Free MS-PowerPoint Tutorials

Introducing PowerPoint 2007
PowerPoint is a complete presentation graphics package. It gives you everything you need to produce a professional-looking presentation. PowerPoint offers word processing, outlining, drawing, graphing, and presentation management tools, all designed to be easy to use and learn to help you create stunning presentations.

Additional New Features in PowerPoint
In this tutorial you can create custom layouts without much more effort and convert a list to a diagram in just two clicks.

Creating a Basic Presentation in PowerPoint 2007
This tutorial will describes you with powerpoint 2007 by walking you through the creation of a basic bullets-and-background slideshow presentation. You will learn how to create a new slideshow, choose a look and feel, add text and slides, print speaker notes and handouts, and finally, how to unveil your masterpiece.

How to Edit PowerPoint Slides
This tutorial shows you how to use PowerPoint's Search and Replace feature to find words and phrases buried in long presentations and change (or delete) them quickly. And if spelling's not your speciality, PowerPoint can help you check it.

Adding Color and Pictures to a Presentation
Learn how to use themes, changing backgrounds, adding graphics, showing movies on a slide and adding sounds to a presentation.

Introducing PowerPoint 2007

In this tutorial, we tell you what a PowerPoint presentation is and explain some PowerPoint jargon. By the time you finish reading this tutorial, you will know what creating a PowerPoint presentation entails.

Introducing PowerPoint
A Whirlwind Tour of PowerPoint

Introducing PowerPoint

In this tutorial, we tell you what a PowerPoint presentation is and explain some PowerPoint jargon. By the time you finish reading this tutorial, you will know what creating a PowerPoint presentation entails.

PowerPoint Slides

Figure shows the PowerPoint window. That thing in the middle is a slide, PowerPoint’s word for an image that you show your audience. Surrounding the slide are many tools for entering text and decorating slides. When the time comes to show your slides, you dispense with the tools and make the slide fill the screen. Throughout this tutorial, you will find instructions for making slides and for constructing a presentation, the PowerPoint word that describes all the slides, from first to last, that you show to your audience.

The PowerPoint window (top) and a slide as it looks in a presentation (bottom).

Some PowerPoint Jargon

To make PowerPoint do your bidding, you need to know a little jargon:

Presentation:
All the slides, from start to finish, that you show your audience. Sometimes presentations are called “slide shows.” Presentations are saved in presentation files (.pptx files).

Slides:
The images you create with PowerPoint. During a presentation, slides appear on-screen one after the other. You don’t need a slide projector to show these slides. You can now plug a laptop or other computer into special monitors that display PowerPoint slides.

Notes:
Printed pages that you, the speaker, write and print so that you know what to say during a presentation. Only the speaker sees notes.

Handout:
Printed pages that you may give to the audience after a presentation. A handout shows the slides in the presentation. Handouts are also known by the somewhat derogatory term “leave-behinds.”

PowerPoint as a Communication Tool

PowerPoint is not just a speaker’s aid, but a means of communicating something to an audience - an idea, a business plan, a marketing strategy. PowerPoint has become so popular in part because it relieves the burden of public speaking. A nervous public speaker (and who is not a nervous public speaker?) can avert the attention of the audience to the slides and allow the slides to carry the day. But those slides in and of themselves can be great means of communication. PowerPoint offers numerous ways to communicate with an audience above and beyond what can be said in words:

Colors:
Your color choices set the tone and suggest what you want to convey in your presentation.

Photographs and other images:
A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. Spare yourself from having to speak thousands of words by including pictures in your presentation.

Tables:
Support your proposal with table data. No one will be able to refute you.

Charts:
For comparing and presenting data, nothing beats a chart.

Diagrams:
With diagrams, the audience can literally visualize a relationship,concept, or idea.

Shapes and text-box shapes:
You can use lines, shapes, and text box shapes (shapes with words on them) to illustrate your ideas.

Sound and video:
Include sound and video to make your presentation a feast for the ears and eyes.

A Whirlwind Tour of PowerPoint

To help you understand what you are getting into, the rest of this tutorial provides a whirlwind tour of PowerPoint. It explains what creating a presentation entails, from inserting the first slide to putting on the finishing touches. Better fasten your safety belt.

Creating the slides

After you create a new presentation, your next task is to insert the slides. As shown in figure, PowerPoint offers many preformatted slide layouts. These layouts are available on the New Slide dropdown list, the drop-down list you open when you want to insert a slide. Each layout is designed for presenting information a certain way.

As you create slides, you can jot down notes in the Notes pane. You can use the notes later on to formulate your presentation and decide what you will say to your audience while each slide is on-screen.

To help complete tasks, you can change views. Figure shows the Power- Point window in Slide Sorter view. This view is best for moving, copying, and deleting slides. PowerPoint offers the View tab and View buttons for changing your view of a presentation. The program offers many different views, each designed to help with a different task.

Designing your presentation

The next step is to think about the appearance of your presentation. Figure shows the Design tab, where you make most of the decisions that pertain to the presentation’s look.

Starting here, you can change the slides’ colors and backgrounds. You can also choose a new “theme” for your presentation - an all-encompassing design that applies to all (or most of) the slides. If you’re the type of person who doesn’t run with the herd, you can overhaul one of these themes and in effect redesign it by switching to Slide Master view and tinkering with the master slides.

Choose a design for your presentation early on. The fonts, graphics, shapes, tables, and charts you put in your presentation have to fit the design. If you change designs after you’ve created the majority of your slides, you may have to choose new font colors and graphics. You may have to redesign your tables, charts, and diagrams as well because they don’t fit into the new design you chose.

Inserting tables, charts, diagrams, and shapes

A PowerPoint presentation should be more than a loose collection of bulleted lists. Starting on the Insert tab, you can place tables, charts, and diagrams on slides. You can also adorn your slides with text boxes, WordArt images, and shapes. And when you include a bulleted or numbered list, you can employ nonstandard bullets and numbering schemes to make your lists a little different from everybody else’s.

Use your imagination. Try to take advantage of all the features that PowerPoint provides for communicating with an audience.

Animating your slides

As we mentioned earlier, PowerPoint slides can play video and sound. You can also enliven a presentation by “animating” it. Starting on the Animations tab, you can make slide items bulleted lists, shapes, and clip art — arrive and leave the screen from different directions. You can make the items on a slide move on the screen. As a slide arrives, you can make it spin or flash.

Showing your presentation

During a presentation, you can draw on the slides . You can also blank the screen, show slides out of order, and detour your presentation into a customized slide show. Most presentations are made to be delivered in person by a speaker, but you can deliver presentations from afar by choosing commands on the Slide Show tab.

These kinds of presentations can run in your absence:

Self-running presentation:
A presentation that runs on its own and can be exhibited at a trade show or other public place.

User-run presentation:
A presentation that others can run. Special buttons permit individuals to go from slide to slide.

A handout:
A printed copy of a presentation.

A CD:
A packaged CD copy of a presentation that others can show on their computers (and you can take on the road). People who don’t have PowerPoint can view presentations after they are packed for a CD.

A Web page:
A version of a presentation formatted for display on the Internet or an intranet.

Additional New Features in PowerPoint

In this tutorial you can create custom layouts without much more effort and convert a list to a diagram in just two clicks. PowerPoint 2007 also gives you the option to package your presentations for distribution on CD. These are features that make life easier in a lot of way.

Creating and Saving Custom Layouts
Converting Lists to Diagrams in Two Clicks
Creating and Saving New Text Effects
Packaging for CD

Creating and Saving Custom Layouts

Microsoft goes to work well in advance of releasing a new product to put together templates and document layouts for use with the final product. Even so, when the product is released it is impossible to include every layout and template that you might need. Every organization has different requirements. And with different requirements comes the need for custom layouts.

To make PowerPoint (and other office programs) as usable as possible, PowerPoint gives you the capability to create custom layouts that suit your needs. However, if you tried to figure this out without some help, you could spend days on it and still not locate the right commands. The names have changed, and with the change in controls, you may not recognize the controls that you need. Here is how it is done.

1. Either in an existing presentation or in a new slide, click the View tab, and then select Slide Master from the Ribbon, so you are taken to the Master View, and the Ribbon and tabs change to reflect the tools you will need to create your custom slide.
   
   
2. Click Insert Slide Master to add a new master slide to your presentation. A screen with several master-slide layouts appears, select the slide you want to work from. Don't worry if there are elements in the existing masters that you don’t want, you can remove them by right-clicking the border of the element (also called placeholder) and selecting Cut.
   
   
3. To design your custom layout, select Insert Placeholder, as shown in Figure below. Then select the placeholder that you would like to insert on the slide and define the area on the slide where you want to insert the placeholder by dragging your mouse across the desired area on the slide template.
   
   
   
   

   Insert placeholders on your custom slide to complete the desired layout.

4. You can also toggle titles and footers on and off by placing a check mark in or removing it from the box next to these options. When you have finished laying out your slide, click File and select Save As => PowerPoint Presentation, and then add the name of the file and use the Save type as drop-down menu to select PowerPoint Template.

When you have finished with your custom slide, remember to select Rename and give it a meaningful name that will help you locate the slide when you need it. To return to your original document, all you need to do is click Close on the Slide Master tab.

Then you can add your custom slide to any document by selecting the Insert tab. Click Add Slide => Reuse Slide, and then navigate to and select the custom slide that you have created. It can be reused any number of times in any number of presentations. If there is a specific slide layout that you use regularly, this is the fastest way to ensure that it is always available to you.

When you add a custom slide to an existing presentation, the presentation theme is automatically added to the slide. If you prefer to have a different theme, you will have to change it manually.

Converting Lists to Diagrams in Two Clicks

Using a list to create a diagram in just two clicks. It is really that simple. Here is how:

1. Create a slide in your presentation. You can use just about any layout that includes text capabilities to create the slide, so right-click anywhere within the list area.
   
   
2. From the list that appears, highlight Convert to SmartArt, as shown in Figure below, the SmartArt options appear.
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Click the thumbnail that represents the SmartArt diagram that suits your presentation, it will automatically be inserted on your slide in place of the list that you originally created, as shown in below (I select Vertical Picture Accent List). The text list is also opened automatically so you can change any of the points included in the original list.
   
   
   

Creating and Saving New Text Effects

In some documents, you may want to change the text effects throughout the document. In the past, that meant highlighting text and making the changes. Today, it is easy to do. You can change the way text looks all the way through the document with the click of a button. All you need to do is highlight the text you want to change and then use the Text Fill, Text Outline, and Text Effects buttons to make your changes. Once the changes are made, you can save the document to keep from losing your new formatting. To apply new formatting to your entire document:

1. Go to the Design tab and then in the Themes section of the tab, select the Theme Fonts drop-down menu to make the changes that you desire, or click Create New Theme Fonts.
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Make your selections and enter a name for the new theme fonts.
   
   
3. Click Save. Now you have a font theme you can apply to any document.

PowerPoint is full of powerful, easy-to-use options that were very difficult to find in the past. These new options take a little getting used to, but once you figure them all out, it is easy to create professional, effective PowerPoint presentations in less time than ever before.

Packaging for CD

One additional feature of PowerPoint 2007 that you might find useful is the ability to package your presentation to be burned to CD. Storing your presentation on CD makes it easy to share and archive. But in the past, burning a presentation to CD was less than user-friendly. Today, even with charting and graphics that included imbedded information from other sources, you can save a CDready file, or burn your presentation to CD with the click of a button. Here is how.

1. Once you have completed your presentation select Office button and then click Publish => Package for CD. The Package for CD dialog box appears.
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Select the desired options: name your CD, select any additional files that you want to save, and then click the Options button. (Don't worry about embedded files; the program handles that.)
   
   
3. In the Options menu, you can select the Presentation Type, select the Include these files options, and set Security and privacy.
   
   
4. When you have made your selections, click to either save the finished file or burn it to CD, and you are done.

Creating a Basic Presentation

This tutorial will describes you with powerpoint 2007 by walking you through the creation of a basic bullets-and-background slideshow presentation. You will learn how to create a new slideshow, choose a look and feel, add text and slides, print speaker notes and handouts, and finally, how to unveil your masterpiece.


Beginning a New Presentation
Creating a Presentation from an Existing Template, Theme, or Presentation
From an existing (built-in) theme
Choosing a Theme for Your Presentation
Adding Text
Adding More Slides
Moving Around Inside a Presentation
Adding Speaker Notes
Creating and Printing Handouts
Saving and Closing a Presentation
PowerPoint 2007 File Types
Running a Presentation

Beginning a New Presentation

You have got two basic choices when it comes to creating a new presentation:

You can start from scratch, using a blank canvas.
If you are familiar with earlier incarnations of the PowerPoint program, or if you are interested in learning the ins and outs of PowerPoint quickly, then you will probably want to choose this option.

You can create a new presentation based on an existing template, theme, or presentation.
A template is a generic presentation file designed for you to reuse. Complete with themes, background images, and even generic content (such as page numbers and placeholder text), templates let you jump-start your presentation by giving you everything you need except your specific content. If you are creating a presentation for your local school board, for example, then you will need to add the content that describes your findings, conclusions, and suggestions.

Templates are the better option when you need to crank out a presentation in a jiffy. PowerPoint comes with a handful of professionally designed templates and themes, but you can also create presentations based on a template, theme, or presentation that you've previously created, or one that you have found online and downloaded onto your computer.

Creating a New Presentation from Scratch

When you launch PowerPoint, the program starts you off with a brand-new presentation cleverly named Presentation1.

PowerPoint calls this a "blank" presentation even though technically it's not blank at all: It contains placeholders for the first slide's title and subtitle.

Typically, you dive right in, adding a look and feel, text, pictures, and so on to the blank presentation PowerPoint hands you. But if you've closed or saved your freebie, here is how you create an additional blank presentation:

• Select Office button New. The New Presentation window appears.
  
  
• On the left side of the New Presentation window, make sure the Blank and recent option is selected. If it's not, click it to select it.
  
  
• In the New Presentation window, double-click Blank Presentation or you can click Blank Presentation and then click Create. Either way, a new blank presentation named Presentation2 (or Presentation3, or Presentation4 depending on how many new presentations you have created since you launched the program) appears in your PowerPoint workspace.
  
  
  
  

  Because folks typically want to create a new presentation either from scratch or based on a favorite (and, therefore, recently used) template, the Blank and recent option is automatically selected. But you can choose instead to create a presentation based on an existing presentation, or on a theme or template you've created or downloaded from the Web.

  (Short Key) To create a new blank presentation without going through the New Presentation window, press Ctrl+N.

Creating a Presentation from an Existing Template, Theme, or Presentation

PowerPoint lets you get a jump on your new presentation by starting with an existing template, theme, or presentation and then filling in your content. You can choose from the many templates and themes that come with PowerPoint, or you can go online and search for a specific template or theme that matches your needs. You can also reuse any of the templates, themes, or presentations that you have previously created. The following sections describe each of your options.

From an existing template

A template is a generic presentation designed to be used again and again. Templates help you crank out presentations quickly, because all the design work has been done for you. All you have to do is add your content: the text, charts, graphics, and other elements that convey your particular message.

Templates vary widely, but all contain predefined themes (color schemes, background images, title and bullet point layouts, and text fonts). Some templates contain additional format and design elements and even some generic or placeholder content. Some templates are businesslike, with sober colors and artwork; some are whimsical, with wacky fonts and brightly colored balloons all over the place. The template motifs you can find are nearly endless, which makes it relatively easy to choose a template that fits the mood and structure you want to create for your presentation.

PowerPoint gives you four different options for creating a new presentation using an existing template: Recently used templates, Installed Templates, My templates (templates you have saved yourself), and Microsoft Office Online. The option you choose depends on where you want PowerPoint to hunt for the template, as described in the following sections.

Recently used templates

PowerPoint keeps track of the templates you apply to your presentations and displays the last few in a list. So if you tend to use the same two or three templates to create all your presentations, chances are you'll find this option the easiest. Here is how to create a new presentation using a template you recently applied to another presentation:

• Select Office button => New. The New Presentation window appears.
  
  
• In the left side of the New Presentation window, make sure the Blank and recent option is selected. (If it is not, click to select it.)
  
  
• In the middle of the New Presentation window, scroll through the template thumbnails.
  
  
• Click to select the template you want to base your new presentation on. In the right side of the New Presentation window, a preview appears. Depending on whether the selected template is stored on your computer or on Microsoft's Web server, PowerPoint displays a Create or Download button, respectively, at the bottom of the New Presentation window.
  
  
• Click Create (or Download). The New Presentation window disappears. (If you clicked Download, then a Downloading Template message flashes briefly on the screen.) PowerPoint then loads the selected template into a new presentation it names Presentation1 (or Presentation2, or Presentation3, depending on how many presentations you have created since you launched PowerPoint).

Installed templates

When you installed PowerPoint, you automatically installed a handful of professionally designed templates, including templates that let you set up photo albums (Classic Photo Album and Contemporary Photo Album), corporate-style slideshows (Corporate Presentation), layouts for print publications (Pitchbook), animated question-and-answer tutorials (Quiz Show), and big-screen slideshows (Wide Screen Presentation 16x9). To use one of these built-in templates to create a new presentation, follow these steps:

• Select Office button => New. The New Presentation window appears.
  
  
• In the left side of the New Presentation window, click Installed Templates. Several template thumbnails appear in the middle of the New Presentation window. Click a template to select it. A larger version of the template appears in the preview area (the right side) of the New Presentation window.
  
  
• Click Create. The New Presentation window disappears, and you see a new presentation file based on the template you selected.

Instead of clicking a template and then clicking Create, you can save a step by simply double-clicking the template.

My templates

Each time you create your own template or download a template from Microsoft's Web site. PowerPoint automatically stores the template in a special directory on your computer similar to this one: C:\Documents and Settings\[Your Name]\Application Date\Microsoft\Templates.To use one of these templates to create a new presentation, follow these steps:

• Select Office button New. The New Presentation window appears. On the left side of the New Presentation window, click My templates. The New Presentation window vanishes, and the New Presentation dialog box shown.
  
  
  
  

  PowerPoint stores the templates you createor that you download from Microsoft's Office Online Web sitein a special folder so that you won't confuse them with PowerPoint's built-in templates. To change how the template icons appear, choose from Large Icons (which makes the template names easier to read), List (shown here), and Details (which displays the date the template was created).

• In the New Presentation dialog box, select the template you want to use and click OK. The New Presentation dialog box disappears, and PowerPoint displays a new presentation file based on the template you selected.

Microsoft Office Online

Although lots of Web sites offer PowerPoint templates for download, you should check Microsoft's Office Online Web site first for a couple of reasons. One, Microsoft's templates are free and two, checking Microsoft's site is one-click easy, as described next. Because Microsoft lets its customers upload templates willy-nilly, the quantity and quality of the templates you find on its site can vary widely.

• Select Office button New. The New Presentation window appears. On the left side of the New Presentation window, under Microsoft Office Online, choose the type of template you are looking for, such as Brochures or Content Slides. Template thumbnails appear in the center of the New Presentation window.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Click a template thumbnail to select it then click Download. A validation message box appears, letting you know that Microsoft is gearing up to check your copy of PowerPoint to make sure it's not bootlegged. (If Microsoft does not find a legitimately purchased copy of PowerPoint on your computer, then you won't be able to download templates.)
  
  
• In the validation message box, click Continue. Microsoft checks out your copy of PowerPoint. If it passes muster, a Downloading Template message appears briefly, after which PowerPoint displays a new presentation file based on the template you selected.

The rest of this tutorial shows you how to add text and change the look of your newly created presentation.

From an existing (built-in) theme

If you know which theme you want to apply to the new presentation you are creating, then you can save a click or two by applying it when you create the presentation file. To create a new presentation based on one of the themes that comes with PowerPoint:

• Select Office button => New. The New Presentation window appears. On the left side of the New Presentation window, click Installed Themes. Several theme thumbnails appear in the middle of the New Presentation window.
  
  
• Click a theme to select it. A larger version of the theme appears in the preview area (the right side) of the New Presentation window.
  
  
• Click Create. The New Presentation window disappears and you see a new presentation based on the theme you selected.

Difference Between Templates and Themes

Templates
A template is any presentation you plan to reuse. You tell PowerPointand remind yourself and your coworkersthat you plan to reuse it by saving it in the special template file format, .potx. Templates typically define custom slide layouts and, in some cases, generic content. Every template has a theme.

Themes
A theme tells PowerPoint what color to use for your slides titles, subtitles, body text, background, and so forth. It also describes which fonts and graphic effects to use, for example, some themes automatically add shadows to title text and blurring to the shapes you add to your slides.
Unlike applying a template to a newly created presentation, applying a theme does not start you out with custom slide layouts or content. Insteadas you can see by the single slide shown herethemes give you coordinated color, font, and background effects. PowerPoint automatically applies these effects to each new slide you create.

From an existing presentation

If you have already got a presentation on your computercreated in any version of PowerPointthen you can load that presentation into PowerPoint 2007 and use it as the basis of a new presentation. You have got two options for loading an existing presentation: the New From Existing Presentation window, which is a good choice if you've never used PowerPoint before; and the Open window, which is handy if you're familiar with PowerPoint.

(Remember) A third, quickie alternative exists for creating a new presentation from an existing onebut this alternative works only if you have recently edited the existing presentation. To try it out, click the Office button and then, from the list of Recent Documents that appears, choose an existing document. After PowerPoint opens the document, immediately save it (Office button => Save As) with a different name.

New from Existing Presentation window

If you are new to PowerPoint, then you wll appreciate the New from Existing Presentation window, which simplifies the process of opening an existing presentation. And unlike using the Open window, using the New from Existing Presentation window automatically generates a new file name, so you don't have to worry about accidentally overwriting your original presentation. To create a presentation using the New from Existing Presentation window:

• Select Office button => New. The New Presentation window appears. Click New from existing. The New from Existing Presentation window appears.
  
  
• Select the file you want to open and then click Create New. The New from Existing Presentation window disappears, and the presentation you selected appears in your PowerPoint workspace. PowerPoint gives the presentation a new, generic name (PowerPoint2, PowerPoint3, and so on) to remind you to rename the file before you save it.
  
  To browse your computer for an existing PowerPoint file, either click the folder icons you see on the left side of the window, or click the Look in drop-down menu. When you see the PowerPoint file you are looking for, click it to select it. Then click Create New to load it into PowerPoint under a new name.

The Open window

The Open window gives you more options for opening an existing presentation than the New from Existing window does. You will find these options useful in certain situations, such as when you want to protect an existing presentation by opening it in read-only mode, read through all the slides to make sure it's the one you want, and then save a copy. To open an existing presentation using the Open window:

• Choose Office button Open (or press Ctrl+O). Select the file you want to open, either by clicking the folder icons you see on the left side of the window, or by clicking the Look in drop-down menu. When the PowerPoint file you're looking for appears in the list, click it to select it.
  
  
• Choose one of the following options:
  • Open. Opens the selected file.
  • Open => Open Read-Only. Opens a protected version of the file that lets you make changes to the presentation, but doesn't let you save them unless you specify a new filename.
  • Open => Open as Copy. Opens the presentation file, but renames it Copy(1)filename.pptx.
  • Open => Open in Browser. Opens the selected HTML file in Internet Explorer (or your default browser).
  • Open => Open and Repair. Tells PowerPoint to fix a corrupted file before it tries to open it. The file you selected appears in your PowerPoint workspace.

Choosing a Theme for Your Presentation

No matter which approach you use to create a presentationfrom scratch, from an existing presentation, from a template, or from a built-in themeonce you have a presentation, you can change how it looks in one fell swoop by changing its theme.

A theme is a collection of characteristics including colors, fonts, and graphic effects (such as whether the shapes you add to your slides have drop shadows). For example, applying the built-in Deluxe theme turns your background a tasteful shade of blue and displays your title text (which appears in the Corbel font) in an attractively contrasting, gently shadowed shade of yellowall thanks to the theme. You can change all of these characteristics individually. But applying themes gives you more bang for your buck in several important ways:

Using themes is quicker than changing individual settings one at a time
Applying a theme is a two-click proposition. Changing the dozen-plus settings controlled by a theme would exercise your click finger a lot more than that. And themes save you time you'd otherwise spend figuring out which colors look good together.

Using themes helps ensure a decent-looking, readable slide
Consistency is an important design principle: it sets the tone for your presentation and lets your audience focus on your message. When you change settings manually, you can end up with a distracting mishmash of colors and fonts on a single slide or across slides. Not so with themes. Once you apply a theme, the theme takes control of your settings. If you change the background color of your slides, then the theme automatically changes the title and subtitle fonts to compatible colorscolors that are not just readable against your new background, but attractive, too.

Using themes lets you create a consistent look and feel across Microsoft Office-produced materials You can use the same themes you use in PowerPoint in Word and Excel, too. When you apply the same theme to your Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint slides, you end up with a consistently presented, harmonious whole.

Here is how to apply a theme to a PowerPoint presentation:

• Click the Design tab. The Design ribbon appears, complete with a Theme gallery. The Themes section of the Design ribbon contains just a snippet of the Themes gallery, to see more themes, you need to click the More icon.
  
  
  
  
  
  Click the More icon at the bottom-right corner of the Themes section. Additional themes appear in the gallery. You can find additional themes on the Web and download them into PowerPoint by clicking More Themes on Microsoft Office Online.
  
  
• Mouse over the themes in the gallery one by one. PowerPoint previews each theme as you mouse over it so you can get an idea of how each will look applied to your presentation's content and layout. If you mouse over a theme and PowerPoint does not immediately preview it on your slide, wait a few seconds: the process is quick, but it's not instantaneous.
  
  
• Click a theme to select it. PowerPoint applies the selected theme to all of the existing slides in your presentation, as well as all the new slides you create.

  PowerPoint lets you apply a theme to only selected slides. Applying more than one theme to a slideshow is useful when you're creating a distinct before-and-after presentation or other multi-section slideshow and want each section to look distinct.

Adding Text

You will want to add at least some text to most, if not all, PowerPoint presentations you create. The PowerPoint designers made it easy for you to add text to your slides. The following sections show you how.

Adding Text to an Existing Text Box

When you start to work with a new presentation, the ribbon displays the Home tab. Blank presentations come complete with title and subtitle placeholder text boxes. To replace the placeholder text in either of these two text boxes with your own text, simply click inside the placeholder and begin typing. When you do, two things happen:

• PowerPoint displays the Drawing Tools | Format tab and, on the Home ribbon, activates many of the text formatting options. You can use these options to change the font, size, and color of your text, turn your text into a right-justified paragraph or a bullet point, and much more.
  
  
• Resize and transform handles appear at the corners and edges of the text box. Tiny white resize handles, which are square on the edges of the text box and circular on the corners, let you stretch or shrink your text box by dragging them. The circular green transform handle appears above the top of your text box and lets you tilt it. Drag the handles to tilt or resize your text box.

Adding a New Text Box

You are not limited to the placeholder text boxes PowerPoint starts you off with: you can add as many additional text boxes to your slides as you like.

As soon as you click a text box, PowerPoint activates the text formatting and drawing tools and reveals the Drawing Tools | Format tab. Now, in addition to typing your text, you can format it, change its color, or add an effect (such as a glow or bevel). Drag any of the eight white resize handles to resize your text box, drag the circular green transform handle to rotate the text box.

• To add a new text box to a slide: Click the Insert tab. The Insert ribbon appears.
  
  
• On the Insert ribbon, click Text Box. In the status bar at the bottom of the screen, PowerPoint displays a helpful hint (Click and drag to insert a text box). When you mouse over your slide, you notice that your cursor looks like a tiny down arrow.
  
  
• On the slide, click where you want your new text box to appear. A text box appears with the cursor handily positioned inside. The Drawing Tools | Format tab pops up, and on the Home ribbon, PowerPoint activates most of the formatting options, ready for you to format your text.
  Alternatively, you can click and drag to draw the outline of your text box before you begin typing. It's another step, but it'll help you get an idea of how much space your text will take up on your slide before you actually type it in.
  
  
  
  

  Choosing one or more formatting options (such as Bold, Italics, or Font) before you begin typing tells PowerPoint to apply those options to your text automatically as you type.

• Type your text. The text box expands automatically to accommodate your text

Adding More Slides

When you create a new blank presentation, PowerPoint spots you one slide. But in most cases, you will want your presentation to contain a lot more slides than that. Fortunately, adding a new slide is easy, as you will see in the following sections.

PowerPoint gives you two options: adding a slide with layout identical to the current slide, and specifying a different slide layout. A slide layout is a description of what content appears where on a slide. For example, applying a Title Slide layout to a slide positions title and subtitle text placeholders near the middle of your slide, and nothing else. Applying a Title and Content layout positions a title text placeholder near the top of a slide, and an object placeholder beneath that. To add a slide with a layout identical to the current slide:

• Select any non-title slide. PowerPoint does not automatically duplicate title slides for a pretty obvious reason: 99 percent of the time, you don't want two title slides in a single presentation. For the one percent of the time when that's exactly what you want, add a slide, and then change the slide's layout to Title Slide.
  
  
  
  

  Clicking the New Slide button is the quickest way to add a slide to your presentation. You can always change the layout, of course, but when you want to add a different kind of slidesay, one with a subtitle or columnsyou can save yourself some time by choosing a new slide layout right off the bat.

• Click the New Slide button. PowerPoint inserts a new slide after the current slide. If that is not what you want (for example, if you want to add a slide to the beginning of your presentation), then you can easily change the order of your slides.
  PowerPoint gives you another way to add a new slide with a layout similar to the current slide. In the Slides pane (at the left side of your workspace), you can right-click the page after which you want to create a new slide. Then, from the menu that appears, select Duplicate.

To add a slide with a different layout:

• On the Home ribbon, click the down-arrow next to New Slide. A menu appears.
  
  
• Click to select the slide layout you want. Your choices include Title Slide, Title and Content, Section Header, Two Content, Comparison, Title Only, Blank, Content with Caption, and Picture with Caption. PowerPoint adds your new slide after the current slide.
  To make an exact copy of the current slidecontent and allmake sure you have the slide selected in the Slides pane, and then press Ctrl+D.

Moving Around Inside a Presentation

Moving around your presentation when you only have one slide is not much of an issue. But once you start adding slides, you will want a way to hop quickly from your first slide to your last. You will also want to jump to specific slides in the middle of your presentation, for example, to tweak a particular slide's layout, to add content, or to delete it.

PowerPoint gives you several ways to flip through your presentation. This section acquaints you with the easiest and most useful options: using your workspace scroll bar, using the View pane on the left side of the screen, and using the Home ribbon's and click NEW SLIDE.

The appearance and number of slide layouts you see in this menu depend on the theme (and template, if any) you have applied to your presentation. If you add a slide and then change your mind, you can either click Undo (Ctrl+Z), or delete the slide by choosing Home => Delete.

Navigating with the Scroll Bar

In PowerPoint, you see a scroll bar on the right side of your workspace.

To scroll through your presentation, all you need to do is click the scroll bar and drag up (to scroll toward the beginning of your presentation) or down (to scroll toward the end). As you go, PowerPoint displays each slide in turn.
To flip forward (or back) through your presentation one slide at a time, click the Next Slide (or Previous Slide).

If you've got more than one slide, the vertical scroll bars always appear in PowerPoint, no matter which tab you select or which ribbon appears at the top of your workspace. Scrolling tells PowerPoint to display slides not just in the main workspace, but also to display thumbnail versions in the Slides pane.

Navigation with the Slides and Outline Tabs

Slides and Outline tabs are not views (they both appear in Normal view) but are tabs that let you see slide thumbnails or an outline of your slideshow, respectively, in the Slides or Outline pane.

PowerPoint assumes you want to use Slides view until you tell it otherwise. To change views, click the Outline tab. To switch back to Slides view, click the Slides tab.
If you don't see the View pane at all, select View Normal to display it.

Here, the Slides tab is selected. You're viewing the contents of the first (selected) slide.

Using Find

When you've got a lot of slides and you are looking for one containing a specific word or phrase, you will want to bypass Views in favor of the Find function. Similar to the Find feature in other Windows programs, PowerPoint's Find function lets you search for specific words quickly and easily. Here is how to use it.

• Press Ctrl+F. The Find dialog box appears.
  
  
  
  

  Another way to display this Find box is to head to the Editing section of the Home tab and then click the Find button.

• In the Find What box, type in the text you want to find. If you like, you can click to turn on the Match Case checkbox (which tells PowerPoint to look for leader but not Leader, LEADER, or LeAdEr) or the Find Whole Words Only checkbox (which tells PowerPoint to look for leader but not myleader). When you finish, click Find Next.

  PowerPoint displays the slide containing your text. If it does not find a match, it shows this message: PowerPoint has finished searching the presentation. The search item was not found.

Adding Speaker Notes

Speaker notes are optional text notes you can type into PowerPoint. You can associate a separate speaker note with each slide of your presentation. Your audience can't see speaker notes, but you can. You may find speaker notes useful:

While you are putting your presentation together.
If you know you need to add a graphic to slide six and a couple of bullet points to slide 33, then you can jot down reminders to yourself in the Speaker Notes pane. Then, before you put your presentation to bed, you can view your speaker notes and double-check that you've caught everything.

While you are delivering your presentation.
You can set up your presentation so that your audience sees your slideshow on the screen while you see your notes (on your own computer monitor). Or, if you're the tactile type, you may prefer to print out your speaker notes and keep them with your during your presentation.

To add speaker notes for a particular slide, click in the Speaker Notes pane and type away.

Speaker notes are specific to individual slides, so when you select a new slide, PowerPoint displays a fresh, clean Speaker Notes pane. You can make the pane bigger by dragging the resize handle.

If you don't see the Speaker Notes pane, then click the Speaker Notes pane's resize bar at the bottom of the workspace and drag upward.

Depending on the view you choose, the Speaker Notes pane doesn't always appear automatically and it is not obvious that you can drag the resize bar at the bottom of the workspace to display it. Fortunately, you can. The farther you drag, the larger the notes display (and the smaller the slide display).

Creating and Printing Handouts

You don't have to do anything special to create handouts in PowerPoint. That is because handouts in PowerPoint are nothing more than slides printed one or more to a page.

To print handouts:

• Select Office button => Print => Print Preview. The Print Preview ribbon appears, and PowerPoint's best guess at how you want your handouts printed appears in the workspace.
  
  
• Click the Print What drop-down box and then, from the menu that appears, choose how you want PowerPoint to print your handouts. PowerPoint redisplays the handouts preview based on your selection.
  
  
  
  

  You can tell PowerPoint to print up to nine slides per page. Here, you see the effect of printing two per page, which is a nice compromise: large enough to read the slides, but roomy enough for note taking.

• Click Print. The familiar Print dialog box appears and Click OK. PowerPoint prints your handouts.
  
  
• Click Close Print Preview to dismiss the Print Preview ribbon and return to your workspace.

Saving and Closing a Presentation

After you have created a new presentation file and spent some time working on it, you will want to save it every so often so that when your system crashes, you can recover your work. And if you are like most folks, you'll also want to save and close your presentation each time you wrap up a work session.

Saving and closing a PowerPoint presentation are both straightforward tasks. If you are familiar with any other Windows programs, then you will recognize most of the steps. To save a newly created presentation:

• Select Office button => Save. The Save As dialog box appears.
  
  
  
  

  Most of the time, when you're ready to save your presentation, you'll choose the .pptx file type or .ppt (the old, pre-2007 PowerPoint format). But you have got about a dozen choices, including the template (.potx) and show (.ppsx) formats.

  You can press Ctrl+S or click the Save button (the little diskette icon) that appears in the Quick Access toolbar.

• Click the Save in drop-down box to choose a directory to store your file in. In the File name field, type a new name for your file.
  
  
• Click the Save as Type drop-down box to select a file format. Most of the time, you will choose the .pptx format and click Save. The Save As dialog box disappears and PowerPoint saves the file in the format you specified.

To close a presentation, simply select Office Close. When you do, PowerPoint closes your presentation with no fanfare. If you have never saved this particular file, however, a dialog box pops up asking you if you want to save the changes you made. Click Yes to display the Save As dialog box and proceed as described above.