A Guide toA Guide to
PowerPointPowerPoint

PowerPoint
• PowerPoint is a part of the Microsoft
Office package.
• It is a presentation software program
that has many of the functions available
in Microsoft Word.

PowerPoint Continued
• To display a presentation, you need:
– A computer (desktop or laptop)
– LCD projector
– White board or screen for projection

Seeing (and Hearing)
Is Believing
• PowerPoint presentations can enhance
understanding and retention of
concepts.
• Audiovisual aids should be relevant to
the speech topic.

Designing Presentation Aids
• Do not add too much content.
– Keep bullets short
• Visual aids should:
– Reinforce
– Support
– Summarize what you say
Simplicity

Designing Presentation Aids
• Use the same design throughout
your presentation
Continuity

Designing Presentation Aids
Continuity
• Maintain continuity in:
– Colors
– Fonts
– upper and lowercase letters
– Styling
• Boldface
• Underlining
• Italics

Designing Presentation Aids
• Typeface:
– a specific style of lettering
• Arial
• Times Roman
•Courier New
• Tahoma
•Monotype Corsiva
Typeface

Designing Presentation Aids
• Fonts:
– sets of sizes (called the point size)
• 24 point
• 20 point
• 18 point
• 16 point
• 10 point
– upper and lower cases
Font Size

Designing Presentation Aids
• Check that your lettering stands apart
from your background.
• Use a typeface that is simple, easy to
read, and doesn’t distract from your
message.
• Don’t overuse boldface, underlining or
italics. Use upper-and lowercase type.
Typeface Style And Font Size

Designing Presentation Aids
• Use bold, bright colors to emphasize
important points.
• Use softer, lighter colors.
• Avoid dark backgrounds.
Color

A How-To Guide forA How-To Guide for
Using MicrosoftUsing Microsoft
PowerPoint as aPowerPoint as a
Presentation AidPresentation Aid

How-To Guide to PowerPoint
• This guide offers straightforward advice
that will help you use Microsoft
PowerPoint to create effective and
enjoyable presentations.

You don’t want your slides to
look like this:
Title
too
small
Font is
small
and hard
to read
Texts
overlap
and have
strange
formatting
Clip art is too large; only one piece is
Colors on
the slide
are
distracting

Let’s Begin!
• PowerPoint is a Microsoft application.
• If you are proficient in programs such
as Word and Excel, you are already
familiar with over 100 common
commands used by Microsoft Office
software.

Let’s Begin!
• NOTE: All of the icons, example
buttons, and toolbars shown in this
slide show are taken from the PC
version of PowerPoint. The Macintosh
version is similar, yet slightly different.

To Use PowerPoint
• Become familiar with the toolbars
• Select your presentation option
• Learn how to create a slide
• Learn how to organize design elements
• Learn how to balance design elements

Learning the Toolbars
View
buttons
Common tasks toolbar
Format
-ting
toolbar
Menu
bar
Standard
toolbar
Drawing toolbar

Learning the Toolbars
• The Menu bar
• The Standard toolbar
• The View toolbar
• The Drawing toolbar
• The Formatting toolbar
• The Common Tasks toolbar

Learning the Toolbars
• The Menu bar contains the commands for which
shortcuts exist on the toolbars.
• For instance, under File you can find the option to
Save your presentation, which is also available on the
Standard toolbar.
• In the Formatting menu, you can click on Alignment
and change the flow of text on your screen. You can
also click one of the alignment icons on the Formatting
toolbar to perform the same task.

Learning the Toolbars
• The Standard toolbar contains a
number of useful shortcuts:
• New presentation
• Open a new or existing presentation
• Save
• Print
• Spelling

Learning the Toolbars
• The Standard toolbar also includes a
number of other shortcut features:
• Insert a Microsoft Word Table
• Insert a Microsoft Excel Table
• Insert a Chart
• Insert Clip Art
• The Office Wizard. When you click this and
type a question, it will search the Help index
for possible answer.

Learning the Toolbars
• The View toolbar gives different options
for viewing slides:
• Slide View: shows slides one by one
• Outline View: shows an outline of all slide text
• Slide Sorter View: places all the slides on one
screen in slide format
• Note Pages View: allows you to add and read
notes below each slide
• Slide Show: allows you to see the
presentation

Learning the Toolbars
• The Drawing toolbar gives shortcuts to:
• AutoShapes: draw lines, arrows, rectangles, and
ovals; access the AutoShapes menu
• Text boxes: draw these where you wish to add text
on a blank slide or add text to an existing slide
• Line color, font color, and fill color options, with
menus
• Dash style and 3-D options
• The Draw button presents a menu of other ways to
manipulate your text and clip art, including rotation,
alignment, and alterations to AutoShapes.

Learning the Toolbars
• The Formatting toolbar allows you to:
• Change font
• Change font size
• Add boldface, italics, underlining, and
shading to text
• Create animation effects
• Change paragraph alignment

Learning the Toolbars
• The New Slide button inserts a new slide
directly following the slide currently being
viewed.
• The Slide Layout button gives choices of
layouts for different pre-designed text box
and clip art formations.
• The Apply Design button gives pre-designed
slide aesthetic options.

Learning the Toolbars
• Finally, on the View menu you can
choose which toolbars are available at
any give time:
• Click View
• Scroll down to Toolbars
• Select or deselect your preferences

Select Presentation Option
• When PowerPoint launches you will see
the screen above.
• Here you select how you would like to
create your presentation.

Select Presentation Option
• The AutoContent
Wizard is useful for
those who are
unfamiliar with
PowerPoint or who
need extra help.
• It sets up an index of
slides with preloaded
titles, points, subpoints,
and designs.

Select Presentation
Option
• The Template
option provides
moderate flexibility
in designing
presentations.
• You choose from
28 templates to
organize your
points, subpoints,
and design.

Select Presentation
Option
• The Blank
Presentation option
offers the most
flexibility.
• Users customize
every aspect of the
design for each
individual slide.
• The following slides will
teach you how to work
from Blank Presentation.

How to Create a Slide
• Click New Slide to select a layout for
the title slide.
• To change the color of the slide either
right-click it and select Slide Color
Scheme or select Format and then
Slide Color Scheme from the Menu bar.

How to Create a Slide
• You choose the color scheme and
format of the slide, and if you wish you
can also apply these choices to all of
the following slides.
• You can change the color scheme of
one or all of your slides at any time.

How to Create a Slide
• To change the order of the slides, first
select Slide Sorter View ( ) from the
View toolbar. You can move slides by
cutting and pasting or dragging and
dropping
• To delete a slide, either click on it while
in Slide Sorter View or go to it in Slide
View ( ), then select Edit from the
Menu bar and click on Delete Slide.

Organizing Design Elements
• Text
• Clip art and pictures
• Animation effects
• Balancing the
elements

Organizing Text
As you
can see
from this
slide, text
boxes can
be put
anywhere.
Click on the icon on
the Drawing toolbar.
With the cursor, draw the
approximate size you need
for your text.

Organizing Text
• You can expand the box to include more text or
make it smaller to make room for other design
elements on the slide.
• The pre-
designed
selections from
the Slide Layout
screen offer the
most logical and
often-used
layouts.

Organizing Text
• Use a readable font and font size for
each different aspect of the page (a
good size range is between 20-60
points).
• Be consistent from slide to slide with
fonts and font sizes.
• Choose colors that will ensure that
your text is readable and your slides do
not appear distracting.

Organizing Text
• Don’t use too many different
fonts.
• DON’T USE ALL CAPS.
• Avoid fonts that are
distracting:
– Braggadocio
– OzHandicraft BT
– Shelley Volant e BT

Organizing Text
• Don’t include your entire speech on the
slides. Instead highlight important points.
• To determine what information is best to
include in your presentation, you should:
• Review your speech outline.
• Identify points that can be illustrated,
such as key terms and their definitions,
statistics, or charts and graphs.

Organizing Clip Art and Pictures
• To insert clip art onto your slide you can:
• Select a slide layout that has a set space
for clip art. When working on that slide,
simply double-click on the clip art space
and it will take you to the Microsoft Clip
Gallery.
• Use the Insert menu, click Picture, and then
select Clip Art.
• Click on the shortcut icon:

Organizing Clip Art and Pictures
• To insert your own photos or graphics
rather than ones from the gallery, click
Insert, scroll to Picture, and select
From File.
• Here you can browse your computer
and choose art from your own files.

Organizing Clip Art and Pictures
• If you cannot find what you need in the
gallery or your own resources, you have
another option. Downloads of more
images are available free from Microsoft
via the Internet.
• In the gallery, click on the icon in
the bottom right corner.
• Search by key word to find what you
need.

Organizing Clip Art and Pictures
• PowerPoint can incorporate graphs and charts
as well.
• On the Standard toolbar, there are shortcuts for
inserting Microsoft Word tables and Microsoft
Excel worksheets and graphs .
• Change the numbers and labels on the graphs
or charts to fit your information.

Organizing Clip Art and Pictures
• Remember: use
clip art, pictures,
charts, and
graphs only to
illustrate points,
not as fillers.

Organizing Animation Effects
• PowerPoint has a variety of different ways
that text and art can be animated.
• For example:
Blinds
Vertical
Fly from Bottom-Left
Box Out
Spiral
Checkerboard
Across
Crawl
from
Right
Dissolv
e
Peek from Bottom
Stretch from Top
Appear
Wipe Right
Zoom In

Organizing Animation Effects
• These effects can be interesting additions
to your presentation, but they can also be
distracting. Use them sparingly to add
emphasis.
• To animate, right-click on the text or image
and select Custom Animation from the
menu.
• Select the effect you want to use,
determine the order of the animations on
the slide, and make sure to preview.

Organizing Animation Effects
• Take time while in this screen to determine
how your animation effects will appear.
• Clicking on the Timing menu gives you
options so that your textboxes, clip art, and
other animation elements can be presented
on a mouse click, automatically, or
automatically after a preset length of time.

Balancing the Elements
• Even if you follow all the suggestions for
setting up your slide and its elements, you
still may find that your presentation is hard
to follow.
• It is important to go back through your
completed presentation and make sure
that the overall experience of watching it is
pleasant as well as educational.

Balancing the Elements
• Defining a balanced slide may seem like a
matter of opinion, but there are concrete
criteria, including:
• Clip art and text must fit together well. No
element -- title, points, graphics -- should
overpower the others.
• Headings should be consistent in size and
placement. They should be large and clear.
• Easy to understand.

The clip art
illustrates
the slide
and is well
placed on
the layout.
Example of a Balanced Slide
The title
is large
and
clear.
Good use
of
contrasting
colors on
slide and in
font.
Text is
easy to
read and
well sized.

Example of an Unbalanced Slide
Title
and
color
scheme
are still
fine.
Text is
too
small.
Clip art
is too
large.
This slide is hard to read and places unnecessary
emphasis on the artwork.

Giving Your
Presentation
• Practice your speech
• Time yourself.