Presentations on Command | Tablet PCs for Dummies

I’m sure that if you’ve ever prepared a PowerPoint presentation (especially at the last minute, and especially under pressure), you’re quite used to speaking to PowerPoint. However, this is a family book, so I won’t go into some of the words a harried presenter might scream at his computer when a presentation deadline is drawing inexorably closer and he’s about as prepared as raw sushi.

This section deals with a different and much more productive kind of speech you can use with PowerPoint: the Speech feature of Windows XP for Tablet PC that enables you to use voice commands and enter text by simply saying it.

Warning! Chapter 6 covers talking to your Tablet PC, so I won’t go into much detail about that here. However, I do want to mention that if you haven’t trained your Tablet PC voice-recognition capabilities to understand your voice, 15 minutes before your presentation is due is not the time to use this option.

Voice-recognition applications have come a long way, but they still have a way to go before they’re going to be as reliable as other forms of data entry (such as keyboards and Pen tools).

The voice commands you can use differ slightly in each application. In fact, speaking content into a presentation requires that you select a destination first. The following section shows what you can do with speech input and PowerPoint.

Entering presentation content

As with entering content by writing with the pen, entering content with speech requires that you select the destination for the content first: a placeholder on a slide, the Outline tab, the Notes pane, or a text box.

After you have chosen the location for the spoken content to appear, follow these steps to use Speech:

With the Input Panel open, choose ToolsðSpeech.
Tap the Dictation button to begin the listening function for Speech.
Speak the content clearly and slowly.

As you do, it appears in the selected location; if you are speaking too softly or Speech can’t understand you, it displays a message in the Input Panel (as shown in Figure 11-8).

Figure 11-8: You can use the Dictation and Command buttons to move back and forth between entering content and using voice commands at any time.

Tip You can use the Keyboard tools to invoke actions — such as Enter to move to the next line, or Backspace to delete content — while you work with Speech.

Warning! You cannot use the Speech feature to enter anything into an Ink and Drawing object — for that, you have to write in the object with your pen.

Editing by voice

You can use any category of voice command in PowerPoint. For example, you can launch or switch to other applications, use commands to navigate (simply say, “Go to Beginning”), convert to uppercase and lowercase letters, and edit (say “Delete” or “Undo That”).

Tip The What Can I Say listing, found at Speech ToolsðWhat Can I Say?, shows you the voice commands that are available (see Figure 11-9).

Figure 11-9: What can I say? It’s the What Can I Say listing.

Check out the list of voice commands in Table 11-1. I find these commands especially useful when I’m using PowerPoint.

Table 11-1: What You Can Say to PowerPoint
Voice Command	Result
New Slide	Inserts new slide
New Presentation	Opens new presentation
Spell That	Runs Spell Checker
Clip Art	Opens the Clip Art task pane
Custom Animation	Opens Custom Animation task pane
Increase Font Size	Increases text size by 6-point increments
Decrease Font Size	Decreases text size by 6-point increments
Design	Displays Slide Design task pane
WordArt	Begins WordArt applet

Tip One other very cool thing: When you display a task pane, such as Slide Design, all the choices in that pane become available as menu and button voice commands. So if you display the Layout pane, all the layouts can be applied by voice command; if you display the Custom Animation pane, suddenly those commands are available to you by voice as well. Pretty smart, huh?