Microsoft PowerPoint is a popular program for creating electronic presentations in the form of slide shows. This LIS training document deals with PowerPoint 2007, which is the latest version of PowerPoint.

Goals

Upon completion of this 1-on-1 training, you will be able to:

• Create a Presentation
• Become Familiar with the Location of Tools in the Ribbon
• Save and Print a Presentation
• Save a Presentation For Use With Previous Versions of PowerPoint

Training

Create a Presentation

1. First, open Microsoft PowerPoint by clicking Start > All Programs > Applications > Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007.

When you open PowerPoint, an empty slide show will automatically be created.

2. Your slide show starts off with one slide, and its layout is initially a simple title and subtitle. If you want, you can change the “layout” of your slide. PowerPoint has a number of predefined layouts that you can use. In the Home tab of the Ribbon, you’ll notice there is a Layout button. Click the Layout button and you will see the different predefined layouts that you can use. You may also have a custom layout, which you can create by simply inserting the objects that you want and moving them around.

3. You can edit the text in the slide by clicking on the text field, then editing the text. For now, let’s type in the title “Executive Presentation,” and for the subtitle, type “I’ll think of something to put here.”

Adding Slides

To add a slide to your slide show, click the New Slide button in the Home tab of the Ribbon. There are actually two halves to this button. The top half of the button (the icon) just creates a new slide with a default title and bulleted list formatted slide. If you click the bottom half of the New Slide button, you will be given a menu of layouts for your new slide. Let’s create a couple of slides and put a little bit of content in them.

1. Click the New Slide button a few times (click the top part of it to get the default layout).

2. Click the thumbnail for the second slide in the Sidebar to go to the second slide.

3. Type in the title “Introduction,” and then click on the “Click to add text” field to start typing in some bullet points for your slide.

Slide Background

There’s no need to have a boring white background for your slide show. With PowerPoint, you can quickly choose a theme for your entire slide show. Click the Design tab of the Ribbon, and choose a theme that tickles your fancy. It will automatically be applied to your entire slide show.

Navigating from Slide to Slide

You can move from slide to slide by simply scrolling up and down using the vertical scroll bar on the right side of the window. You can also switch slides using the sidebar, which contains thumbnails of all of your slides. You will find the sidebar on the left side of the window. You can click on the thumbnail to go to the slide you want.

Transitions

With PowerPoint, you can make a slide show as simple or as elaborate as you like. One simple way to add a little pizzazz to your presentation is to add transitions between your slides. You can add transitions by clicking on the Animation tab of the Ribbon and choosing from the transitions in the Transition to This Slide section. When you hover your mouse over each transition, you will get a Live Preview of how the transition will actually look.

Views

While working on your slide show, there are a few different ways you can look at it as you’re editing. To change views, click the View tab of the Ribbon and click on the view you would like. There are also view icons at the bottom of the screen that you can click on.

Here are a few useful ones:

• The Normal view is the view that you see by default when you create the presentation. You see the slide in a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) fashion, and you have a sidebar on the left side of the window.

• The Slide Sorter view shows you thumbnails of all your slides. This view is useful if you want to quickly find a slide, or if you want to do a change to a batch of slides (like add a specific transition or animation). To add a transition to a batch of slides, go to Slide Sorter view, select the slides you want to apply the transition to (hold the Ctrl key to select multiple slides at once, or hold the Shift key to get a block of slides), click the Animations tab, and click on a transition.

• The Notes Page view creates a page for each slide. The top half of the page has a picture of the slide, and the bottom half has notes, which you can create for yourself.

• Clicking the Slide Show button will start your slide show. Click on your first slide, click this button and see how your slide show looks now. To move forward a slide, just click the mouse button.

Changing Order of Slides

If you want to move a slide to a different position in your slide show, drag its thumbnail in the side bar in Normal view, or drag its thumbnail in Slide Sorter view.

Get to Know the Ribbon

Before Office 2007, you had toolbars and menus. Now, you have the Office Fluent Ribbon. It consists of several tabs:

Home

The Home Tab contains the tools you will probably find yourself using most frequently when you are using PowerPoint.

• Clipboard
• Slides
• Font
• Paragraph
• Drawing
• Editing

Insert

The Insert tab allows you to insert objects into your slides.

• Tables
• Illustrations
• Links
• Text
• Media Clips

Design

The Design tab gives you access to ways you can customize the appearance of your presentation.

• Page Setup
• Themes
• Background

Animations

The Animations tab is where you go to control slide transitions and animations.

• Preview
• Animations
• Transition to This Slide

Slide Show

The Slide Show tab lets you control how you want your slide show presented and lets you use automatic timers.

• Start Slide Show
• Set Up
• Monitors

Review

The Review tab lets you check for spelling errors, track changes, and gives you access to other editing-related aspects.

• Proofing
• Comments
• Protect

View

The View tab lets you change how you view the presentation while editing it.

• Presentation Views
• Show/Hide
• Zoom
• Color/Grayscale
• Window
• Macros

Save a Presentation

In PowerPoint 2007 (and other Office programs), the File menu has been replaced with the Office Button. This button gives you access to things that you used to find in the File menu, like opening, saving and printing, and it also gives you access to PowerPoint Options.

To save, click the Office Button, and click Save. You can also use the Ctrl+S keyboard shortcut.

Print a Presentation

To print a slide show, click the Office Button and click Print. You will then see a number of options for printing. To save paper, it is a good idea to choose to print a handout or notes page, as opposed to printing the slides. You can choose what you want to print by clicking on the menu under “Print what.”

Save a Presentation for Use With Previous Versions of PowerPoint

PowerPoint 2007 uses a different file format than previous versions. Therefore, older versions of PowerPoint will not be able to open a PowerPoint 2007 file without a compatibility add-on. However, PowerPoint 2007 can save presentations in the older format. Click the Office Button, move the mouse onto Save As and choose PowerPoint 97-2003 Presentation.

Additional Resources

Review the Help within PowerPoint

PowerPoint 2007 has a built-in help system. Hit the F1 key, or click the question mark on the upper right part of the window to access it.

• You can select a topic by clicking on the text, such as What’s new .
• You can also type a word or phrase into the box at the top of the window, click the Search button, and then select the topic of interest.
• You can click on Training and select a topic, such as Up to speed with PowerPoint 2007 to view an online demo and then practice hands-on.

Review Online Microsoft Resources

• Personalize Your Slide Design
• Microsoft Office PowerPoint Product Page
• Office 2007 Test Drive

Consult Atomic Learning

Atomic Learning is a provider of web-based software training videos and resources. Some relevant video clips and tutorial series are:

• PowerPoint 2007 – Getting Started Workshop
• PowerPoint 2007 – Intro
• PowerPoint 2007 – Intermediate
• PowerPoint 2007 – Advanced

Consult Reference Books

Many books are available for check-out at the Help Desk, including, but not limited to, the following:

• Teach Yourself VISUALLY Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007
• Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 Step by Step
• PowerPoint 2007 for Dummies
• 2007 Microsoft Office System Inside Out

Review the Technology Help Desk web site

• PowerPoint 2007 FAQ
• PowerPoint 2007 – Getting Started
• Office 2007 – Using the Keyboard With the Ribbon
• For more related articles not listed here, go to http://lis.luther.edu, and use the Search LIS box in the upper right hand corner to search for “PowerPoint 2007”
• For more articles on other topics, go to http://lis.luther.edu/learn/articles.

Contact the Technology Help Desk

• Call 563-387-1000
• Email helpdesk@luther.edu
• Stop by the Technology Help Desk in Preus Library