Working on the Slide

While in Normal view, you can look at and edit the selected slide in the slide pane. As Figure 12.3 shows, the slide's viewing area appears in a full-screen view when you close both the left pane and the task pane. You can make edits directly on the slide and see the results of those edits as you make them. Use the slide pane for viewing changes to your slide's design or for inserting graphical elements into the slide.

Figure 12.3. By closing the surrounding panes, you devote more screen area to editing individual slides.

To move from slide to slide while viewing a single slide at a time, perform any of the following:

• Click within the vertical scrollbar area.

• Press the PageUp or PageDown keys.

• Click either the Next Slide or Previous Slide button on the vertical scrollbar.

When you want to edit a text (or graphic) object on an individual slide, click that object. PowerPoint displays the object surrounded by sizing handles. PowerPoint treats a slide's title as a single object and the slide's bulleted set of items as another object. If you've inserted other elements onto the slide, such as a sound or video clip, you can click on that object and move, edit, or delete the object as well. Figure 12.4 shows a busy slide with multiple selections. By holding Ctrl when you click over objects on the slide, you select each of those objects at the same time so that you can apply the same formatting task to the selected items. When you want to change the font or screen size of multiple objects at one time, select them all at once and perform the change only once.

Figure 12.4. Select multiple objects to apply a uniform edit to them at once.

To Do: Edit a Slide's Text

To edit a slide's text, perform these steps:

1. Click the text you want to edit to display the text's sizing handles.

2. To move the text, drag one edge of the text's placeholder in the direction you want to move the text.

3. To shrink or enlarge the selected text object, drag one of the sizing handles in or out to adjust the object's size. (PowerPoint does not shrink or enlarge the actual text inside the placeholder as you resize the sizing box.)

4. After you display the placeholder, click inside the box at the point in which you want to edit text. PowerPoint inserts the text cursor (also called the insertion point ) at the location of your desired edit. Move the mouse pointer out of the way so you can see the insertion point.

   At the insertion point, you can insert or delete text. You can also change the font, color , size, and style of any text that you select using the Formatting toolbar or the Format, Font menu option. For example, to increase or decrease the font size, use the Font dialog box and select a different size. Displaying the Formatting toolbar makes the most common text formatting tools available, including font, size, bold, and underline.

Select any text, and then click the Increase Font Size toolbar button to quickly increase the font size of the selected text. The Increase Font Size button works faster than opening the Font dialog box. (A Decrease Font Size button is also available.) Depending on your screen size and resolution, you might have to click the toolbar's Toolbar Options button to see the Increase Font Size and Decrease Font Size buttons .

If graphic images appear on the slide, double-click them to edit the images with the graphic-editing tools.

If you right-click an object (such as a graphic image) while editing a slide and select the Action Settings option, PowerPoint displays the Action Settings dialog box, as shown in Figure 12.5. By assigning an Internet hyperlink address, a Windows program, or a sound file to a mouse click or movement, PowerPoint connects to that hyperlink location, runs the program, or plays the sound during the presentation. You can provide pushbutton access to programs and Internet Web pages while delivering your presentation!

Figure 12.5. Assign events to mouse clicks and movements.

Using the Slide Sorter View

Use the Slide Sorter view to rearrange slides, not to edit text or graphics on individual slides. When you display the Slide Sorter view, PowerPoint presents several of your presentation slides, as shown in Figure 12.6. The Slide Sorter view enables you to quickly and easily drag and drop slides to reorder your presentation. Although you can rearrange slides from the outline, the Slide Sorter view lets you see the overall visual results of your slide movements.

Figure 12.6. Rearrange slides in the Slide Sorter view.

Use your mouse to drag slides from one location to another in the presentation. Remember that the Undo command (Ctrl+Z) reverses any action that you accidentally make. You also can use the Windows Clipboard to copy, cut, and paste, although dragging with your mouse is easier. The Clipboard holds up to 24 entries that you can copy, cut, and paste, as with Word and Excel. To delete a slide, click the slide once and press the Delete key.

One of the more advanced (but useful) slide-sorter features involves the Slide Sorter toolbar, which appears at the top of the Slide Sorter view (refer to Figure 12.6). When you click the Transition button, the Slide Transition task pane appears. These transition effects determine how the slide show feature transitions ( dissolves ) from one slide to the next when you display your presentation. The next two lessons discuss PowerPoint's slide show in more detail. For now, click a Transition button inside the Transition task pane to see the various ways that PowerPoint can move from one slide to the next.

Using the Notes Page View

When you select View, Notes Page, PowerPoint displays your slide, as shown in Figure 12.7, with a blank area at the bottom of the screen for speaker notes. This Notes Page view contains a slide image and, below it, a notes box for the slide. Therefore, the speaker's notes contain the slides that the audience sees as well as notes the speaker wrote to tell the audience about each slide. Your audience does not see the speaker's notes. You click inside the notes box to type or edit slide notes.

Figure 12.7. Prepare speaker's notes using the Notes Page view.

The Notes Page view is designed to allow printing of the notes for the speaker. However, the speaker can also display the Notes Page view during a presentation to eliminate paper shuffling. If the speaker's computer has two video cards and two monitors , PowerPoint can send the slides to one monitor and the speaker's slides and note pages to the other. When the speaker moves to the next slide, the speaker's notes change as well. When you're ready to return to the Normal view, simply double-click the slide image.

When you display the presentation in Notes Page view, you can use the PageUp and PageDown keys to scroll through the slides and see the speaker's notes at the bottom of each slide. If the text area is not large enough to read the notes, expand the viewing area by using the Zoom command in the View menu.