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Chapter 2: Powerpoint, Presentation Concepts

Why It Matters: Microsoft PowerPoint Basic Skills

In this learning module, you will learn the basics of using PowerPoint, focused on editing a
preexisting presentation and changing style elements. Before we begin, here is a quick tutorial
on some key information about PowerPoint and some handy tips to remember before we start
using this program.

1. When you are actually working in PowerPoint you are working on a presentation.
Individual pages within a presentation are called slides. You can think of slides similarly to
a page in Word: each is a standalone piece in a presentation.
2. Just like in Word, PowerPoint has a ribbon area at the top of the window with different
tabs. Refer to the first Microsoft Word module for a refresher on these terms if you
need one.

Introduction to Creating Presentations

What you’ll learn to do: create and save a new presentation.

Creating a new presentation is important because you may not always be given a presentation
to edit. Sometimes you may need to start from a blank slate. Creating a new presentation is
much like creating a new document or new spreadsheet.

New Presentations

• You can open PowerPoint from the Start menu (or the Applications folder on a Mac) by
clicking on the PowerPoint icon. The PowerPoint icon comes in a variety of forms
depending on your OS and version of PowerPoint, but it always features the color
orange and the letter P.

• When you open PowerPoint, some versions of PowerPoint may take you straight to a
new blank presentation. Newer versions such as PowerPoint 2019 and 365 will take you
to a menu called the backstage view to choose to open a new blank presentation or
open a new presentation from a template.
• To open a blank presentation, double-click the blank presentation option. You can also
choose to select a theme for a new presentation, but remember: themes can be
changed at any time.
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• If you already have a file open in PowerPoint, you can create a new presentation by
clicking File>New. You can also use the shortcut Ctrl+N (Cmnd+N for Mac).
• Once you have a new presentation open, you save it the same way you would a Word
or an Excel file. The default file type is .pptx (PowerPoint Presentation). Refer to the
Word lesson if you need a refresher.

Themes

A theme is the overall visual look and scheme to a

presentation in PowerPoint. Like many other
features, it is quite easy to change the theme
after a presentation has been created.

1. Click on the Design tab.

2. Select a new theme from the available
options.
3. Double-click on this theme.

You can also change the color scheme of a theme, before or after you apply it to a
presentation. This is done from the Variants and Customize groups of the Design tab.

Introduction to Using PowerPoint

What you’ll learn to do: edit and organize a presentation.

Learning to use Microsoft PowerPoint is one of the most helpful and versatile workplace skills
you can acquire. Many of the skills you learned for Word and Excel can also be applied to
PowerPoint. The file extension for PowerPoint is .pptx, with versions older than 2003 using
.ppt.
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Editing a Presentation

• To open an existing presentation, simply

double-click on the presentation file, just
the same as opening a Word document
or Excel file that you have already been
given.
• You may also open a presentation using
the Ctrl+O (Cmnd+O) shortcut or
through the File menu if you already
have a presentation open.

• Once you have opened an existing

presentation, one of the first steps you
may want to take is to edit content
within that presentation. However,
before we begin that step let us look at
the default view when we have opened a
presentation, and review a few terms.

1. Slide thumbnail view: this shows you

smaller images of all the slides in a presentation. It has its own scroll bar if there are
more slides than will fit in a single viewing window.
2. Active slide thumbnail: the active slide is highlighted in an orange box in the
thumbnail view.
3. Active slide: this is the main view of the active slide you are currently viewing and can
edit. You can see the scroll bar on the right that allows you to move quickly through the
presentation.

You can move between slides in a presentation using either the slide thumbnail view of the
slides or in the main window. The slide shown in the main window is the active slide for editing.

Organizing Slides

Besides text edits on individual slides, you may also need to make more global changes,
including adding, deleting, or moving slides within a presentation. Each of these tasks is easiest
to accomplish using the slide thumbnail view. The steps for these are outlined below.

Add a Slide

1. To add a slide, simply click between two existing slides where you wish to insert a new
blank slide.
2. Add a slide using the New Slide dropdown display in the Slides group of the ribbon.
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The New Slide dropdown display will show you various slide layouts you may want to use.

The layout name gives you a basic idea of when to use what format. For example, you can use
the Comparison slide if you wish to present two images side-by-side for direct comparison.
There is space above each comparison box to provide a descriptive title, such as “Before
editing” and “After editing.”
Don’t worry; it is very easy to change the slide layout if you decide you want a different one
later. Note that when you add a slide, the new slide becomes the active slide in the main
window.

You can also add slides using the the New slide dropdown menu in the Insert tab.

Delete a Slide

1. To delete a slide, click on the thumbnail image of the slide you wish to delete in the
thumbnail view.
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2. Then use either the Backspace or Delete button on your keyboard to remove that slide.
Compare the two screenshots below. In the first there are four slides visible in the
thumbnail. Slide 2 is selected and deleted, so you do not see it in the second screenshot.

Note that when you delete a slide, the next slide in the presentation becomes the active
slide in the main window.

Move a Slide

1. To move a slide, click on the slide you wish to move in the slide thumbnail view.
2. Drag that slide to a new position in the slide thumbnail view.

Compare the screenshots below. Slides #2 and #3 have been switched.

Views

Another commonly used option in PowerPoint is the view you use to examine the slides. There
are two major views: Normal and Outline.

By default, PowerPoint opens presentations in the Normal view. This is the view you have seen
in screenshots throughout this module, with the slide thumbnails on the left, and as shown
below.

• But as you can see, it is difficult to see what the text on slides actually says from the
Normal view. If you wish to still have an overall thumbnail view of the slides in the
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presentation, but want to be able to read the text on the slides, you can use the
“Outline” view.

• Note that you can read the text that has been typed on a slide, but you cannot see
tables or a thumbnail view of any images. In the Normal view, the table in Slide 3 is
visible, but in the Outline view all you can see of Slide 3 is the title.
• You can still add, delete, and move slides from the Outline view. You can also directly
edit text from the thumbnail slides in the Outline view, which you cannot do from the
Normal view thumbnails. To do this, double-click on or near the text you would like to
edit and type as normal.

Introduction to Objects in PowerPoint

What you’ll learn to do: add objects to a presentation.

You have previously learned to add text boxes, headers, and footers to Word documents. You
can also add these objects and more to PowerPoint presentations.

PowerPoint is a helpful tool for organizing textual information in short, direct sentences or bullet
points. It is also useful for displaying tables, as you saw in the previous module. Tables are not
the only graphics that you can embed in a presentation however. You can also add images, clip
art, and dynamic art to slides that help convey your message.
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Text Boxes

Another type of edit you may wish to perform on a presentation slide is to add a text box. Text
boxes are used for emphasis or as supplements to the standard layout space. For example,
perhaps you want to draw attention to a
specific feature on an image or in data. An
easy way to do this is with a text box.

1. Select the slide you wish to edit with a

text box.
2. Click on the Insert Tab
3. Select Text Box from the menu in the
Text group of the ribbon
4. Click on the slide to place your text
box.
5. Enter your text.

After placing your text box, you

can move it by clicking on the text box
and dragging it to a new location.

Images and Clip Art

To add an image, insert a new slide. For our purposes, it is helpful to start with a Title and
Content slide, but remember you can always change the format of your slide later.

Method 1

1. Click inside the content box so that it becomes the active portion of the slide.
2. If you hover your mouse over any of the icons shown in the green box below, you will
see a description of what type of object you can insert.
3. Select Pictures, the bottom left icon.
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4. By default, your computer’s Pictures folder will pop up. If your images are stored
elsewhere, navigate to the appropriate location to find your image.
5. Click on the picture or image you wish to insert.
6. Click Insert

Method 2

Another way to add an image to a slide is to use the Pictures option in the Insert tab. Pictures
embedded this way are automatically sized as well.
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Clicking the Pictures button uses images stored on your computer. Clicking the Online Pictures
button allows you to use an embedded search engine to use images directly from the internet.
Note that the term pictures is used to represent really any graphic: it can be a photograph, an
icon, or a graphic file. Older versions of Microsoft Office included something called clip art. Clip
art was basically a graphic icon, such as the image shown below. This type of image can still be
used and searched for using the Online Pictures option.

SmartArt

SmartArt is a dynamic type of image that you will often see in PowerPoint slides. SmartArt can
be used to group lists of information together, through bullet lists for example, or to show a
process, through cycles. Fortunately, you do not need to be a graphic designer to create and
insert simple and effective SmartArt into a PowerPoint presentation.
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Before you actually insert SmartArt, you should determine what you are attempting to convey
and the best way to convey it. One helpful item here is the descriptions provided for each basic
SmartArt graphic shape. You can access these descriptions by selecting the Insert a SmartArt
Graphic option on a new slide. When you do, you will see this window:

The graphic styles displayed immediately under All are the commonly used ones, but you can
navigate to specific styles using the menu on the left. For this walkthrough, we will create a
basic cycle SmartArt graphic. This type of graphic is useful when describing a process, such as
what happens when a customer returns a defective item. This example will be used to describe
how to create a SmartArt graphic.

Once you click

OK, the graphic is

automatically sized into your slide, just like inserting any image. Remember: at the end of the day,
a SmartArt graphic is just an image. Therefore, you add them to slides using the same steps
shown on the previous page. You have to insert a SmartArt graphic before you can actually create
the graphic.

The graphic inserts into the slide with default options, but those are very easy to change, as we
will soon see
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Using the text box on the left, type in what

should be displayed in each portion of the
graphic. To move between portions of the
graphic, in this case the circles, click on the
next bullet in the text box or on the next
shape in the graphic. Below, all text has
been updated and a title has been added to
the slide.

You can edit the text at any time by clicking

on the “Type your text here” box or the
circle you wish to edit. If you have left the
slide or presentation and come back to edit
it later, you will need to click on some part
of the SmartArt graphic to bring the “Type
your text here” box back onto the screen.

If you want to change the color scheme, layout, number of shapes in the graphic, or any other
option, you can do so using the Design tab and the options available in that ribbon. Note this
Design tab is only available after you have clicked on the SmartArt graphic. This is not the
standard Design tab that is always available in PowerPoint.
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Once you have created your SmartArt graphic, you can use the Convert to Shapes option to
make your SmartArt graphic a static image. Once you do this, you can still edit the text inside
the shapes, but you cannot change other options such as color, layout, or number of shapes.

Arranging Objects

At this point, we have learned how to add a variety of items to PowerPoint slides, including
different types of images and videos. There are times when you may have multiple objects on a
slide together and wish to position them in a certain way. Alternatively, you may wish to
position a single item in a very specific fashion. This is called arranging objects on slides. Like
many other tasks in PowerPoint, there are automated ways to do this.

1. The “Arrange” menu is found in the “Drawing” group of the Home tab.
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2. You must select a specific object to arrange. For this example, the image of the flower on
the left has been selected.

3. The dropdown Arrange menu provides you a variety of options. Align will specifically
position the selected object somewhere on the slide.

• When you have multiple overlapping objects, you can choose which one is in the
background or forefront using the Order Objects selections. You should Bring to
Front the image you wish to be in the forefront, but keep in mind it will then hide
anything it overlaps. Consider the images below.
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• If you have multiple objects together on a slide, you can make them into a Group
using the “Group Objects” menu. Grouping different objects together turns them
into a single object. In this way, they can be moved, aligned, or resized as a unit
instead of individually. Note that you can only group the same type of objects
together. You can group multiple images together, but you cannot group an
image and a video.

Grouping Objects
PowerPoint allows you to insert shapes or objects and position them in various ways in
a slide. In the previous module you learned how to arrange objects. Now we’ll walk
through how to group objects. The main reasons to group objects are to make it easier
to move, align or resize objects together. In this example we assume objects have
already been arranged and now need to be grouped.

Group Objects
1. Open a slide in a PowerPoint presentation containing various shapes or objects arranged
in the slide.
2. Start from a corner of the slide, hold the left-mouse button down and drag it to include all
objects to be included in a group.
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3. Release the mouse button and all the objects should be showing that they have been
selected by each object showing its rotate arrow, resizing dots, etc.
4. On the Home tab, select the Arrange button, and in Group Objects, select Group.

5. Now all the selected objects will be in one group and can be moved, resized, rotated,
copied, flipped or rearranged as one group.
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Modify Group Objects

Once objects are grouped, they can be

modified in a variety of ways including
ungrouping and regrouping. We’ll walk
through a few steps of how to modify within
a group object.

Text

If a group object has resized by either

enlarging or shrinking and there is text
involved within the group, check to see if it
now needs to be modified. When a group is
resized, text retains its original font size. To
resize it, triple click on the text and all text
in an object is selected. A menu will appear
to change the size to fit the object.

Shapes

Within a group, an individual object can be

moved around without affecting the other
objects. To move a specific object in a
group, select the object and drag it to a new
position.

Ungroup/Regroup

If after repositioning or adjusting a group you

no longer want the objects to act as one
group, go back to the Home, Arrange, Group
Objects, selecting Ungroup. If you decide that
you’d rather have them as a group again,
select all the objects and select the Regroup
option.