Powerful PowerPoint Presentations
Powerful PowerPoint Presentations
Powerful PowerPoint Presentations
We’ve collected our best PowerPoint tips articles to help your presentations
sizzle. The articles were originally published with trainers in mind, but full
instructions are included so that any professional can make use of this
information.
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PowerPoint Presentation Tips
Create a slide
To start, quickly set up a sample slide to demo the technique:
1. With a presentation open, choose New Slide from the Insert menu, select Bulleted List Auto Layout from
the New Slide dialog box, and click OK.
2. Click on the title placeholder and type some title text.
3. Click within the bottom text box and type five or six items, pressing [Enter] after each one (except the last
one). PowerPoint will bullet the items automatically.
5. Choose Gray from the After Animation drop-down list to make each item change color when the
subsequent item appears.
These settings tell PowerPoint to display a new bulleted item every time
you click the mouse and to turn each item gray as the next one appears.
Show time!
Now you can show the class how these animation settings will affect the previously static bulleted list.
1. Click the Slide Show button at the bottom of the window to launch the presentation.
2. Click the mouse button to display the first item.
3. Click again to bring in the next item and turn the first one gray.
4. Continue clicking to work through the rest of the list.
company's image and their own tastes. They can then use that template to create their own trademark
presentations. Here's a sample walk-through that introduces the necessary steps.
Slide setup
To create a design template, start by opening a new presentation and inserting a slide. You can then apply the
desired formatting to various slide elements using the Slide Master view.
1. Launch PowerPoint and select Blank Presentation in the startup dialog box, as we've done in Figure A.
Figure A
2. Click OK and then click OK again when the New Slide dialog box appears. This will insert a title slide.
3. Choose Master from the View menu and select Slide Master. Then, simply apply the formats you want for
presentations based on this design template. Table A shows a selection of sample formatting
possibilities, and Figure B shows the sample slide with this formatting applied (prior to deleting the
rectangle). Of course, your students may have their own design requests, which you can demonstrate
instead.
4. After making the desired formatting changes, choose Slide from the View menu to switch back to Slide
view.
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PowerPoint Presentation Tips
Figure B
We've formatted the slide master with the design characteristics for our
new template.
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PowerPoint Presentation Tips
Figure C
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PowerPoint Presentation Tips
The scenario
Let's assume that you've created a presentation that introduces departmental objectives for the next six months.
One slide lists several bulleted objectives, including Reduce Spending. To back up this objective, you want to
show the audience certain areas where spending can be cut back—so you decide to jump to an Excel worksheet
that tracks purchase orders.
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PowerPoint Presentation Tips
2. Click and drag on the slide to draw the button. When you release the mouse button, PowerPoint will
display the Action Settings dialog box with the Mouse Click tab selected.
3. Select the Hyperlink To option and choose Other File from the Hyperlink To drop-down list. PowerPoint
will display the Hyperlink To Other File dialog box. Just choose the file you want the button to open, click
OK, and then click OK again to close the Action Settings dialog box.
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PowerPoint Presentation Tips
At this point, you may want to show your students that they can format the button just as they would any other
slide object. They can also resize the button and drag it wherever they want on the slide.
When the button setup is complete, you can put it through its paces. But first, a word of warning.
Other actions
After you share this specific technique, you may want to show your class some additional features of the Action
Settings dialog box. For instance, you might run through the various entries on the Hyperlink To drop-down list
and touch on the Run Program and Play Sound options. You may also introduce the Mouse Over tab—but be
sure your students realize how easy it is to inadvertently mouse-over a button during a presentation and jump to
an unwanted destination.
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PowerPoint Presentation Tips
Other approaches
You're not restricted to using action buttons to create links such as the one we've looked at here. You can right-
click on any slide object and choose Action Settings from the shortcut menu to open the Action Settings dialog
box and specify a target location. You can also select any object and then click the Hyperlink button. PowerPoint
will open the Insert Hyperlink dialog box, where you can use the Link To File Or URL or Named Location In File
options to specify a destination for the link.
Creating notes
PowerPoint offers a couple of methods for creating notes for a slide, but we'll take the most flexible approach:
1. Display the slide in Slide view or select it in Slide Sorter view.
2. Choose Notes Page from the View menu or click the Notes Page View button in the horizontal scroll bar.
PowerPoint will switch to Notes Page view, displaying an image of the slide and a text box for notes.
3. Click in the text box and type a sample note. You'll probably want to choose a higher zoom percentage
from the Zoom drop-down list for a better view of what you're typing.
4. To show that notes text works just like any other slide text, make a couple of editing changes and then
reformat your notes by highlighting the text and selecting a different font and point size.
5. To demonstrate that you can resize the slide image and text box, click a handle and drag. (Hold down
[Shift] and drag a corner handle if you want to resize proportionally.) You can also drag both elements to
relocate them on the page.
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PowerPoint Presentation Tips
6. When you're finished, choose Slide or Slide Sorter from the View menu (or click the corresponding
buttons on the horizontal scroll bar) to return to your original view.
3. For demo purposes, reduce the size of the slide image at the top of the Notes Master by dragging a
corner handle and then drag a handle on the text box to make it bigger.
4. Again, for demo, click anywhere within the label Click To Edit Master Text Styles and choose 18 from the
Font Size drop-down list. (You can click in the labels for additional levels and apply different formatting if
you want, but that's not really necessary to show how the Notes Master works.)
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PowerPoint Presentation Tips
Printing notes
The final step is to print out a set of notes for the speaker to refer to during the presentation.
1. Choose Print from the File menu.
2. Use the settings in the Print Range area to specify the slides for which you want to print notes (or leave
All selected).
3. Choose Notes Pages from the Print What drop-down list.
4. Click OK to send the notes to the printer.
Timing is everything
Suppose you're designing a training slide show, and you want the student to read a question or an instruction,
ponder it, and then click the mouse to display the answer to the question or the next instruction. And maybe, just
for fun, you want to display a cool graphic image after the student clicks for the last time.
To illustrate how to create click-activated text, we'll use the slide shown in Figure A. (We simply created a blank
slide, added one text object for the title, another text object for the instructions, and an image object for the clip
art.)
Figure A
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PowerPoint Presentation Tips
We'll tell PowerPoint to display the items in the instructions text box one
line at a time—adding a line each time the user clicks the mouse.
Once you've typed the instructions in your text box, here's how you make those instructions appear one click at
a time.
1. Right-click on the text box that contains the instructions and select the Custom Animation option from the
Context menu, as shown in Figure B.
2. When the Custom Animation dialog box appears, click the Timing tab.
3. The item labeled "Text 2" will be selected by default. (That's the second text object in our sample slide, the
one that contains our instructions.) In the Start Animation section, click the Animate radio button. When you
do, PowerPoint will move Text 2 to the top of the Animation Order list, as shown in Figure C.
4. Next, click the Effects tab. At this point, select one of the options under the Entry Animation And Sound
option. These options determine how the text will appear on the slide—you can select plain old Appear or
any of the other animation options. Then, click the check box labeled Grouped By and select the 1st option,
as shown in Figure D. That option says, "Bring in the text one first-level paragraph at a time."
5. In order to make the picture the last thing to appear on this slide, click the Timing tab again. Click on Object
3 and then click the Animate radio button. When you do, PowerPoint will add Object 3 to the Animation
Order list. Click the Effects tab and choose an entry animation style for the graphic. (For our sample slide,
we chose the option Fly From Left.)
6. Click OK to close the Custom Animation dialog box.
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PowerPoint Presentation Tips
Figure B
Right-click on the text box that contains your series of instructions and choose the Custom
Animation option from the Context menu.
Figure C
Click the Timing tab and then activate the Animate radio button. When you do, the text object
goes to the top of the Animation Order list.
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PowerPoint Presentation Tips
Figure D
Once you've selected an object for animation, click the Effects tab and
select one of the entry animation options. Click the check box for
Grouped By and select the 1st option.
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PowerPoint Presentation Tips
Figure A
The first step in adding your company logo to your slides is editing the Master Slide.
Next, place the logo file on the master slide. It will appear in the same position on all the slides. If your Picture
toolbar is displayed, start by clicking Insert Picture From File (the first button on the left). If your Picture toolbar
isn't open, just go to PowerPoint's Insert menu, choose Picture, and then select From File.
When the Insert Picture dialog box opens, navigate to your company logo file (as we did in Figure B) and click
Insert.
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PowerPoint Presentation Tips
Figure B
When you open the Insert Picture dialog box, navigate to the
appropriate file. (In this case, we selected trlogo.bmp.)
PowerPoint treats the logo image as just another object. Simply click on the image's border and drag it to the
appropriate location on the Master Slide. (If you need to change the size of the image, do that now by clicking on
one of the corners and shrinking or expanding its borders.) Figure C shows what our Master Slide looks like after
we moved the logo to the bottom-right corner. Figure D illustrates how this change to the Master Slide affects the
slides in our presentation.
Figure C
Once you've inserted the logo, you can adjust its size and position
on the slide.
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PowerPoint Presentation Tips
Figure D
Here's what the finished product will look like. The logo will appear in
the same position on every slide.
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PowerPoint Presentation Tips
Start recording, cue the sound, and click at the right time
The first step is to create your slide show. Once you've done that, you're ready to record an audio track. To do so,
open PowerPoint's Slide Show menu and select the Record Narration command. PowerPoint will then display the
dialog box shown in Figure A.
Figure A
Recording starts when the first slide appears. Read your narration or cue your sound track. Press Spacebar
when you're ready to proceed to the next slide. When you press Spacebar on the last slide in your presentation,
PowerPoint will display the dialog box shown in Figure B. Click Yes or press [Enter], and PowerPoint will display
the dialog box shown in Figure C. Click Yes or press [Enter] again to go to Slide Sorter view.
At that point, you'll be able to tell at a glance how long each slide will be displayed. Figure D shows the number
of seconds of audio I recorded for each slide in my sample presentation.
Note: The next time you run the slide show, it will proceed on autopilot, displaying each slide for as long as the
associated audio track lasts.
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PowerPoint Presentation Tips
Figure B
After you press Spacebar to end recording on the last slide, PowerPoint
will confirm that you want to save the timing settings.
Figure C
Figure D
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PowerPoint Presentation Tips
Thanks!
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