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PowerPoint works as a visual aid for giving presentations. (If you never give presentations, you probably don’t need PowerPoint.) Rather than fumble around creating, organizing, and displaying transparencies with an overhead projector, you can use PowerPoint on your computer to create, organize, and display slides that display information organized as text and graphics. Besides displaying slides on the screen, PowerPoint also lets you add notes that only you can see to each slide and turn your entire slide show presentation into printed handouts so the audience can review your presentation and take notes next to a printed copy of each slide. The next time you need to convince or inform an audience, use PowerPoint to create and deliver your presentation. (Just make sure you never use PowerPoint to propose marriage.)

Defining the Purpose of Your Presentation

PowerPoint can make creating and delivering a presentation easy, but before you start creating fancy visuals with eye-popping graphics and colors, step away from your computer, put down your copy of PowerPoint, and place your hands in the open where anyone can see them. Rushing into PowerPoint to create a presentation is likely to create a dazzling array of colors, fonts, and graphics that may look interesting but won’t convey your message effectively. The best way to create an effective presentation is to take some time to think about the following:

 What is your point? Define the single most important idea of your presentation.

 Who is the target audience? A presentation given to engineers and scientists will look different than the same presentation given to CEOs and venture capital executives.

 What do you want the audience to do? A speaker may present new ideas to a conference while a politician may present ideas designed to sway the audience to take certain actions, such as voting a specific way.

After you understand the purpose of your presentation, your audience, and what you hope your presentation will do, you’re ready to go through the physical steps of creating a presentation in PowerPoint.

Creating a PowerPoint Presentation

A PowerPoint presentation consists of one or more slides where each slide can display text and graphics. Creating a presentation means adding slides and typing text or pasting graphics on each slide. When you first start PowerPoint, the program loads a blank presentation that you can modify right away. If you’ve been working on another presentation in PowerPoint and you need to start a new, blank presentation from scratch, follow these steps:

1. Click the Office Button and then choose New. A New Presentation dialog box appears.

2. Click Blank Presentation and then click Create. After you create a new presentation, you need to fill it with content (text and graphics). PowerPoint gives you two ways to view, edit, and design your presentation:

 Slide view  Outline view

Both views let you add, delete, rearrange, and edit slides. The main difference is that Slide view lets you add graphics and modify the visual appearance of a slide. Outline view displays your entire presentation as an outline where each slide appears as an outline heading, and additional text on each slide appears as a subheading. Outline view makes it easy to rearrange and organize the slides in your presentation without the distraction of the visual appearance of each slide. You can create an entire presentation in Slide view without ever using Outline view at all (or use Outline view without ever using Slide view at all). Outline view is most useful for creating and organizing a presentation. Slide view is most useful for viewing the appearance of multiple slides at once.

Designing a presentation with Slide view

Slide view shows your entire slide show as thumbnails in the left pane and the currently selected slide in full size view in the right pane. Creating a new slide To create a new slide within Slide view, follow these steps:

1. Click an existing slide in the thumbnail pane.

2. Click the Home tab.

3. Click New Slide in the Slides group. Rearranging slides You can rearrange the order of your slides by following these steps:

1. In the thumbnail pane, click the slide that you want to move to a new position in your presentation.

2. Hold down the left mouse button and drag (move) the mouse up or down within the thumbnail pane. PowerPoint displays a horizontal line between slides to show you where your slide will appear. If you drag the mouse to the top or bottom of the thumbnail pane, PowerPoint automatically scrolls up or down the list.

3. Release the left mouse button when you’re happy with the slide’s new position.

Hiding and deleting a slide

If you have a slide that you no longer want in your presentation, you can either hide or delete it. Hiding a slide keeps the slide but doesn’t display that slide when you give your presentation. You may want to hide a slide in case you need it later or so you can reference the information on this slide with the rest of your presentation. To hide a slide, follow these steps:

1. Click the slide in the thumbnail pane that you want to hide.

2. Click the Slide Show tab.

3. Click Hide Slide in the Set Up group. PowerPoint dims your chosen slide and highlights the Hide Slide icon. To unhide a slide, repeat the above steps. If you’re sure you want to get rid of a slide, you can just delete it. To delete a slide, follow these steps:

1. Click the slide in the thumbnail pane that you want to delete.

2. Click the Home tab.

3. Click Delete in the Slides group. PowerPoint deletes your chosen slide. If you press Ctrl+Z or click the Undo icon right away, you can recover a deleted slide.

Designing a presentation with Outline view

Outline view shows the title and subtitle text of each slide in the left pane and the currently selected slide in full size view in the right pane. The biggest advantage of Outline view is that it lets you rearrange and organize your slides by focusing on their content (title and subtitles). To switch from Slide view to Outline view, click the Outline tab. To switch from Outline view to Slide view, click the Slides tab.

Creating a new slide

In Outline view, each outline heading represents a slide title and each subheading represents a slide’s subtitles. To create a new slide in Outline view, follow these steps:

1. Click the Outline tab to switch to Outline view.

2. Click a slide title in the Outline pane.

3. Choose one of the following:

• Press Home to move the cursor to the front of the outline heading. This creates a new slide before the currently displayed slide.

• Press End to move the cursor to the end of the outline heading. This creates a new slide after the currently displayed slide.

4. Press Enter.

PowerPoint adds a new, blank slide to your presentation.

Creating subtitles on a slide

Outline view lets you create slides and add subtitles to each slide as well. To add a subtitle to a slide, follow these steps:

1. Click the Outline view tab to display the Outline pane.

2. Click a slide title and then press End to move the cursor to the end of the slide title.

3. Press Enter. PowerPoint creates a blank slide title underneath.

4. Press Tab. PowerPoint indents your slide title and turns it into subtitle text under the previous outline heading.

Collapsing and expanding subtitles

A large presentation consisting of multiple slides with subtitles can be hard to read. To simplify the appearance of your outline, PowerPoint lets you collapse or expand outline headings. To collapse or expand an outline heading, follow these steps:

1. Click the Outline tab to display the Outline pane.

2. Double-click the slide icon of a slide title in the Outline pane. To expand a collapsed slide title, just double-click its slide icon.

Rearranging slides

Outline view makes it easy to rearrange slides just by moving slide titles up or down. To move a slide title, follow these steps:

1. Move the mouse pointer over the slide icon that appears to the left of the slide title that you want to move. The mouse turns into a two-way pointing arrow.

2. Hold down the left mouse button and drag (move) the mouse up

or down. PowerPoint displays a horizontal gray line to show where the new position of the slide will appear in your presentation.

3. Release the left mouse button. PowerPoint moves your outline heading to its new position in your presentation.

Deleting a slide

To delete a slide in Outline view, follow these steps:

1. Click the slide icon that appears to the left of the slide title you want to delete.

2. Press Delete.

Working with Text

Most slides contain exactly one title and one subtitle text box. The title text box typically defines the information that the slide presents, while the subtitle text box displays supporting information. When you create a new slide, both the title and subtitle text boxes will be empty, although they’ll both display the message Click here to add title or Click here to add subtitle. (This text won’t appear on your slides if you don’t type anything there.) If you delete all the text inside of a title or subtitle text box, PowerPoint automatically displays the Click here to add title or Click here to add subtitle text in the empty text boxes. To add text inside a title or subtitle text box, follow these steps:

1. Click in the title or subtitle text box, directly on the slide. PowerPoint displays a cursor in your chosen text box.

2. Type your text. You can also create title and subtitle text in Outline view as explained in the earlier section, “Designing a presentation with Outline view.”

Typing text in a text box

A typical PowerPoint slide lets you type text in the Title text box or the Subtitle text box. When you type text in the Title or Subtitle text box, the contents appear as slide titles and subheadings within Outline view. However, PowerPoint also offers you a third option for displaying text on a slide: You can create your own text box and place it anywhere on the slide. When you create your own text box and fill it with text, this text will not appear within Outline view. To create and place a text box on a slide, follow these steps:

1. Click the Insert tab.

2. Click the Text Box icon in the Text group. The mouse pointer turns into a downward-pointing arrow.

3. Move the mouse pointer over the area on the slide where you want to create a text box.

4. Hold down the left mouse button and drag (move) the mouse to draw a text box on a slide.

5. Release the left mouse button. PowerPoint displays a text box.

6. Type your text inside the text box. Any text you type into a text box that you create will not appear in Outline view.

Formatting text

After you create text in a text box, you can format it by choosing different fonts, font sizes, and colors. To change the appearance of text, follow these steps:

1. Click the Home tab.

2. Click in a text box and select the text you want to format.

3. Click one of the following font tools:

   •  Font list box
   •  Font Size list box
   •  Increase Font Size
   • Decrease Font Size
   •  Change Case
   •  Bold
   •  Italic
   •  Underline
   •  Shadow
   •  Strikethrough
   •  Character Spacing
 •  Font Color

Aligning text

PowerPoint can align text both horizontally and vertically inside a text box. To align text, follow these steps:

1. Click the Home tab.

2. Click in a text box and select the text you want to align.

3. Click one of the following text alignment tools in the Paragraph group:

   •  Align Left
   •  Center
   •  Align Right
   •  Justify
   •  Align Text (Top, Middle, Bottom, Top Centered, Middle Centered,
   Bottom  Centered)
 

4. Click the Align Text icon in the Paragraph group. A pop-up menu appears.

5. Click a vertical alignment option, such as Top or Middle.

Adjusting line spacing

Line spacing defines the space that appears between each line in a text box. To define the line space in a text box, follow these steps:

1. Click the text box that contains text.

2. Click the Home tab.

3. Click the Line Spacing icon in the Paragraph group. A pull-down menu appears.

4. Select a line spacing value, such as 1.5 or 2.

Making numbered and bullet lists

PowerPoint can display text as bulleted or numbered lists. The two ways to create such a list are before you type any text or after you’ve already typed some text. To create a bulleted or numbered list as you type new text, follow these steps:

1. Click in a text box.

2. Click the Home tab.

3. Click the Bullets or Numbering icon in the Paragraph group. A pull-down menu appears.

4. Click a bullet or numbering option. PowerPoint displays a bullet or number.

5. Type any text and press Enter. As soon as you press Enter, PowerPoint displays a new bullet or number.

If you have existing text, you can convert it to a bullet or numbered list. To convert existing text into a list, follow these steps:

1. Click in the text box that contains the text you want to convert into a bullet or numbered list.

2. Select the text you want to convert into a list.

3. Click the Home tab.

4. Click the Bullets or Numbering icon in the Paragraph group. PowerPoint converts your text into a list. PowerPoint displays each paragraph as a separate item in a bullet or numbered list. A paragraph is any amount of text that ends with a paragraph mark (¶), which is an invisible character that you create when you press the Enter key.

Making columns

You can divide a text box into multiple columns, which can be especially useful if you need to display large lists on a slide. To divide a text box into columns, follow these steps:

1. Click the text box that you want to divide into columns.

2. Click the Home tab.

3. Click the Columns icon in the Paragraph group. A menu appears.

4. Click a column option, such as Two or Three.

Moving and resizing a text box PowerPoint lets you move text boxes anywhere on the slide. To move a text box, follow these steps:

1. Move the mouse pointer over the edge of the text box that you want to move. The mouse turns into a four-way pointing arrow.

2. Hold down the left mouse button and drag (move) the mouse to move the text box.

3. Release the left mouse button when you’re happy with the new location of the text box.

To resize a text box, follow these steps:

1. Click the text box you want to resize.

2. Move the mouse pointer over a handle. The mouse pointer turns into a two-way pointing arrow.

3. Hold down the left mouse button and drag (move) the mouse. PowerPoint resizes your text box in the direction you move the mouse.

4. Release the left mouse button when you’re happy with the size of the text box.

Rotating a text box After you type text in a title or subtitle text box, you can rotate the text box on your slide. To rotate a text box, follow these steps:

1. Click the text box you want to rotate

2. Move the mouse pointer over the rotate handle. The mouse pointer turns into a circular arrow.

3. Hold down the left mouse button and drag (move) the mouse to rotate your text box. If you hold down the Shift key while dragging the mouse, you can rotate the text box in 15 degree increments.

4. Release the left mouse button when you’re happy with the rotated position of your text box. You can still edit and format text in a text box that appears rotated.

Adding Color and Pictures to a Presentation

To make your presentations look more visually appealing, PowerPoint lets you add color and graphics to your slides. Color and graphics can’t turn a worthless presentation into an informative one, but they can enhance an informative presentation and make it easier for people to watch.

Applying a Theme

By default, PowerPoint displays each slide with a white background. Although you could change the colors and appearance of each slide individually, it’s much easier to change every slide in your presentation using a theme. A theme provides predesigned colors and designs that are applied to each slide to give your presentation a uniform and professional look. To define a theme for a presentation, follow these steps:

1. Click the Design tab.

2. Click the More button under the Themes group. your presentation will look.

3. Click a theme. PowerPoint displays your chosen theme on your slides.

4. Click the Theme Colors icon in the Themes group. A menu appears, listing different color variations you can choose for your presentation.

5. Click a color pattern. PowerPoint displays your new theme colors.

6. Click the Fonts icon in the Themes group. A menu appears listing all the default fonts for your presentation.

7. Click a font.

8. Click the Effects icon in the Themes group. A menu appears listing all the different effects you can give your presentation, such as Metro or Currency.

9. Click an effect.