PowerPoint is a member of the Microsoft Office suite of programs.

A facturer to work well

together. Like its siblings — Word (a word suite is a group of programs designed by a single
manuprocessor), Excel (the spreadsheet), Outlook (the personal organiser and e-mail
manager), and Access (the database) — PowerPoint has a well-defined role. It creates
materials for presentations. A presentation is any kind of interaction between a speaker and
audience, but it usually involves one or more of the following visual aids: 35mm slides,
overhead transparencies, computer-based slides (either local or at a Web site or other network
location), hard-copy handouts, and speaker notes.

PowerPoint can create all of these types of visual aids, plus many other types that you’ll learn
about as you go along. Because PowerPoint is so tightly integrated with the other Microsoft
Office components, you can easily share information among them. For example, if you have
created a graph in Excel, you can use that graph on a PowerPoint slide. It goes the other way,
too. You can, for example, take the outline from your PowerPoint presentation and copy it
into Word, where you can dress it up with Word’s powerful document formatting commands.
Virtually any piece of data in any Office program can be linked to any other Office program,
so you never have to worry about your data being in the wrong format. PowerPoint also
accepts data from almost any other Windows-based application and can import a variety of
graphics, audio, and video formats. In this module, you’ll get a big-picture introduction to
PowerPoint, and then we’ll fire up the program and poke around a bit to help you get familiar
with the interface. You’ll find out how to use the tabs and panes, and how to get help and
updates from Microsoft.
Starting and Exiting PowerPoint

You can start PowerPoint just like any other program in Windows: from the Start menu.
Follow these steps:
1. Click the Start button. The Start menu opens.
2. Click All Programs.

3. Click Microsoft Office.

4. Click Microsoft PowerPoint. The program starts.

If you have opened PowerPoint before, a shortcut to it might appear in the Recently Used
Programs list, which is directly above the All Programs command on the Start menu. If you
use other applications more frequently than PowerPoint, PowerPoint may scroll off this list
and you therefore have to access it via the All Programs menu.

Understanding the Screen Elements

PowerPoint’s interface is typical of any Windows program in many ways, but it also has
some
special Office–specific features as well:

 Title bar: Identifies the program running (PowerPoint) and the name of the active
presentation. If the window is not maximised, you can move the window by dragging
the title bar.
 Ribbon: Functions as a combination of menu bar and toolbar, offering tabbed
‘‘pages’’ of
buttons, lists, and commands.
 File tab: Opens the File menu (Backstage view), from which you can open, save,
print,
and start new presentations.
 Quick Access Toolbar: Contains shortcuts for some of the most common commands.
You can add your own favourites here as well.
 Minimise button: Shrinks the application window to a bar on the Windows taskbar;
you
click its button on the taskbar to reopen it.
 Maximise/Restore button: If the window is maximised (full screen), it changes to
windowed (not full screen). If the window is not maximised, clicking here maximises
it.
 Close button: Closes the presentation. You may be prompted to save your changes if
you
made any.
 Work area: Where active PowerPoint slide(s) appear. It is a normal view, but other
views are available that make the work area appear differently.

Working with the Ribbon

As mentioned earlier in the PowerPoint user interface is based on the Ribbon, which is a bar
across the top of the window that contains tabbed pages of commands and buttons. Rather
than opening a menu and selecting a command, you click a tab and then click a button or
open a list on that tab.
 Figure: PowerPoint

Here are some important terms you need to know when working with tabs:

 Ribbon: The whole bar, including all of the tabs.

 File tab: A tab-like button that opens Backstage view, from which you can choose to
start
a new presentation, save, print, and perform other file-related activities. Quick Access
 Toolbar: A small toolbar adjacent to the Office button from which you can
select commonly used commands.
 Tab: A tabbed page of the Ribbon.
 Contextual tab: A tab that appears only when certain content is selected, such as a
graphic or a chart. The context name appears above the tab name.
 Group: A section of a tab. The Home tab has the following groups:
Clipboard, Slides, Font, Paragraph, Drawing, and Editing.
 Dialog box launcher: A small icon in the bottom-right corner of a group, from which
you
can open a dialog box related to that group.
Working with Collapsible Tab Groups

Within a tab, groups can expand or collapse depending on the width of the PowerPoint
window. When the window is large enough (somewhere around 1100 pixels), everything
within each group is fully expanded so that each item has its own button. When the window
is smaller, groups start collapsing so that all groups remain visible. At first, large buttons get
smaller and stack vertically; if that’s not enough, then groups collapse into single large
buttons with drop-down lists from which you can select the individual commands.

Working with Backstage View

When you open the Backstage view by clicking the File tab, a multilayered menu system
appears.
Many of the commands along the left side of the screen are categories that open submenus
when
you click them. The top-level categories and commands in Backstage view are:

 Save: Saves the current presentation.

 Save As: Saves the current presentation and prompts you for file name and location
information, even if the file has been previously saved.
 Open: Displays the Open dialogue box, from which you can select a file to open.
 Close: Closes the active presentation.
 Info: Displays information about the current presentation, including its properties.
Commands are available for working with versions, permissions, and sharing.
 Recent: Displays a list of recently opened presentations, from which you can quickly
reopen one.
 New: Displays a list of templates available for starting a new presentation.
  Print: Provides access to printing options, including setting a print range, choosing a
printer, and specifying settings like colour and collation.
 Save & Send: Offers access to features for distributing the presentation via e-mail or
fax,
changing the presentation type, creating PDF and XPS files, and publishing/packaging
the
presentation.
 Help: Opens a list of Help options, including links to the PowerPoint help file, online
resources and updates.
 Options: Click here to open a dialog box where you can customise the interface.
 Exit: Choose this command to exit PowerPoint, as you learned earlier.
 Option buttons: Each section of the dialog box can have only one option button
chosen at
once. When you select one option button, the previously selected one becomes
deselected,
like on a car radio. Click the one you want.
 Increment buttons: Placed next to a text box, these buttons allow you to increment
the
number in the box up or down by one digit per click.
 Drop-down list: Click the down arrow next to one of these to open the list, and then
click
your selection from the menu that appears.
 Command button: Click one of these big rectangular buttons to jump to a different
dialog box. OK and Cancel is also command buttons; OK accepts your changes and
Cancel rejects them.

There are categories along the left side of the dialog box. Click a category to change to a
different ‘‘page’’ of options. You might also sometimes see tabs at the top of a dialog box,
which serves the same purpose.

Changing the View

A view is a way of displaying your presentation on-screen. PowerPoint comes with several
views because at different times during the creation process, it is helpful to look at the
presentation in different ways. For example, when you add a graphic to a slide, you need to
work closely with that slide, but when you rearrange the slide order, you need to see the
presentation as a whole. PowerPoint offers the following views:

 Normal: A combination of several resizable panes, so you can see the presentation in
multiple ways at once. Normal is the default view.
 Slide Sorter: A light-table-type overhead view of all the slides in your presentation,
laid out in rows, suitable for big-picture rearranging.
 Notes Page: A view with the slide at the top of the page and a text box below it for
typed notes. (You can print these notes pages to use during your speech.)
 Slide Show: The view you use to show the presentation on-screen. Each slide fills the
entire screen in its turn.
 Reading View: A simplified version of Slide Show view, which appears in a window
rather than full-screen. This view is new in PowerPoint.

Normal View
Normal view is a very flexible view that contains a little bit of everything. In the centre is the
active slide, below it is a Notes pane, and to its left is a dual-use pane with two tabs: Slides
and Outline. When the Outline tab is selected, the text from the slides appears in an outline
form. Each of the panes in Normal view has its own scroll bar, so you can move around in the
outline, the slide, and the notes independently of the other panes. You can resize the panes by
dragging the dividers between the panes. For example, to give the notes area more room,
point the mouse pointer at the divider line between it and the slide area so that the mouse
pointer becomes a double-headed arrow, and then hold down the left mouse button as you
drag the line up to a new spot. The Slides/Outline pane is useful because it lets you jump
quickly to a specific slide by clicking on it. For example, you can click on any of the slide
thumbnails on the Slides tab to display it in the Slide pane. You can also click on some text
anywhere in the outline to jump to the slide containing that text. You can turn the
Slides/Outline pane off completely by clicking the X button in its top-right corner. This gives
maximum room to the Slides pane. When you turn it off, the Notes pane disappears too. To
get the extra panes back, reapply Normal view.

Slide Sorter View

If you have ever worked with 35mm slides, you know that it can be helpful to lay the slides
out on a big table and plan the order in which to show them. You rearrange them, moving this
one here, that one there until the order is perfect. You might even start a pile of backups that
you will not show in the main presentation but will hold back in case someone asks a
pertinent question. That’s exactly what you can do with Slide Sorter view.

Slide Show View

When it’s time to rehearse the presentation, nothing shows you the finished product quite as
clearly, as Slide Show view does. In Slide Show view, the slide fills the entire screen. You
can move from slide to slide by pressing the Page Up or Page Down keys, or by using one of
the other movement methods available.

Notes Page View

When you give a presentation, your props usually include more than just your brain and your
slides. You typically have all kinds of notes and backup material for each slide — figures on
last quarter’s sales, sources to cite if someone questions your data, and so on. In the old days
of framed overhead transparencies, people used to attach sticky notes to the slide frames for
this purpose and hope that nobody asked any questions that required diving into the four-
inch-thick stack of statistics they brought.

Today, you can type your notes and supporting facts directly in PowerPoint. As you saw
earlier, you can type them directly into the Notes pane below the slide in Normal view.
However, if you have a lot of notes to type; you might find it easier to work with Notes Page
view instead. Notes Page view is accessible only from the View tab. In this view, you see a
single slide (uneditable) with an editable text area below it called the notes placeholder,
which you can use to type your notes. You can refer to these notes as you give an on-screen
presentation, or you can print notes pages to stack neatly on the lectern next to you during the
big event. If your notes pages run off the end of the page, PowerPoint even prints them as a
separate page. If you have trouble seeing the text you’re typing, zoom in on it, as described in
the next section.
Zooming In and Out

If you need a closer look at your presentation, you can zoom the view in or out to
accommodate almost any situation. For example, if you have trouble placing a graphic
exactly at the same vertical level as some text in a box next to it, you can zoom in for more
precision. You can view your work at various magnifications on-screen without changing the
size of the surrounding tools or the size of the print on the printout.

In Normal view, each of the panes has its own individual zoom. To set the zoom for the
Slides/Outline pane only, for example, select it first; then choose a zoom level. Or to zoom
only in the main workspace (the Slide pane), click it first. In a single-pane view such as Notes
Page or Slide Sorter, a single zoom setting affects the entire work area. The larger the zoom
number, the larger the details on display. Zoom of 10% would make a slide so tiny that you
couldn’t read it. A zoom of 400% would make a few letters on a slide so big they would fill
the entire pane. The easiest way to set the zoom level is to drag the Zoom slider in the
bottom-right corner of the PowerPoint window, or click its plus or minus buttons to change
the zoom level in increments.

To resize the current slide so that it is as large as possible while still fitting completely in the
Slides pane, click the Fit Slide to Current Window button, or Choose View ➪ Fit to Window.
Another way to control the zoom is with the Zoom dialog box. Choose View ➪ Zoom to
open it. (You can also open that dialog box by clicking the % next to the Zoom slider in the
lower right corner of the screen.) Make your selection, by clicking the appropriate button, and
then click OK. Notice that you can type a precise zoom percentage in the Percent text box.
You can specify any percentage you like, up to 400%. (Some panes and views will not go
higher than 100%.)
Enabling Optional Display Elements

PowerPoint has a lot of optional screen elements that you may (or may not) find useful,
depending on what you’re up to at the moment. The following sections describe them.

Ruler
Vertical and horizontal rulers around the slide pane can help you place objects more
precisely. To toggle them on or off, select or deselect the Ruler check box on the View tab.
Rulers are available only in Normal and Notes Page views. The rulers help with positioning
no matter what content type you are working with, but when you are editing text in a text
frame, they have an additional purpose as well. The horizontal ruler shows the frame’s
paragraph indents and any custom tab stops, and you can drag the indent markers on the ruler
just as you can in Word.

Gridlines

Gridlines are non-printing dotted lines at regularly spaced intervals that can help you line up
objects on a slide. To turn gridlines on or off, use either of these methods:

Press Shift+F9.

On the View tab, in the Show group, select or deselect the Gridlines check box.

Choose Home ➪ Align ➪ View Gridlines. There are many options you can set for the
gridlines,
including whether objects snap to it, whether the grid is visible, and what the spacing should
be
between the gridlines. To set grid options, follow these steps:

 On the Home tab, in the Drawing group, choose Arrange ➪ Align ➪ Grid Settings,
or
right-click the slide background and choose Grid and Guides. The Grid and Guides
dialog
box opens.
 In the Snap To section, select or deselect these check boxes:


o Snap Objects to Grid: Specifies whether or not objects will automatically align
with the grid.
o Snap Objects to Other Objects: Specifies whether or not objects will
automatically align with other objects.

 In the Grid Settings section, enter the amount of space between gridlines desired.
 Select or deselect the Display Grid On Screen check box to display or hide the grid.
(Note
that you can make objects snap to the grid without the grid being displayed.)
 Click OK.
Guides
Guides are like gridlines except they are individual lines, rather than a grid of lines, and you
can drag them to different positions on the slide. As you drag a guide, a numeric indicator
appears to let you know the ruler position. Use the Grid and Guides dialog box to turn guides
on/off, or press Alt+F9. You can create additional sets of guide lines by holding down the
Ctrl key while dragging a guide (to copy it). You can have as many horizontal and vertical
guides as you like, all at positions you specify.

Color/Grayscale/Pure Black and White Views

Most of the time, you will work with your presentation in colour. However, if you plan to
print the presentation in black and white or grayscale (for example, on black-and-white
handouts), you should check to see what it will look like without colour. Click the Grayscale
or the Pure Black and White button on the View tab to switch to one of those views. When
you do so, a Grayscale or Black and White tab becomes available. From its Setting group,
you can fine-tune the grayscale or black-and-white preview. Choose one that shows the
object to best advantage; PowerPoint will remember that setting when printing or outputting
the presentation to grayscale or black-and-white source. When you are finished, click the
Back to Color View button on the Grayscale tab. Changing the Black and White or Grayscale
settings doesn’t affect the colours on the slides; it only affects how the slides will look and
print in black and white or grayscale.

Opening a New Display Window

Have you ever wished you could be in two places at once? Well, in PowerPoint, you actually
can. PowerPoint provides a way to view two spots in the presentation at the same time by
opening a new window. To display a new window, display the View tab and click New
Window in the Window group. Then use Arrange All or Cascade to view both windows at
once. You can use any view with any window, so you can have two slides in Normal view at
once, or Slide Sorter and Notes Pages view, or any other combination. Both windows contain
the same presentation, so any changes you make in one window are reflected in the other
window.

Arranging Windows

When you have two or more windows open, whether they are for the same presentation or
different ones, you need to arrange them for optimal viewing. You saw earlier how to resize a
window, but did you know that PowerPoint can do some of the arranging for you? When you
want to arrange the open windows, do one of the following:

 Tile: On the View tab, click Arrange All to tile the open windows, so there is no
overlap.
 Cascade: On the View tab, click Cascade to arrange the open windows so that the
title
bars cascade from upper-left to lower-right on the screen. Click a title bar to activate a
window.

These commands do not apply to minimised windows. If you want to include a window in the
arrangement, make sure you restore it from its minimised state first.
Switching among Windows

If you have more than one window open and can see at least a corner of the window you
want, click it to bring it to the front. If you have one of the windows maximised, on the other
hand, or if another window is obscuring the one you want, click Switch Windows (on the
View tab) and select the window you want to view.

Using the Help System

The PowerPoint Help system is like a huge instruction book in electronic format. You can
look up almost any PowerPoint task you can imagine and get step-by-step instructions for
performing it. To open the PowerPoint Help window, choose File ➪ Help ➪ Microsoft
Office Help, or press F1, or click the Help icon (the question mark) in the upper-right corner
of the PowerPoint window.

To look up information in the Help system, you can:

 Click one of the topics on the default Browse PowerPoint Help page, and then keep
clicking subtopics to narrow down the search until you arrive at what you want.
 Type a keyword or phrase in the Search box, and then click Search or press Enter to
find all Help articles that contain it.

When you browse or search the Help system, a list of articles matching the topic or search,
term appears. Click an article to read it.

Using PowerPoint Support Resources

Microsoft provides a variety of support tools for PowerPoint in addition to the Help system.
You
can diagnose problems with your PowerPoint installation, for example, download updates,
register your copy of PowerPoint, and more.

To access these tools, follow these steps:

1. Choose File ➪ Help.
2. Click the button for the option you want to access.

Figure: PowerPoint resource

Understanding Product Activation

All Office products must be activated after a certain number of days or a certain number of
uses. This is a simple matter if you have an Internet connection. Every time you start an
Office application, a reminder to activate appears. Follow the prompts to activate it. You do
not have to give any personal information. So what is this activation, and why is it required?
Activation locks your copy of Office (or PowerPoint, if you bought it separately) to the
hardware configuration in your computer, so that it can’t be installed on any other PC.

The activation utility surveys a sampling of your PC’s hardware (around a dozen different
components) and based on their models, serial numbers, and so on, it comes up with a
number. Then it combines that number mathematically with the 24-digit installation key code
you entered when you installed the software, to produce a unique number that represents that
particular copy of Office combined with that particular PC. It then sends that number off to
an activation the database at Microsoft, along with the original installation key code. So how
does this prevent illegal software copying? Two ways. One is that the installation key code is
locked to that hardware ID so that if you install the same copy on a different PC, it can’t be
activated there. (This is not the case for some corporate and volume-licensed copies.) The
other is that it prevents you from radically changing the hardware in the PC without
contacting Microsoft for reactivation authorisation. For example, you could not take the hard
disk out of the PC and put it in another PC without reactivating Office. It is this second point
that has been an issue of conflict between Microsoft and users because many users like to
tinker with their hardware and they do not want to have to contact Microsoft every time they
make hardware changes.

According to Microsoft documentation, the change of one or two pieces of hardware will not
trigger the need for reactivation, but your experience may differ. Even if you are prompted to
reactivate, you can usually reactivate a legitimate installation via phone with no problems.
There are two situations in which you might not have to activate: When you buy a new PC
with Office preinstalled. The office will already have been activated, so you do not have to go
through the process if you work for a company or attend a school that has a licensing
agreement with Microsoft for a certain number of copies. You might have a version of Office
that does not contain the activation requirement. When you go through the activation process,
you are also asked whether you want to register your copy of the software. Activation by
itself sends no identifying information about you or your PC to Microsoft; if you want to be
on the Microsoft mailing list for update information, you must go through the additional
process of registration.

Adjusting Privacy Settings

In some situations, it is advantageous for your copy of PowerPoint to communicate with

Microsoft over the Internet. For example, when you use the Help system, you get better
results if you are connected, and when inserting clip art, you have more images to choose
from if you are connected. It’s a two-way street: your copy of PowerPoint can also help
Microsoft by sending information to the company about your usage habits. For example,
when Microsoft is developing a new version of PowerPoint, they look at usage data to
determine which features of the program people are using the most and the least. This
program for gathering user data is the Customer Experience Improvement Program, and
participation in it is optional. To control whether — and how — your copy of PowerPoint
interacts online with Microsoft, follow these steps to configure Privacy Options:
 Choose File ➪ Options.
 Click Trust Center, and then click the Trust Center Settings button. The Trust Center
dialog box opens.
 Click Privacy Options, and then select or deselect any of the check boxes in the
Privacy
Options section. To get information about each of the options, point to
the ‘‘i’’ symbol to its right.
 Click OK, and then OK again to close all open dialog boxes.