Creating a New Presentation


You can start a new presentation in one of three ways: by using a wizard, by basing it on one of PowerPoint s design templates, or by creating it from scratch. In this topic, we ll practice the first two methods . Afterwards, you ll be familiar enough with the concepts that you ll be able to experiment with creating a new presentation from scratch on your own.

Using the AutoContent Wizard

Suppose you need to give a presentation at a meeting of local business people to introduce them to the Business Environmental Action Team (BEAT) organization. You want to create a presentation that will explain the general purpose and objectives of BEAT, as well as give audience members a clear idea of how they can get involved.

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Bypassing wizard pages

While going through the AutoContent Wizard, as well as other wizards pages, you can bypass sections of the wizard. In the road map on the left side of the dialog box, click the colored square next to the part of the process you want to display. You can move backward to a previous page by using this method or by clicking Back. You can bypass all the pages by clicking Finish to complete the wizard with its default settings.

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When you are first learning how to use PowerPoint and you want to take advantage of all the help you can get, you can use the AutoContent Wizard to get the ball rolling. The wizard asks a few questions and allows you to select one of its ready-made presentations as a starting point. You can then customize the slides in the presentation by adding, deleting, or changing various elements. Follow these steps to see how the wizard works:

  1. Click the Start button at the left end of the Windows taskbar, click All Programs , and then click Microsoft PowerPoint .

    Your screen looks like this:

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  2. In the New area of the New Presentation task pane, click From AutoContent Wizard .

    The first of five AutoContent Wizard pages appears.

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  3. Read the information on the page, and click Next .

    You will select the type of presentation you want to create in the dialog box shown in this graphic:

    The road map on the left tells you to specify a presentation type. The types available are listed on the right. Use the buttons in the middle to display the types by category.

  4. Click the buttons in the middle of the page to get familiar with the presentation types available in each category.

  5. Click the General button, select Recommending a Strategy , and then click Next .

  6. Select On-screen presentation as your output option, and click Next .

    The dialog box shown in this graphic appears:

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    The information you enter on this page will become the first slide, called the title slide, of the presentation.

  7. In the Presentation title text box, type Toward a Healthy Environment , and in the Footer text box, type Redmond Business Environmental Action Team .

  8. Make sure that the Date last updated and Slide number check boxes are selected.

    When these options are selected, PowerPoint includes the date and slide number in the Footer section of each slide, along with the footer text you specify.

  9. Click Next , and then click Finish .

    PowerPoint closes the blank Presentation1 file, hides the task pane, and opens your new presentation, as shown in this graphic:

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    The presenter s name in the center of the slide is the user name that was supplied when PowerPoint was installed. We ll show you how to change this name later.

    Taking up most of the screen is your new presentation, which PowerPoint shows in Normal view in the window s slide pane. Normal view divides the work area into three panes:

    • On the left is the overview pane, which displays an outline of the presentation. The first topic in the outline is the title slide information you entered in the fourth AutoContent Wizard page. The remaining topics are PowerPoint s suggestions for items you might want to cover when recommending a strategy. Each topic is designated by a number and a slide icon, with topics appearing as slide titles.

    • In the slide pane of the work area is the first slide, which corresponds to the outline s first topic, displayed with the design template assigned by PowerPoint to the selected presentation type. At the bottom of the slide pane s vertical scroll bar are two buttons, the Previous Slide and Next Slide buttons, that you can click to move backward and forward through the presentation s slides.

    • Below the slide pane is an area where you can add notes about the active slide. These notes can be printed as speaker s notes to guide the delivery of the presentation.

  10. Click the Save button on the Standard toolbar, type 1 Redmond BEAT in the File name text box of the Save As dialog box, and click Save .

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Presentation tips

Using a program like PowerPoint won t ensure that your presentations will be successful. You have to use some common sense, too. Here are some tips for creating clean and concise presentations:

  • Know as much as you can about your audience before you start creating your presentation. Tailor its tone, words, and graphics appropriately.

  • Consider what points you want your audience to remember after your presentation. Come up with an overall theme that you can reinforce throughout the presentation.

  • Make each slide convey only one main idea that can be interpreted at a glance.

  • Cut the verbiage on each slide to the essentials. Never have more than six bulleted items per slide. The more items on each slide, the fewer words you should use in each item.

  • Make sure your capitalization and punctuation are consistent. On any one slide, don t mix complete sentences with partial sentences.

  • Above all, don t expect your slides to carry the entire weight of the presentation. To hold the attention of your audience, you must be poised and confident, and you must express your ideas clearly and persuasively.

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Basing a Presentation on a Design Template

If you know exactly what you want to say, but you need a little help coming up with a design for your presentation, you can bypass the AutoContent Wizard, and start a presentation based on one of PowerPoint s design templates. A template is a set of ready-made formatting that defines the look of a slide. If you later change your mind about the design you have chosen , you can easily switch to a different template with just a few mouse clicks.

PowerPoint comes with many templates that incorporate different combinations of graphics, text, and special effects. Often, one of these templates is just what you need to give a presentation an appropriate, professional look. Follow the steps below to create a new presentation using a design template:

  1. Click New on the File menu to display the New Presentation task pane, and in the task pane s New section, click From Design Template .

    PowerPoint opens the Slide Design “ Design Templates task pane and displays the design template options, which look something like the ones shown in this graphic:

  2. In the Available For Use area, select a template, click its down arrow, and click Show Large Previews in the drop-down list to see larger views of the templates that are installed on your computer.

  3. Scroll down to see the template designs, pointing to each to display a ScreenTip with the design s name.

  4. Click various template designs to see how they will look when applied to a slide.

  5. When you re ready, click the Capsules template.

    If this template is not installed on your computer, you might be prompted to insert the installation CD-ROM.

  6. Click the down arrow on the task pane s title bar, and then click Slide Layout in the drop-down list to switch to that task pane.

    PowerPoint provides many predefined slide layouts, called autolayouts , and one blank slide that you can use to design a slide layout of your own.

  7. In the Text Layouts area, click the Title and Text autolayout.

    If you are unsure which autolayout is Title and Text, use ScreenTips to find it.

  8. Click the title area, and type the title The Cost of Waste in the US .

    Don t type the period for the title or any of the bulleted items. Remember to make the punctuation on all your slides consistent.

  9. Click the object area, type Today: $10 billion as the first bulleted item, press Enter to start another bulleted item, and type By the year 2007: $110 billion .

    By the way, these statistics are for demonstration only.

  10. Save the presentation with the name 2 Redmond BEAT .

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Previews

The text in the template icons in the Slide Design “ Design Templates task pane (Lorem ipsum, and so on) is traditionally used in layout work. It gives you an idea of how the publication will look when the real text is in place, without distracting you with words you can actually read. We have been unable to discover the origins of this tradition, other than that this block of random Latin words has been used for this purpose for centuries. Though the words are Latin, this type of placeholder is known as greeked text.

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Inserting a New Slide in a Presentation

When you create a presentation based on a design template, PowerPoint provides only the initial slide. A one-slide presentation would surely leave your audience wanting more, so you need to know how to add slides to a template-based presentation. Follow these steps to add three more slides to the presentation you re working on:

  1. With Slide 1 displayed, click the New Slide button on the Formatting toolbar.

    A second slide with the same layout as the first (Title and Text) appears. If the Slide Layout task pane is not already open , it opens now so that you can select an autolayout. You want to keep the Title and Text autolayout for Slide 2, so you don t need to do anything.

  2. Click the title area of Slide 2, and type How Much Waste?

  3. In the object area, type Residences: 850 million tons as the first bulleted item, press Enter to start the second bulleted item, and then type Industry: 6.5 billion tons .

    As before, don t type a period at the end of any of the bulleted items.

  4. Click the New Slide button to add a new Title and Text slide, and then type Where Do I Start? as the title.

  5. Click the object area of Slide 3, and then type the items listed here:

    Join Redmond BEAT

    Attend meetings at 8:00 AM on the last Tuesday of every month

  6. Add a fourth Title and Text slide, and type What Can I Do? as the title. Then type these bulleted items:

    Start a recycling program

    Educate employees

    Buy post-consumer products

    Call Ted Lee at 555-0189 for more suggestions, or visit the Redmond BEAT website at www.redmondBEAT.tld

    The letters tld stand for Top-Level Domain . We use them here so that we can be sure the web sites we use for illustration purposes don t really exist.

  7. Close the task pane, and save the presentation.

    If you later decide that the design template you chose isn t quite right for a presentation, you can select a different one simply by clicking a different design template in the Slide Design “ Design Templates task pane.




Online Traning Solutions - Quick Course in Microsoft Office XP
Online Traning Solutions - Quick Course in Microsoft Office XP
ISBN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2003
Pages: 116

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