Section 13.1. Customizing How PowerPoint Looks


13.1. Customizing How PowerPoint Looks

Because Microsoft did away with most customizable toolbars , menus , and panels of versions past, PowerPoint 2007's window has less to customize. Still, you can tell PowerPoint to turn off options you find annoying, and you can specify what you see in the Quick Access toolbar and the status bar.

13.1.1. Choosing an Overall Look

PowerPoint comes with a couple of skins (basic look-and-feel choices) that let you match the program to your Windows background, if you like. To pick a new skin, choose Office button PowerPoint Options Popular and then choose the look you want from the Color Scheme drop-down menu.

13.1.2. Show (or Hide) the Mini Toolbar

One of the design philosophies that drove Microsoft's redesign of PowerPoint 2007 was, Don't pop stuff up every two minutes while people are trying to workit's annoying . (Or words to that effect.) For the most part, Microsoft stuck to this philosophy. But when it came to editing text on a slidea task most folks do a lot of in PowerPointthe design team compromised by offering the Mini Toolbar you see in Figure 13-1.

Figure 13-1. The instant you click in a text box, the Mini Toolbar springs into actionbut discreetly. It's half see-through, and if you move your mouse around without clicking on it, it quietly disappears. If you find even this modest behavior too intrusive , you can tell PowerPoint to get rid of the Mini Toolbar altogether.


The Mini Toolbar appears automatically whenever you click in a text box. On the plus side, it's small, it's semi-transparent , it disappears when you start typing, and it offers the most all-time popular formatting options, including italics, boldface, and alignment. On the downside, some folks don't like anything popping up on them, helpful or not. The same formatting options are also available on the Home tab, after all.

Out of the box, PowerPoint assumes you want the Mini Toolbar to appear. If you don't, here's how to turn it off:

  1. Choose Office button PowerPoint Options.

    The PowerPoint Options dialog box (Figure 13-2) appears.

  2. On the left side of the PowerPoint Options dialog box, make sure the category Popular is selected.

    NOSTALGIA CORNER
    What You See Is What You Get

    Menus that " remembered " which options you chose the last timeand reordered themselves accordinglymust have seemed like a good idea in the design meetings. But as anyone who's ever used PowerPoint 2003 can tell you, clicking File and then hitting the Expand icon and waiting for the full menu to appear every time you want to work with a file is maddening.

    Thank goodness Microsoft did away with all that shape shifting! Here's what you can expect in PowerPoint 2007 (whether or not you choose to customize it):

    • Stuff stays put. You can't move tabs around the way PowerPoint 2003 let you move toolbars around. And the third (and sixty-third) time you display a menu, the options appear the same as the first time.

    • Stuff doesn't pop up and scare you. In PowerPoint 2003, menus expanded automatically, clipboard options sprang out of the woodwork every time you pasted a line of text onto a slide, and toolbars seemed to pop up of their volition. Not so in PowerPoint 2007, with the exception of the semi-transparent, so-shy-it-disappears-if-you-mouse-away Mini Toolbar (Figure 13-1). And you can turn that off if it annoys you (page 392).


  3. Turn off the checkbox next to "Show Mini Toolbar on selection" and click OK.

    If you find you miss the Mini Toolbar and want to turn it back on again, simply return to Office button PowerPoint Options Popular, and turn the "Show Mini Toolbar on selection checkbox back on.

Figure 13-2. Use the PowerPoint Options dialog box, shown here, to set most (but not all) of PowerPoint's customizable settings. Unfortunately, the settings are organized a bit oddly. Without a good reference (like the one in your hands), you need to hunt around to find the options you want to set.


13.1.3. Show (or Hide) the Ribbon

Normally, you want to see the ribbons that appear when you click Home, View, or any other tab in PowerPoint. But if you you're concentrating on slide layout and don't want any distractions, you can hide the ribbon (but not the tab) by double-clicking any tab. To redisplay the ribbon, double-click the tab again.

13.1.4. Show (or Hide) the Developer Tab

The Developer tab lets you create macros and forms using the Visual Basic for Applications Editor. Because lost of folks can go through their whole PowerPoint lives and never once feel the need to create or run a macro, the Developer tab doesn't appear until you tell PowerPoint to show it.

To show the Developer tab, go to Office button PowerPoint Options Popular. Turn on the "Show Developer tab in the Ribbon checkbox, and then click OK. On the ribbon, the Developer tab appears (Figure 13-3).

Figure 13-3. PowerPoint doesn't display the Developer tab, which you use to create and edit macros, until you tell it to.


You may find you create a macro or two and that's it: you never again touch any of the tools on the Developer tab. If that's the case, you can hide the Developer tab to prevent confusion. Simply return to Office button PowerPoint Options Popular and turn off the "Show Developer tab in the Ribbon checkbox.

13.1.5. Select a Theme for All New Slideshows

Out of the box, PowerPoint assigns every new slideshow you create a plain-Jane theme. But if you tend to use one theme a lotyour company mandates a certain theme developed by your Marketing department, for example, featuring your company's colors, fonts, and logoyou can choose that theme to start all new slide shows. You may end up changing this theme later, but for those presentations that need to conform to your company's style guidelines, you won't have to switch from plain-Jane to Acme Consumer Products Theme every single time.

To specify a theme for all new slideshows, go to Design Themes and right-click the theme you want to use. From the shortcut menu, choose Set as Default Theme.

13.1.6. Customize the Quick Access Toolbar

Although PowerPoint 2007 replaced nearly all toolbars with tabs, one toolbar remains: the Quick Access toolbar (Figure 13-4). As you can probably guess from its name , the Quick Access toolbar is the place to put the buttons , drop-down lists, and so on you want easy access to.

Figure 13-4. Out of the box, PowerPoint assumes you want quick access to the Save, Undo, and Repeat commands, but you can add to, reposition, or remove these options. The Office button (the new, improved File menu) isn't part of the Quick Access toolbar, even though it looks like it might be.


PowerPoint 2007's redesigned interface means that most options are only a couple of clicks away, prominently displayed on one tab or another. But adding your personal favorites to the Quick Access toolbar means they're only one click awayand you don't have to remember which tab they're on, either. In addition to adding buttons to the Quick Access toolbar, you can tell PowerPoint whether to display the toolbarabove the ribbon or below.

13.1.6.1. Add an option to the Quick Access toolbar

You've got two choices when it comes to adding an option to the Quick Access toolbar. You can add options one at a time, or a bunch at one time. Better still, when you add a command to the Quick Access toolbar, PowerPoint automatically lets you access it with a nifty Alt-key shortcut. For example, click Alt+1 (for the first option), Alt+2 (for the second), Alt+3 (for the third), and so on. Press Alt first and then the numberdon't press them together. And make sure you use the numbers above your main keyboard, not the ones on the number pad.

To add an individual option to the Quick Access toolbar, head to any tab and right-click the option you want to add. Then choose Add to Quick Access Toolbar from the shortcut menu (see Figure 13-5). Figure 13-6 shows you the result.

Figure 13-5. The quickest way to add an option (here, Insert Picture from File) to the Quick Access toolbar is to right-click it and choose Add to Quick Access Toolbar. If you want the button to appear somewhere other than the end of the toolbar, right-click it, choose Customize Quick Access Toolbar, and then follow the instructions on page 398 to reposition your newly added option.


Figure 13-6. If you add more buttons than will fit across your screen, PowerPoint simply tacks a More icon on the end of the Quick Access toolbar, which you can click to expand the toolbar. If you add more than a handful of buttons, consider adding a separator to keep the toolbar tidy.



Tip: Alternatively, to add an option to the Quick Access toolbar, you can click Customize Quick Access Toolbar and choose one of the most-commonly added options, such as E-mail, Print Preview, or Spelling. Figure 13-7 shows you how.

Figure 13-7. Because you sometimes don't realize how handy having an option on the Quick Access toolbar can be until you try it, the Customize Quick Access Toolbar shortcut menu lists the most popular options. To add one, simply click to select it.


If you want to add several options to the Quick Access toolbar and rearrange them at the same time, here's what to do:

  1. In the Quick Access toolbar, click Customize Quick Access Toolbar More Commands. (Or right-click the ribbon and choose Customize Quick Access Toolbar.)

    Either way, the PowerPoint Options dialog box opens to the Customization tab, as shown in Figure 13-8.

    Figure 13-8. The list of options you can add to the Quick Access toolbar, sometimes referred to by PowerPointilists as the command well, includes ribbon commands, as you'd expect. But it also includes options that don't appear on any tab. To see these rogue options, from the "Choose commands from" drop-down menu, select All Commands or "Commands Not in the Ribbon" (Figure 13-9). Mousing over an option displays the path to it.



    Note: You can't add the same button to the Quick Access toolbar twice. If you try, the Add button appears grayed out. (You can add multiple separators, though.)
  2. From the "Choose commands from" drop-down menu (Figure 13-9), choose a tab name.

    Options related to that tab appear in the left column.

    Figure 13-9. PowerPoint lets you stock the Quick Access toolbar with options from the ribbon's contextual tabs (the ones on the bottom half of the list) as well as regular tabs.


  3. Click the option you want to add to the toolbar to select it and then click Add. (Or simply double-click the option.)

    The selected option appears at the bottom of the right column, and PowerPoint activates the Move Up arrow. If you select an item from the list in the right column before you choose a button from the left column and then click Add, PowerPoint adds your button directly after the selected item in the right column (not necessarily at the bottom).


    Tip: PowerPoint assumes you want your custom Quick Access toolbar to appear for all of the documents you work with in PowerPoint (in other words, PowerPoint assumes you want your custom Quick Access toolbar to appear every time you open a new document, even after you close and relaunch PowerPoint). If you want it appear in the currently open presentation only, select "For [Document Name]" from the Customize Quick Access Toolbar menu.
  4. Click OK.

    The PowerPoint Options dialog box disappears and you return to the slide editing area, where you see your newly customized Quick Access toolbar.

    If you add, reposition, or delete a bunch of options and then change your mind, you can quickly return to the standard three-button Quick Access toolbar by clicking the Reset button you see in Figure 13-8. When PowerPoint asks if you're sure you want to reset the toolbar, click Yes.

POWER USERS' CLINIC
Launching Macros from the Quick Access Toolbar

If you've got a macro attached to your PowerPoint file, you can add a button to the Quick Access toolbar that runs your macro when you click it. Here's how:

  1. Choose Office button PowerPoint Options Customize.

  2. From the list of macros that appears in the left column, select the macro you want to add to the Quick Access toolbar and then click Add. When you do, PowerPoint displays your macro in the right column and activates the Modify button, as shown in Figure 13-10.

  3. Click Modify and then, in the Modify Button dialog box that appears, choose the icon you want to represent your macro. Click OK.

  4. Click OK in the PowerPoint Options dialog box, and bingoyou've just added a macro to the Quick Access toolbar (Figure 13-11 shows you an example).


13.1.6.2. Reposition an option on the Quick Access toolbar

You can change the order in which PowerPoint displays the Quick Access toolbar buttons. If you use a particular option more often than all the others, place it at the very end of the toolbar (or the very beginning) so you can click it almost without looking.

Figure 13-10. The poorly named Modify button appears grayed out until you add a macro to the Quick Access toolbar. Once you add a macro, clicking Modify displays the Modify Button dialog box shown here, which is also poorly named. It should be called Choose Macro Button, since that's what it lets you do


Figure 13-11. The handy thing about running a macro from the Quick Access toolbar is that it's one-click easy, unlike running a macro from the Developer tab.


To reposition an option on the Quick Access toolbar:

  1. On the Quick Access toolbar, choose Customize Quick Access Toolbar More Commands.

    The PowerPoint Options dialog box appears.

  2. In the right column, click the name of the option you want to reposition and then click Move Up (to bump the button up one in the lineup) or Move Down (to push the button down one in the lineup).

    You can find these arrow icons to the right of the column, as shown back in Figure 13-8.

  3. When you finish, click OK.

    The PowerPoint Options dialog box disappears and you return to your slide editing area, where you see your newly reorganized Quick Access toolbar.

UP TO SPEED
When a Button Is More Than a Button

Most of the options you add to the Quick Access toolbar are buttons, as shown in Figure 13-11 on page 399. But PowerPoint also lets you add whole chunks of options to the Quick Access toolbar in the form of drop-down menus, split buttons, edit controls, and even entire ribbon groups.

You can tell if an option is a simple button or something more complicated by heading to the left-hand column of the PowerPoint Options dialog box (Figure 13-12, top). If you don't see an icon on the far right of the listing, it's a button; if you do see an icon, it corresponds to one of the four option types shown in Figure 13-12 (bottom).


Figure 13-12. Top: Be aware when you add a drop-down menu, ribbon group , or other multiple-choice option to the Quick Access toolbar, it'll look and act different from regular buttons. Instead of immediately performing some useful task the way a button does, clicking one of these displays additional options.
Bottom: Here, the Theme Gallery (a ribbon group) appears on the Quick Access toolbar.


13.1.6.3. Delete an option from the Quick Access toolbar

PowerPoint lets you delete options you've added to the Quick Access toolbar. Simply right-click the button you want to remove and then choose "Remove from Quick Access Toolbar" from the shortcut menu. When you do, PowerPoint immediately removes the button from the toolbar.


Note: There's nothing stopping you from deleting the standard Save, Undo, and Repeat, optionseffectively deleting the Quick Access toolbar itself, except for the little down-arrow Customize Quick Access Toolbar icon.
13.1.6.4. Reposition the Quick Access toolbar

Unless you tell it differently, PowerPoint assumes you want to display the Quick Access toolbar above the ribbon. To display it below the ribbon, choose Customize Quick Access Toolbar Show Below the Ribbon. (Displaying the toolbar below the ribbon takes a small bite out of your screen real estate.)

To put it back up above the ribbon, select Customize Quick Access Toolbar Show Above the Ribbon.

13.1.7. Customize the Status Bar

Redesigned in PowerPoint 2007, the status bar (Figure 13-13) displays helpful information about the presentation you're working on. But it also gives you customizable one-click options for viewing and running your slideshow.

Figure 13-13. Although the status bar at the bottom of the PowerPoint interface is easy to overlook, it has a wealth of quick-access options and presentation-related info . Here, from left to right, are the View Indicator (slide 1 of 1), the name of this presentation's theme, spell check and print status, and zoom options.


To customize the appearance of the status bar, right-click it and, in the shortcut menu that appears (Figure 13-14), turn on the checkbox next to the options you want to display in the status bar. Your options include View Indicator, Theme, Spell Check, Language, Signatures, Information Management Policy, Permissions, View Shortcuts, Zoom, Zoom Slider, and Zoom to Fit.

Figure 13-14. The five options in the middle of the menuSpell Check, Language, Signatures, Information Management Policy, and Permissionsdon't actually appear on the status bar when you turn them on. Instead, they remind you of important options you've set in the PowerPoint Options dialog box.





PowerPoint 2007
PowerPoint 2007
ISBN: 1555583148
EAN: N/A
Year: 2006
Pages: 129

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