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Notes, also known as speaker notes, are printed pages that you carry to a presentation to remind yourself what to say while each slide is on-screen. Notes are strictly for the speaker. They are not for the unwashed masses. Don’t hesitate to write notes to yourself as you put together your presentation. The notes may come in handy when you are delivering your presentation and you run out of things to say. Some people hand out speaker notes after the presentation instead of handouts. Follow these instructions to enter notes:

 -  In Normal view: Type the notes in the Notes pane.

 -  In Slide Sorter view: Select the slide that needs a note, click the Notes button on the Slide Sorter toolbar, and type a note in the Speaker Notes dialog box. To refer to the notes you have written, follow these instructions:

 -  Viewing notes on-screen: Select the slide whose notes need your attention and choose View -> Notes Page. The notes appear on a page along with the slide to which they refer. This is what the page will look like when you print it. Choose 75% or 100% from the Zoom menu to be able to read the notes.

 -  Printing the notes pages: Choose File -> Print and, in the Print dialog box, select Notes Pages from the Print What drop-down list. You get one notes page for each slide in your presentation. Similarly to the Slide Master, PowerPoint offers the Notes Master for laying out notes pages. Choose View -> Master -> Notes Master to see the Notes Master. From the master, you can enter headers and footers for notes pages and decide for yourself which fonts and font sizes to use. Fans of Microsoft Word will be glad to know that you can save notes and slide thumbnails in a Word file. Choose File -> Send To -> Microsoft Office Word. In the Send to Microsoft Office Word dialog box, select one of the Notes options and click OK. Microsoft Word opens a file with the notes and slides. Save the file and print it.

Making a Numbered or Bulleted List

Everybody knows how to make a numbered or bulleted list: Click the Numbering or Bullets button and start typing. Each time you press Enter, a new bullet or number appears. To make a list out of text you’ve already entered, select the text and click the Numbering or Bullets button. So much for conventional numbers and bullets. You will be glad to know that PowerPoint permits you to toy with bullets and numbers to create lists . To create an out-of-the-ordinary list, select the list if you’ve already entered it and choose Format -> Bullets and Numbering. In the Bullets and Numbering dialog box, go to the Bulleted or Numbered tab to beautify your list:

 -  Bulleted list: Choose a bullet on the Bulleted tab. If the choices don’t suit you, click the Picture button to open the Picture Bullet dialog box and select small clip-art bullets; or click the Customize button to open the Symbol dialog box and select a symbol for the bullets.

 -  Numbered list: On the Numbered tab, choose letters, Roman numerals, or another numbering scheme. Enter a number in the Start At text box to resume numbering a list that starts on one slide and continues on another.

 -  Changing the size of bullets and numbers: Enter a percentage in the Size % of Text box to change the size of bullets or numbers relative to the text in the list. Entering 200, for example, makes bullets twice as big as the text.

 -  Changing the color of bullets and numbers: Open the Color drop-down list and select a color.

Advanced Formatting Techniques

The purpose of this article is to help your slide presentations stand out in a crowd. The article explains how to stretch the slide designs and color schemes that come with PowerPoint just a little bit further. You discover how to alter the color schemes and slide designs, get a professional look for your presentations with Slide Masters, handle footers, and make your presentations a little more dramatic with transitions and actions buttons.

Changing or Tweaking a Slide Design or Color Scheme

You can do that no matter how far along you are in constructing your presentation. The new slide design will take over from the old one, even if it means obscuring text or rendering graphics invisible. New slide designs usually change the background of slides. That can have untoward consequences. Besides changing slide designs or color schemes, you can alter the designs or color schemes themselves by following these instructions:

 -  Choosing a new background color: Choose Format -> Background or right-click a slide in the presentation and choose Background. You see the Background dialog box. Open the Background Fill drop-down list and choose a new color or fill effect. Choose Automatic if you want to restore the slide design to its original background color.

 -  Changing the color scheme: Click the Design button to display the Slide Design task plane, and then select the Color Schemes link. The Slide Design task pane shows color schemes. If none suits you, click the Edit Color Schemes link. You see the Custom tab of the Edit Color Scheme dialog box. From here, you can select a part of the color scheme, click the Change Color button to open the Background Color dialog box, and select a new color.

 -  Changing the fonts: The only way to change fonts in a slide design is to go to a master slide. Font changes made to the Slide Master slide are made to all slides except title slides; font changes made to the Title Master slide show up on all title slides. Choose View -> Master -> Slide Master to fiddle with master slides. The following section, “Slide Masters for Consistent Formatting,” explains how to handle master slides.

Slide Masters for Consistent Formatting

Consistency is everything in a PowerPoint presentation. The secret to a good layout is to make sure that the fonts and font sizes on slides are consistent from one slide to the next, that the text boxes for headings are relatively the same size, and that bulleted lists are formatted the same. If the corner of each slide is to show a company logo, the logo needs to appear in the same position on each slide. To make slides consistent with one another, PowerPoint offers the Slide Masters. A Slide Master is similar to a Word template. Formatting changes made to a Slide Master are made as well to the slides that use the Slide Master as the basis for their design. Drop a logo or other image in the corner of a Slide Master, for example, and the logo appears as well on all slides that are governed by the Slide Master. To put slide numbers, footers, the date anything that might appear on every slide in a presentation on slides, insert them on a Slide Master. When you click the New Slide button and choose a layout for a slide, you make either the Slide Master or the Title Master the basis for your new slide. The majority of slides are governed by the Slide Master because the majority of slides are not title slides. Here’s the lowdown on the Slide Master and Title Master:

 -  Slide Master: The master for all slides except those assigned the Title Slide layout, the layout designed for the introductory slide. It has placeholders for entering a slide number, the date, and a footer. The placeholder text shows which font and font size is used for slide titles, first-level bulleted lists, second-level bulleted lists, and so on. By changing one of these fonts, you change fonts on all slides that the Slide Master governs. Drop a company logo onto this slide, and it will appear on all slides except the title slide.

 -  Title Master: The master for slides assigned the Title Slide layout, the first layout in the Apply Slide Layout task pane. Most presentations have only one title slide, but some people use more than one to mark when a new stage of the presentation is forthcoming. If more than one slide in your presentation has been assigned the Title Slide layout, you can go to the Title Master, make formatting changes to it, and rest assured that your changes will appear on all title slides. The following pages explain how to change formats on a Slide Master, apply Slide Master formats to slides, and create more than one Slide Master for a presentation.

Changing formats on the Slide Master

Follow these steps to open the Slide Master or Title Master and make formatting changes there:

1. Choose View -> Master -> Slide Master. Slide Master thumbnails appear on the task pane.

2. Move the mouse pointer over a thumbnail to see which is the Slide Master and which is the Title Master. A ToolTip tells you the name of the slide design you are working on, whether the slide is the Slide Master or the Title Master, and how many slides in the presentation are title slides or normal slides.

3. Select the Slide Master or the Title Master in the task pane. Which slide you choose depends, of course, on whether you want to alter the appearance of a title slide or the other slides in your presentation.

4. Change formats on the slide, insert a logo graphic, change the size of text frames, or do whatever it is you want done to slides throughout your presentation. When you’re finished doing your masterful work, click the Close Master View button or switch to Normal or Slide Sorter view. Here are some other things worth knowing when it comes to Slide Masters:

 -  Dealing with placeholder frames: To remove a placeholder frame, select it and press Delete. Many people, for example, remove the Date Area, Footer Area, or Number Area to make room for a graphic or logo. If you remove a frame but regret doing so, click the Master Layout button or choose Format -> Master Layout and, in the Master Layout dialog box, select the name of the frame you regret deleting: Title, Text, Date, Slide Number, or Footer.

 -  Working with footers: To handle the footer along the bottom of slides the Date Area, Footer Area, and Number Area choose View -> Header and Footer. In the misnamed Header and Footer dialog box (misnamed because there are no headers on slides), enter the date, a footer, or slide numbers along the bottom of slides. Later in this article, “Handling Footers” takes up this subject in detail.

 -  Getting the original design back: When you change formats on a Slide Master, you’re really tinkering with the slide design itself. Suppose that you regret tinkering with the design and you want the original design back? The only way to start all over with an original slide design is to choose a new design in the Slide Design task pane and immediately choose your original design a second time. Doing so has the effect of washing away all the changes you made on the Slide Master and Title Master of a presentation.

Removing a Slide Master item from one slide

The beauty of Slide Masters is that they permit you to put the same item a company logo, a slide number, the date on all the slides in a presentation and rest assured that the items will appear in the same place on each slide. Sometimes, however, Slide Master items get in the way. They occupy valuable space that you need for a chart. They clash with the clip-art illustration on the slide. PowerPoint offers two ways to remove Slide Master elements from a single slide:

 -  Removing the footer and all master slide graphics: Select the slide, choose Format -> Background, and, in the Background dialog box, select the Omit Background Graphics from Master check box. Then click the Apply button.

 -  Covering up the item: With this technique, you block out the item. Click the Rectangle button on the Drawing toolbar and draw a rectangle over the item. Next, open the Fill Color drop-down list on the Drawing toolbar and choose the same color that appears on the slide background. Finally, open the Line Color drop-down list on the Drawing toolbar and choose No Line.

Working with more than one Slide Master

Sometimes a presentation can do with more than one Slide Master. Suppose, for example, that a sales presentation imparts upside and downside information. To help the audience distinguish between optimistic upside slides and their pessimistic downside counterparts, you can create an additional two Slide Masters, a rose-colored one called “Upside” and a murky green one called “Downside.” This way, the audience will know immediately which side’s views you are presenting when you display a new slide. To prevent more than one Slide Master from being created, or, for that matter, to create more than one Slide Master if you are unable to create them, choose Tools -> Options, and, on the Edit tab of the Options dialog box, select or deselect the Multiple Masters check box.

Creating a new Slide Master

To begin with, all slides in a presentation are associated with a single Title Master or Slide Master, but you can follow these steps to create secondary Slide Masters:

1. Choose View -> Master -> Slide Master.

2. In the task pane, select the Slide Master thumbnail if you want to create a new Slide Master; select the Title Master thumbnail to create a new Title Master.

3. Choose Insert -> New Slide Master or click the Insert New Slide Master button. To insert a New Title Master, click the Insert New Title Master button. A new Slide Master or Title Master thumbnail appears in the task pane and the master itself appears in the window.

4. Format the new Slide Master. You can call upon any formatting command you desire. To choose a slide design or color scheme for your new Slide Master, choose Format -> Slide Design and select the design or color scheme in the Slide Design task pane. Another way to create a new Slide Master is to duplicate one that is already there and then change the duplicate’s formats. In the task pane, select the Slide Master that needs duplicating and choose Insert -> Duplicate Slide Master. You can then rename the duplicate (described shortly).

Assigning slides to a Slide Master

No slide can serve two masters. When a presentation includes more than one Slide Master or Title Master, you have to tell PowerPoint which master to assign to your slides. Follow these steps to assign a slide or slides to a Slide Master:

1. Select the slide or slides.

2. Click the Design button to open the Slide Design task pane.

3. Under the Used in This Presentation section, select the Slide Master you want to assign the slide or slides, and then choose Apply to Selected Slides from the drop-down list.

Doing this, that, and the other to Slide Masters

Here is some other stuff you may or may not need to know about working with more than one Slide Master:

 -  Renaming Slide Masters: A newly made Slide Master is given the boring name “Custom Design,” but you can give it a more descriptive name. To do so, select the slide, click the Rename Master button, and enter a new name in the Rename Master dialog box.

 -  Deleting a Slide Master: Select the Slide Master and click the Delete Master button. Slides that were assigned the Slide Master you deleted are assigned to the first or only Slide Master in the Slide Master task pane.