A footer is a line of text that appears at the foot, or bottom, of a slide. Typically, a footer includes the date, a company name, and a slide number. The Slide Master includes frames for entering those very same items. Except for slide numbers, however, putting anything in the footer isn’t recommended. Footers crowd slides and distract the audience from gazing at the slide itself. PowerPoint has a special command, View -> Header and Footer, for entering the date, a word or two of text, and the slide number in footers. To put other items in footers, do so on your own by going to a Slide Master, drawing a text box, and placing the text box near the bottom of the slide (see “Slide Masters for Consistent Formatting,” earlier in this article). To enter a footer with PowerPoint’s help, choose View -> Header and Footer. You see the Header and Footer dialog box and its selfexplanatory options. Keep your eye on the Preview window. It shows what your footer will look like. Here are some things that are worth knowing as you play footsy with PowerPoint slides:

 -  Adjusting the position of footer items: To change where footer items are on the page, you have to go to a Slide Master. Choose View -> Master -> Slide Master and select the Slide Master or Title Master thumbnail. Then drag the text frames in the footer to new locations.

 -  Removing a footer from the first slide: Choose View -> Header and Footer, and, in the Header and Footer dialog box select the Don’t Show on Title Slide check box. To remove a text box from footers that you placed there yourself, choose View -> Master -> Slide Master, select the Title Master thumbnail, select the item you want to remove, and press the Delete key.

 -  Removing the footers from slides: Select the slides from which you want to remove footers, choose Format -> Background, and, in the Background dialog box, select the Omit Background Graphics from Master check box. Then click the Apply to All button. However, this command also removes graphics on the master slide. It removes everything except the title placeholder and text placeholder.

Action Buttons for Going from Slide to Slide

An action button is a handy button, usually found in a corner of a slide, that you may click to go elsewhere in a presentation. Action buttons are especially useful in kiosk-style presentations. PowerPoint offers action buttons for going to the next slide, the previous slide, the first or last slide in a presentation, the last slide you viewed, or a specific slide. Select the slide that needs action and follow these steps to adorn it with an action button:

1. Display the Action Buttons toolbar. To do so, either choose Slide Show -> Action Buttons or click the AutoShapes button on the Drawing toolbar and choose Action Buttons.

2. Study the buttons carefully and click the one that best illustrates the action you want to take. The pointer changes to a cross-hair cursor.

3. Draw the button on the slide. To do so, drag the cross-hair cursor in a diagonal fashion. The Action Settings dialog box  appears when you finish dragging.

4. Select the Mouse Over tab if you want to activate the button by moving the mouse pointer over it, not clicking it.

5. Select the Hyperlink To option button.

6. On the Hyperlink To drop-down list, choose the action you want for the button.

7. Click OK. Now to make the button look right and adjust its size and position:

 -  Choosing a different button: Sorry, the only way to choose a different button for an action is to start all over and redraw the button.

 -  Changing a button’s action: Right-click the button and choose Edit Hyperlink. In the Action Settings dialog box, choose a new action.

 -  Changing an action button’s appearance: Double-click the button or right-click it and choose Format AutoShape. You see the Format AutoShape dialog box. On the Colors and Lines tab, choose a color for the button and a line for its border.

 -  Changing the button’s size: Click the button to display its selection handles. Drag a corner handle a white circle to enlarge or shrink the button.

 -  Changing the button’s position: Click the button to select it. Then drag the button elsewhere.

Giving the Presentation

At last, the big day has arrived. It’s time to give the presentation. “Break a leg,” as actors say before they go on stage. These pages explain how to make the last-minute preparations, print handouts, and show the slides. You also discover how to give self-playing, kiosk-style presentations; customize a presentation for different audiences; and put a presentation on a Web page.

Rehearsing Your Presentation

Be sure to rehearse the presentation two or three times. Take note of how long it takes for you to give the presentation. Be sure to take into account time for questions from the audience. You might need to lengthen or shorten the presentation. And before it starts, make sure the machine on which you will give it is hooked up and in working order. To help you rehearse, PowerPoint offers the Rehearse Timings command. This command keeps count of how long your presentation is and how long each slide is on-screen. When the dress rehearsal is over, you can see in Slide Sorter view how long each slide was on-screen. You can tell whether a slide was on too long and perhaps needs to be divided into two slides. You can tell whether your presentation fits the time you’ll be allotted. Follow these steps to rehearse a presentation:

1. Choose Slide Show -> Rehearse Timings. The first slide appears on-screen, as does the Rehearsal toolbar. You can click the Pause button if during the presentation the dog needs walking or the postman rings twice.

2. Go through your presentation as you expect to on the big day. When the presentation is over, a dialog box tells you the total time of the presentation and asks whether you want to record how long each slide was on-screen.

3. Click Yes to record the timings; click No to ignore them. If you click Yes, the timings will appear in Slide Sorter view.

Printing Handout Copies of a Presentation

One way to make a slide presentation more memorable is to print copies of it and hand out the copies after the presentation is over. That way, audience members can refer to your presentation or even marvel at it later on. Slides can be printed one, two, three, four, six, or nine to a page. Before printing handout copies of the slides in your presentation, tell PowerPoint how many slides to print on a page. Choose View -> Master -> Handout Master. On the Handout Master View toolbar, click the button that corresponds to the number of slides per page you want. While you’re looking at the Handout Master, you can enter a header or footer on the handouts. To print a handout, choose File -> Print. In the Print dialog box, choose Handouts on the Print What drop-down list. You might want to choose Grayscale on the Color/Grayscale drop-down list even if you have a color printer. Slides, especially those with color backgrounds, are easier to see and examine in grayscale on the printed page. As long as the speaker notes you wrote for your slides are suitable for public consumption, you can print speaker notes instead of handouts for your audience. This way, audience members can read explanatory notes as well as see the slides themselves.

Showing Your Presentation

Compared to the preliminary work, giving a presentation is a piece of cake. To get off to a good start, press the Home key or select the first slide in the presentation. That way, you start at the beginning. Then do the following to show the slides:

 -  Starting the show: Choose View -> Slide Show, press F5, or click the Slide Show button.

 -  Going forward: To go forward from slide to slide, press the → key, click the mouse button, press N (for Next), press the Page Down key, press the spacebar, right-click and choose Next, or click the Navigation button in the lower-left corner of the screen and choose Next.

 -  Going backward: To go backward through the slides, press the ← key, press P (for Previous), press the Page Up key, right-click and choose Previous on the shortcut menu, click the Navigation button in the lowerleft corner of the screen and choose Previous, or click the Back button in the lower-left corner of the screen.

 -  Going to a specific slide: Either right-click or click the Navigation button, choose Go to Slide, and select the slide from the list. Press the Home key to go to the first slide.

 -  Ending the show: Press Esc, right-click, and choose End Show from the shortcut menu, or click the button in the lower-left corner of the screen and choose End Show. Presentations end with a blank screen and the words, “End of slide show, click to exit.” To end presentations without the blank slide, choose Tools -> Options, select the View tab in the Options dialog box, and deselect the End with Black Slide check box.

Giving a Self-Playing, Kiosk-Style Presentation

A kiosk-style presentation is one that plays on its own. You set the works in motion, and it plays over and over on your computer until you or someone else comes along to press the Esc key. To give a kiosk-style presentation, you tell PowerPoint how long to leave each slide on-screen. Then you arrange for the presentation to be shown “kiosk-style.”

Deciding how long to keep slides on-screen

Follow these steps to tell PowerPoint how long to keep each slide onscreen:

1. Switch to Normal view and select the Slides tab.

2. Select the first slide in the presentation.

3. Choose Slide Show -> Slide Transition.

4. Deselect the On Mouse Click check box.

5. Select the Automatically After check box. Select both these check boxes if you want to give the people who view the presentation the option of moving ahead on their own. Whichever comes first, slides advance when the viewer clicks the screen or when each slide’s time period comes to an end.

6. Click the Apply to All Slides button.

7. Enter how long you want the slide or all the slides to remain onscreen. How you do this depends on whether you want the slides to stay onscreen the same amount of time:

• All slides the same time: Enter a time period in the Automatically After text box and click the Apply to All Slides button again.

• Each slide a different time: One by one, select each slide on the Slide tab and enter a time period in the Automatically After text box. A fast way to enter time periods for individual slides is to rehearse the presentation and save the timings. If you save the timings, the time periods appear in the Automatically After text box. See “Rehearsing Your Presentation,” earlier in this article.

Making the presentation kiosk-style

Follow these steps to make yours a kiosk-style presentation:

1. Choose Slide Show -> Set Up Show. You see the Set Up Show dialog box.

2. Under Show Type, select the Browsed at Kiosk (Full Screen) option.

3. Click OK.