Chapter 13: Starting a New Presentation

Chapter at a Glance

Quickly create a presentation, page 376. Convert an outline to a presentation, page 383. Reuse existing slides, page 385.

In This Chapter, You Will Learn To:

• Quickly create a presentation.

• Create a presentation based on a ready-made design.

• Convert an outline to a presentation.

• Reuse existing slides.

To work efficiently with Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, you must be able to decide the best way to start a presentation. The New Presentation window provides several options for creating a new presentation:

• If you need help with both the presentation’s content and its look, you can download a complete presentation from Microsoft Office Online and then customize it to meet your needs.

• If you have already created a presentation that is close enough in content and design to be a good starting point, you can use that presentation as the basis for the new one.

• If you have content ready but need help with the look of the presentation, you can base your presentation on one of the design templates that comes with PowerPoint. These templates include graphics, colors, fonts, and styles. You can also base your presentations on your own custom templates.

• If you have created an outline of a presentation in Microsoft Office Word, you can import the outline into PowerPoint to create an instant slide show.

• If you know what your content and design will be and you want to build the presentation from scratch, you can start with a blank presentation.

This chapter will help you become familiar with these methods so that you can decide the best approach for each new presentation you create.

In this chapter, you will create several new presentations: one based on an example from Office Online, one based on a practice file stored on your hard disk, one based on a design template, and one based on a Word outline. You will also add slides to a presentation and insert slides from one presentation into another.

See Also Do you need only a quick refresher on the topics in this chapter? See the Quick Reference entries at the beginning of this book.

Important 

Before you can use the practice files in this chapter, you need to install them from the book’s companion CD to their default location. See “Using the Book’s CD” at the beginning of this book for more information.

Troubleshooting 

Graphics and operating system-related instructions in this book reflect the Windows Vista user interface. If your computer is running Microsoft Windows XP and you experience trouble following the instructions as written, please refer to the “Information for Readers Running Windows XP” section at the beginning of this book.