   Problem: No presentations are listed
   Solution: Check that you are looking at the contents of the correct folder.
   Make sure that the File type box is showing All PowerPoint Presentations. 

   Problem: Resource files are not on the computer
   Solution: Download and unzip them to a location you can find again(!), http://www.jegsworks.com/Lessons/resources/resources-presentations.zip

3. Click on the file socialissues.ppt
   Note the extension is ppt, NOT pptx this time.
   The file name appears in the File name box at the bottom of the dialog.
   
4. Click the Open button.
   The presentation opens in PowerPoint.
   PowerPoint 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016 are quite similar. The biggest difference is at the upper left.
   This presentation has slides with aspect ratio 4:3.
   

    

5. Click the ribbon tab View and then on the button Switch Windows.
   The blank presentation has vanished from the list. Only socialissues.ppt shows in the menu.

   Clearly, PowerPoint views these initial blank documents as disposable and uninteresting!

   Compatibility Mode: When you open a presentation that is in an older file format, PowerPoint will open it in Compatibility Mode. This mode disables new PowerPoint features that do not work in the older versions of PowerPoint. If you save the file to a new format , then an older version of PowerPoint may not be able to open it without an add-in. New features may not work even with an add-in.

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Save As and Close Without Closing PowerPoint

To save a presentation to a different location or with a different name, you must use the Save As command instead of Save.

1. Save As:

   PowerPoint 2007: Click the Office button and then Save As.
   PowerPoint 2010: File tab and then click Save As.
   PowerPoint 2013: Click the File tab and then click on Save As.
   Click on Computer and then on the Browse button.
   PowerPoint 2016: Click the File tab and then click on Save As.
   Click on the Browse button in the middle pane.

   The Save As dialog opens.

2. In the Save As dialog, save the presentation to your Class disk in the folder powerpoint project1 with the name,  socialissues-Lastname-Firstname.pptx .
   (That's your own Firstname and Lastname!)
   Be sure to change the Save As file type to PowerPoint (*.pptx) which is the new format.

   

   Problem: No such folder
   Solution: Create the folder using the New Folder button.
   

3. Close presentation without closing PowerPoint:

   PowerPoint 2007:
   Click the Office button and then on Close.
   PowerPoint 2010, 2013, 2016:
   Click File tab and then click Close.

   PowerPoint shows a gray area where the Normal view would be.
   

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Open Existing Presentation: from Web with PowerPoint

If you know the URL for a presentation that is stored on the Internet or have a link to copy, you can open it directly from inside PowerPoint. This usually saves a step or two or three! You won't be able to save back to the Internet location, of course, unless you have a login and password for that site.

1. If necessary, open PowerPoint.
2. Open the Open dialog as you did in the steps above.

3. In the File name text box, type or Copy and Paste the following URL:
   http://www.jegsworks.com/Lessons/resources/presentations resources/socialissues.ppt

4. Click on Open.

   You may see a message about connecting to the web server, but it may flick by too fast to see.

   You may be able to see a progress bar as the file is downloaded, either on the Status bar or in a popup message box.
   
   

5. If a download dialog appears, click on Open.
   The presentation opens in PowerPoint in Protected View.

   Whether or not you see such a dialog depends on which browser you are using.

   The difference in the choices:

   • Open or Run: The presentation will download to the folder for temporary Internet files. It will then open in PowerPoint automatically.
   • Save: The file will be downloaded to your hard disk to the folder you choose. Then you will probably get a dialog where you can choose to open it right now in PowerPoint. To open it later you can use one of the techniques above for opening a presentation.

   Google Chrome may do this a little differently. The file is downloaded first to the Downloads folder and a button for it appears at the bottom of the Chrome window. An arrow opens a list of choices - Open, Always open files of this type, Show in folder.

   Protected View: The presentation opens in PowerPoint, but is marked Protected View because it was downloaded from the Internet. In this view, certain features are disabled in case the file is a form of malware. Safety can be quite annoying sometimes!

   

   Problem: File name has a number, like (3)
   A file with that name had already been downloaded and saved in the same folder. This might be a Temp folder or the Downloads folder.
   This prevents overwriting of files with the same name that were previously downloaded and saved in the Download folder.

   Problem: Login dialog appears
   You do not have permission to log in but that's OK. This is a permissions problem with the web server. Not your fault or mine either. It happens when the people who are doing maintenance on the web server fail to put the permissions back correctly.
   Click on Cancel.
   Next you will see a message telling you that you do not have permission to make changes.
   Click on Yes to open a read-only copy.
   The login dialog appears again.
   Click on Cancel again.
   

   

   Problem: Error message appears
   You typed the URL incorrectly. For example, in the illustration below there is an extra character in the URL. No such file!

   

   Solution: Click OK to close the message and try again. Watch your typing or copy the URL above and paste it into the text box.

6. Click on the button Enable Editing in the yellow bar across the top.
   Now the presentation title will show [Read-Only] [Compatibility Mode].

   

   Read Only: To save changes you must change the name and/or location of the presentation. That's because the original location is on a web server and you do not have permission to save there.

   Compatibility Mode: The features that older versions of PowerPoint do not understand are disabled. The file is in an older file format. To get out of Compatibility Mode you must save the file as the most current file type. Older versions of PowerPoint will not be able to open a file in the new format without an Add-In program. Even then some of the new features are frozen and can no longer be edited.

7. Close PowerPoint without saving any changes.
   Now you have seen how complicated a 'simple' task can be!