Creating Your First Title Slide

Creating Your First Title Slide

It might seem obvious, but before you can create your first slide, you have to start up PowerPoint. You can do so in a variety of ways: from the Start menu, from a desktop icon, or from the Taskbar.

PowerPoint starts in Normal view, with a blank title slide staring at you. All you have to do is click where it says to click and type the text you want to include. For example, to add information to the title slide, follow these steps:

1. Move the mouse pointer to the title placeholder—the area that says "Click to add title"—and click. PowerPoint opens a text edit box, surrounded by hash marks (see Figure 2.1), and displays a blinking insertion point (the vertical blinking line that appears to show you where the text you type is to be inserted).

   Figure 2.1. A box surrounded by hash marks means you're able to add or edit text in the placeholder box.

   

   Note

   If you can't seem to find the PowerPoint icon anywhere , try selecting Start, Programs (or Start, All Programs in Windows XP). If the Word or Excel icons appear, but the PowerPoint icon does not, you might have a special edition of Office—for example, the Small Business Edition—that does not include PowerPoint. In that case, you need to upgrade your version of Office 2003 or purchase PowerPoint separately.

2. Type the title (for example, I Want You to Know ). Use uppercase or lowercase characters as you want them to appear in the title.

3. Click the subtitle placeholder—the area that says "Click to add subtitle ."

4. In the subtitle box, type your name .

5. Click anywhere on the slide outside both placeholders.

You now have your first title slide (see Figure 2.2).

Adding Slides

Creating your first title slide was pretty easy, but now what? You probably need more than just a title slide, so choose I nsert, N ew Slide (or press Ctrl+M). PowerPoint adds a new bullet slide to the slide show (see Figure 2.3).

Bullets, which are the dots or icons at the left of the text, help viewers see the major topics. You could use a numbered list instead of a bulleted list, but generally , bullets do the trick.

At this point you can go ahead and add text to the title placeholder (for example, About Me ).

To add items to a bulleted list, you follow these steps:

1. Click the bulleted text placeholder. PowerPoint opens a text editing box, with the insertion point following the first bullet (see Figure 2.4).

   Figure 2.4. Bulleted text placeholders are really text boxes, formatted in the bullet style.

   

2. Type the text of the first bullet (for example, your age, where you're from, your profession).

3. Press the Enter key. PowerPoint ends the first bulleted line and adds a second one (see Figure 2.5).

   Figure 2.5. Bullet text is easy to enter, and you just press Enter to get a new bullet.

   

4. Continue typing items in the list, until you have three to five items.

5. Click anywhere on the slide outside the placeholders to close the bulleted text placeholder.

If you want to go back and edit a title or text box, you just click the box and then make any changes you want.

If you accidentally add a bullet you don't want, just press the Backspace key twice, and PowerPoint erases the bullet and returns you to the right side of the preceding bullet.

For more information on creating good, powerful bullets, see p. 76 .

If you'd like, you can insert a couple more slides ( My Work or My Hobbies , for example). Then you should insert a final slide.

In the title placeholder of the final slide, you should type The End . Don't worry right now about the blank bulleted text placeholder. When you view the slide show, it won't be visible.

It's important that you get in the habit of saving your work on a regular basis. There's nothing more painful than putting a lot of creative energy into building a slide show, only to lose it because something happens before you save it. One way to save a slide show is to just choose F ile, S ave and then click S ave. PowerPoint saves the file with a generic filename, such as Presentation1 . Later you'll learn more about PowerPoint filenames and how to save and retrieve them. From time to time, I'll remind you to save your work. To do so, you can choose F ile, S ave, you can click the Save icon on the toolbar, or you can simply press Ctrl+S (my favorite...it's quick and easy).

Caution

A typical temptation for beginning PowerPoint users is to put lots of text or lots of bullets on a slide. Keep your bullets short and to the point and don't make lists of bullets so long that you confuse or lose your viewers.

For more information on saving, retrieving, and managing PowerPoint files, see p. 53 .