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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Get up and running with PowerPoint 2016
Does using PowerPoint make you want to pull your hair out? PowerPoint 2016 For Dummies takes the pain out of working with PowerPoint, offering plain-English explanations of everything you need to know to get up and running with the latest version of the software. With full-color illustrations and step-by-step instructions, it shows you how to create and edit slides, import data from other applications, collaborate with other users in the Cloud, add charts, clip art, sound, and video—and so much more.
PowerPoint is the world's de facto presentation software, used and supported in over 60 countries. The time has never been better to take advantage of the latest software to make killer PowerPoint presentations. From adding special effects to your presentations to working with master slides and templates, this hands-on friendly guide is the fast and easy way to make PowerPoint work for you.
- Presented in full color to better illustrate the powerful presentation features of the software
- Helps you take advantage of all of PowerPoint's new features
- Available in conjunction with the release of the next version of Microsoft Office
- Written by bestselling author Doug Lowe
If you're a new or inexperienced PowerPoint user who spends more time trying to figure out how the software works than you do actually working on your presentations, PowerPoint 2016 For Dummies is just what you need to gain back hours of your work day and make professional, impactful presentations.
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Seitenzahl: 381
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
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PowerPoint® 2016 For Dummies®
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Trademarks: Wiley, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and may not be used without written permission. PowerPoint is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
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Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015950487
ISBN 978-1-119-07705-3 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-07734-3 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-07710-7 (ebk)
PowerPoint® 2016 For Dummies®
Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/powerpoint2016 to view this book's cheat sheet.
Table of Contents
Cover
Introduction
About This Book
Foolish Assumptions
Icons Used in This Book
Beyond the Book
Where to Go from Here
Part I: Getting Started with PowerPoint 2016
Chapter 1: Welcome to PowerPoint 2016
What in Sam Hill Is PowerPoint?
Introducing PowerPoint Presentations
Starting PowerPoint
Navigating the PowerPoint Interface
Unraveling the Ribbon
Telling PowerPoint What to Do
The View from Here Is Great
Taking the Backstage Tour
Creating a New Presentation
Displaying Your Presentation
Saving Your Work
Opening a Presentation
Closing a Presentation
Getting Help
Exiting PowerPoint
Chapter 2: Editing Slides
Moving from Slide to Slide
Working with Objects
Editing a Text Object
Selecting Text
Using Cut, Copy, and Paste
Duplicating an Object
Using the Clipboard Task Pane
Oops! I Didn’t Mean It (The Marvelous Undo Command)
Deleting a Slide
Duplicating a Slide
Finding Text
Replacing Text
Rearranging Your Slides in Slide Sorter View
Chapter 3: Working in Outline View
Calling Up the Outline
Selecting and Editing an Entire Slide
Selecting and Editing One Paragraph
Promoting and Demoting Paragraphs
Adding a New Paragraph
Adding a New Slide
Moving Text Up and Down
Collapsing and Expanding the Outline
Chapter 4: Proofing Your Presentations
Checking Spelling as You Go
Spell Checking After-the-Fact
Using the Thesaurus
Capitalizing Correctly
Using the AutoCorrect Feature
Chapter 5: Don’t Forget Your Notes!
Understanding Notes
Adding Notes to a Slide
Adding an Extra Notes Page for a Slide
Adding a New Slide from Notes Page View
Printing Notes Pages
Displaying Notes on a Separate Monitor
Chapter 6: Show Time!
The Quick Way to Print
Printing from Backstage View
Setting Up a Slide Show
Starting a Slide Show
Working in Presenter View
Keyboard and Mouse Tricks for Your Slide Show
Using Presentation Tools
Rehearsing Your Slide Timings
Using Custom Shows
Showing Your Presentation Online
Part II: Creating Great-Looking Slides
Chapter 7: All about Fonts and Text Formatting
Changing the Look of Your Text
Big Picture Text Formatting
Creating Fancy Text with WordArt
Chapter 8: Designing Your Slides
Looking at the Design Tab
Working with Themes
Changing the Slide Size
Using Background Styles
Chapter 9: Animating Your Slides
Using Slide Transitions
Using the Animations Tab
Customizing Your Animation
Making Text Jiggle
Using the Animation Painter
Chapter 10: Masters of the Universe Meet the Templates of Doom
Working with Masters
Modifying the Slide Master
Adjusting the Handout and Notes Masters
Using Masters
Using Headers and Footers
Yes, You Can Serve Two Masters
Restoring Lost Placeholders
Working with Templates
Working with Presentation Sections
Part III: Embellishing Your Slides
Chapter 11: Inserting Pictures
Exploring the Many Types of Pictures
Using Pictures
Inserting Pictures from a File
Cropping a Picture
Adding Style to Your Pictures
Correcting Sharpness, Brightness, and Contrast
Adjusting Color
Applying Artistic Effects
Compressing Your Pictures
Removing Picture Backgrounds
Chapter 12: Drawing on Your Slides
Some General Drawing Tips
Drawing Simple Objects
Creating Other Shapes
Styling Your Shapes
Flipping and Rotating Objects
Drawing a Complicated Picture
Chapter 13: Charting for Fun and Profit
Understanding Charts
Adding a Chart to Your Presentation
Changing the Chart Type
Working with Chart Data
Changing the Chart Layout
Changing the Chart Style
Embellishing Your Chart
Chapter 14: Working with SmartArt
Understanding SmartArt
Creating a SmartArt Diagram
Tweaking a SmartArt Diagram
Editing the SmartArt Text
Working with Organization Charts
Chapter 15: Lights! Camera! Action! (Adding Sound and Video)
Getting Ready to Add Sound to a Slide
Setting Audio Options
Adding Video to Your Slides
Setting Video Options
Chapter 16: More Things to Insert on Your Slides
Inserting Tables
Inserting WordArt
Using Hyperlinks
Adding Action Buttons
Inserting Equations
Part IV: Working with Others
Chapter 17: Collaborating in the Cloud
Sharing a Presentation in the Cloud
Sharing a Presentation with Other Users
Sending Slides for Review Via Email
Using Comments
Comparing Presentations
Chapter 18: Using a Slide Library and Other Ways to Reuse Slides
Stealing Slides from Another Presentation
Saving Slides in a Slide Library
Stealing Slides from a Slide Library
Chapter 19: Exporting Your Presentation to Other Formats
Creating a PDF File
Crafting a Video
Packaging Your Presentation on a CD
Creating Word Handouts
Part V: The Part of Tens
Chapter 20: Ten PowerPoint Commandments
I. Thou Shalt Frequently Savest Thy Work
II. Thou Shalt Storeth Each Presentation in Its Proper Folder
III. Thou Shalt Not Abuseth Thy Program’s Formatting Features
IV. Thou Shalt Not Stealeth Copyrighted Materials
V. Thou Shalt Abideth by Thine Color Scheme, Auto-Layout, and Template
VI. Thou Shalt Not Abuse Thine Audience with an Endless Array of Cute Animations or Funny Sounds
VII. Keep Thy Computer Gurus Happy
VIII. Thou Shalt Backeth Up Thy Files Day by Day
IX. Thou Shalt Fear No Evil, for Ctrl+Z Is Always with Thee
X. Thou Shalt Not Panic
Chapter 21: Ten Tips for Creating Readable Slides
Try Reading the Slide from the Back of the Room
Avoid Small Text
No More Than Five Bullets, Please
Avoid Excessive Verbiage Lending to Excessively Lengthy Text That Is Not Only Redundant But Also Repetitive and Reiterative
Use Consistent Wording
Avoid Unsightly Color Combinations
Watch the Line Endings
Keep the Background Simple
Use Only Two Levels of Bullets
Avoid Bullets Altogether If You Can
Keep Charts and Diagrams Simple
Chapter 22: Ten Ways to Keep Your Audience Awake
Don’t Forget Your Purpose
Don’t Become a Slave to Your Slides
Don’t Overwhelm Your Audience with Unnecessary Detail
Don’t Neglect Your Opening
Be Relevant
Don’t Forget the Altar Call
Practice, Practice, Practice
Relax!
Expect the Unexpected
Don’t Be Boring
About the Author
Cheat Sheet
Advertisement Page
Connect with Dummies
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Introduction
Welcome to PowerPoint 2016 For Dummies, the book written especially for people who are lucky enough to use this latest and greatest version of PowerPoint and want to find out just enough to finish that presentation that was due yesterday.
Do you ever find yourself in front of an audience, no matter how small, flipping through flip charts or shuffling through a stack of handwritten transparencies? You need PowerPoint! Have you always wanted to take your notebook computer with you to impress a client at lunch, but you haven’t known what to do with it between trips to the salad bar? You really need PowerPoint!
Or maybe you’re one of those unfortunate folks who bought Microsoft Office because it was such a bargain and you needed a Windows word processor and spreadsheet anyway, and hey, you’re not even sure what PowerPoint is, but it came with the software you purchased, so it didn’t cost extra. Who can resist a bargain like that?
Whichever circumstance you find yourself in, you’re holding the perfect book right here in your formerly magic-marker-stained hands. Help is here, within these humble pages.
This book talks about PowerPoint in everyday — and often irreverent — terms. No lofty prose here; the whole thing checks in at about the fifth-grade reading level. I have no Pulitzer expectations for this book. My goal is to make an otherwise dull and lifeless subject at least tolerable, and maybe even kind of fun.
About This Book
This isn’t the kind of book that you pick up and read from start to finish as though it were a cheap novel. If I ever see you reading it at the beach, I’ll kick sand in your face. This book is more like a reference — the kind of book you can pick up, turn to just about any page, and start reading. It has 22 chapters, each one covering a specific aspect of using PowerPoint — such as printing, animating your slides, or using clip art.
You don’t have to memorize anything in this book. It’s a need-to-know book: You pick it up when you need to know something. Need to know how to create an organization chart? Pick up the book. Need to know how to override the Slide Master? Pick up the book. After you find what you’re looking for, put it down and get on with your life.
I use a few conventions to communicate information:
Keyboard shortcuts:
On occasion, this book directs you to use specific keyboard shortcuts to get things done. When you see something like Ctrl+Z, this instruction means to hold down the Ctrl key while pressing the Z key and then release both together. Don’t type the plus sign.
Commands:
Sometimes I tell you to use a command that resides on the new Ribbon interface like this: Choose Home ⇒ Editing ⇒ Find. That means to click the Find button, which you can find in the Editing group on the Home tab.
Onscreen messages:
Whenever I describe a message or information that you see onscreen, it looks like this:
Are we having fun yet?
Buttons in the margin:
Whenever I discuss a certain button that you need to click in order to accomplish the task at hand, the button appears either in the margin or in a helpful table that summarizes the buttons that apply to a particular task. This way, you can easily locate it on your screen.
Bold text:
Type bold text just as it appears in the book. The exception is when you’re working through a steps list: Because each step is bold, the text to type is not bold.
Monofont:
Web addresses and programming code appear in monofont. If you’re reading a digital version of this book on a device connected to the Internet, you can click the web address to visit that website, like this:
www.dummies.com
.
Foolish Assumptions
I make only three assumptions about you:
You use a computer.
It’s a Windows computer — not a Mac. (PowerPoint 2016 requires at least Windows 7.)
You use or are thinking about using PowerPoint 2016.
Nothing else. I don’t assume that you’re a computer guru who knows how to change a controller card or configure memory for optimal use. These types of computer chores are best handled by people who like computers. My hope is that you’re on speaking terms with such a person. Do your best to stay there.
Icons Used in This Book
As you’re reading all this wonderful prose, you occasionally see the following icons. They appear in the margins to draw your attention to important information. They’re defined as follows:
Watch out! Some technical drivel is just around the corner. Read it only if you have your pocket protector firmly attached.
Pay special attention to this icon — it tells you that some particularly useful tidbit is at hand, perhaps a shortcut or a way of using a command that you might not have considered.
Danger! Danger! Danger! Stand back, Will Robinson!
Did I tell you about the memory course I took? Paragraphs marked with this icon simply point out details that are worth committing to memory.
Beyond the Book
I couldn’t fit everything about PowerPoint 2016 in these pages, so you can go online to find even more information:
Cheat Sheet:
Go to
www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/powerpoint2016
to find a variety of shortcuts for everything from formatting and editing to slide shows and more.
Web Extras:
Go to
www.dummies.com/extras/powerpoint2016
to access articles on how to add recurring text, how to create a hyperlink to another slide, how to add comments to presentations, and more.
Where to Go from Here
Yes, you can get there from here. With this book in hand, you’re ready to charge full speed ahead into the strange and wonderful world of desktop presentations. Browse through the table of contents and decide where you want to start. Be bold! Be courageous! Be adventurous! Above all else, have fun!
Part I
Getting Started with PowerPoint 2016
Visit www.dummies.com for great Dummies content online.
In this part …
Get a bird’s-eye view of PowerPoint 2016 and what you can do with it.
Find out how to edit the content on PowerPoint slides, from the text itself to text objects to other types of objects, such as clip art pictures or drawn shapes.
Understand how to work in Outline View so you can focus on your presentation’s main points and subpoints without worrying about appearance.
Learn to proof your presentation with PowerPoint and avoid embarrassing mistakes.
Discover how to create speaker notes to help you get through your presentation.
Know how to finish the final preparations by printing copies of your slides, notes, and handouts, as well as how to set up a projector and actually deliver your presentation.
Chapter 1
Welcome to PowerPoint 2016
In This Chapter
Discovering PowerPoint
Firing up PowerPoint
Making sense of the PowerPoint screen and the Ribbon
Visiting backstage
Creating a presentation
Viewing presentation outlines
Saving and closing your work
Retrieving a presentation from the hard drive
Getting help
Getting out of PowerPoint
This chapter is a grand and gala welcoming ceremony for PowerPoint 2016, Microsoft’s popular slide-presentation program.
This chapter is sort of like the opening ceremony of the Olympics, in which all the athletes parade around the stadium and people make speeches in French. In much the same way, this chapter marches PowerPoint 2016 around the stadium so you can get a bird’s-eye view of what the program is and what you can do with it. I might make a few speeches, but not in French (unless, of course, you’re reading the French edition of this book).
What in Sam Hill Is PowerPoint?
PowerPoint is a program that comes with Microsoft Office (although you can buy it separately, as well). Most people buy Microsoft Office because it’s a great bargain: You get Word, Excel, and Outlook all together in one inexpensive package. And PowerPoint is thrown in for good measure. Of course, depending on which edition of Office you buy, you might get other goodies as well, such as Access, Publisher, a complete set of Ginsu knives, and a Binford VegaPneumatic Power Slicer and Dicer. (Always wear eye protection.)
You know what Word is — it’s the world’s most loved and most hated word processor, and it’s perfect for concocting letters, term papers, and great American novels. I’m thinking of writing one as soon as I finish this book. Excel is a spreadsheet program used by bean counters the world over. Outlook is that program you use to read your email. But what the heck is PowerPoint? Does anybody know or care? (And as long as I’m asking questions, who in Sam Hill was Sam Hill?)
PowerPoint is a presentation program, and it’s one of the coolest programs I know. It’s designed to work with a projector to display presentations that will bedazzle your audience members and instantly sway them to your point of view, even if you’re selling real estate on Mars, season tickets for the Oakland Raiders, or a new tax increase to a congressman in an election year. If you’ve ever flipped a flip chart, you’re going to love PowerPoint.
Here are some of the many uses of PowerPoint:
Business presentations:
PowerPoint is a great timesaver for anyone who makes business presentations, whether you’ve been asked to speak in front of hundreds of people at a shareholders’ convention, a group of sales reps at a sales conference, or your own staff or co-workers at a business meeting.
Sales presentations:
If you’re an insurance salesperson, you can use PowerPoint to create a presentation about the perils of not owning life insurance and then use your laptop or tablet computer to show it to hapless clients.
Lectures:
PowerPoint is useful for teachers or conference speakers who want to reinforce the key points in their lectures with slides.
Homework:
PowerPoint is a great program to use for certain types of homework projects, such as those big history reports that count for half your grade.
Church:
People use PowerPoint at churches to display song lyrics on big screens so everyone can sing or to display sermon outlines so everyone can take notes. If your church still uses hymnals or prints the outline in the bulletin, tell the minister to join the 21st century.
Information stations:
You can use PowerPoint to set up a computerized information kiosk that people can walk up to and use. For example, you can create a museum exhibit about the history of your town or set up a tradeshow presentation to provide information about your company and products.
Internet presentations:
PowerPoint can even help you to set up a presentation that you can broadcast over the Internet so people can join in on the fun without having to leave the comfort of their own homes or offices.
Introducing PowerPoint Presentations
PowerPoint is similar to a word processor such as Word, except that it’s geared toward creating presentations rather than documents. A presentation is kind of like those Kodak Carousel slide trays that your grandpa filled up with 35mm slides of the time he took the family to the Grand Canyon in 1965. The main difference is that with PowerPoint, you don’t have to worry about dumping all the slides out of the tray and figuring out how to get them back into the right order.
Word documents consist of one or more pages, and PowerPoint presentations consist of one or more slides. Each slide can contain text, graphics, animations, videos, and other information. You can easily rearrange the slides in a presentation, delete slides that you don’t need, add new slides, or modify the contents of existing slides.
You can use PowerPoint both to create your presentations and to actually present them.
You can use several different types of media to actually show your presentations:
Computer screen:
Your computer screen is a suitable way to display your presentation when you’re showing it to just one or two other people.
Big-screen TV:
If you have a big-screen TV that can accommodate computer input, it’s ideal for showing presentations to medium-sized audiences — say 10 to 12 people in a small conference room.
Computer projector:
A computer projector projects an image of your computer monitor onto a screen so large audiences can view it.
Webcast:
You can show your presentation over the Internet. That way, your audience doesn’t all have to be in the same place at the same time. Anyone with a web browser can sit in on your presentation.
Printed pages:
Printed pages enable you to distribute a printed copy of your entire presentation to each member of your audience. (When you print your presentation, you can print one slide per page, or you can print several slides on each page to save paper.)
Overhead transparencies:
Overhead transparencies can be used to show your presentation using an overhead projector. It’s a little old-school to be sure, but some people still do it this way.
Your presentations will be much more interesting if you show them using one of the first four methods (computer monitor, TV, projector, or webcast) because you can incorporate animations, videos, sounds, and other whiz-bang features in your presentation. Printed pages, overheads, and 35mm slides can show only static content.
Presentation files
A presentation is to PowerPoint what a document is to Word or a worksheet is to Excel. In other words, a presentation is a file that you create with PowerPoint. Each presentation that you create is saved on your computer’s hard drive as a separate file.
PowerPoint 2016 presentations have the special extension .pptx added to the end of their filenames. For example, Sales Conference.pptx and History Day.pptx are both valid PowerPoint filenames. When you type the filename for a new PowerPoint file, you don’t have to type the .pptx extension, because PowerPoint automatically adds the extension for you. Windows may hide the .pptx extension, in which case a presentation file named Conference.pptx often appears as just Conference.
I recommend you avoid the use of spaces and special characters, especially percent signs (%), in your filenames. If you want the effect of a space in a filename, use an underscore character instead. Spaces and percent signs in filenames can cause all kinds of problems if you post your presentation files to the Internet, either on a web page or even as a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) upload.
Versions of PowerPoint prior to 2007 save presentations with the extension .ppt instead of .pptx. The x at the end of the newer file extension denotes that the new file format is based on an open XML standard data format that makes it easier to exchange files among different programs. PowerPoint 2016 can still save files in the old .ppt format, but I recommend you do so only if you need to share presentations with people who haven’t yet upgraded to PowerPoint 2007 or later.
PowerPoint is set up initially to save your presentation files in the Documents folder, but you can store PowerPoint files in any folder of your choice on your hard drive or on any other drive. You can also save your presentation to online file storage, such as Microsoft’s OneDrive. And, if you wish, you can write a presentation to a USB flash drive or to cloud storage.
What’s in a slide?
PowerPoint presentations comprise one or more slides. Each slide can contain text, graphics, and other elements. A number of PowerPoint features work together to help you easily format attractive slides:
Slide layouts:
Every slide has a slide layout that controls how information is arranged on the slide. A slide layout is simply a collection of one or more placeholders, which set aside an area of the slide to hold information. Depending on the layout that you choose for a slide, the placeholders can hold text, graphics, clip art, sound or video files, tables, charts, graphs, diagrams, or other types of content.
Background:
Every slide has a background, which provides a backdrop for the slide’s content. The background can be a solid color; a blend of two colors; a subtle texture, such as marble or parchment; a pattern, such as diagonal lines, bricks, or tiles; or an image file. Each slide can have a different background, but you usually want to use the same background for every slide in your presentation to provide a consistent look.
Themes:
Themes are combinations of design elements such as color schemes and fonts that make it easy to create attractive slides that don’t look ridiculous. You can stray from the themes if you want, but you should do so only if you have a better eye than the design gurus who work for Microsoft.
Slide Masters: Slide Masters are special slides that control the basic design and formatting options for slides in your presentation. Slide Masters are closely related to layouts — in fact, each layout has its own Slide Master that determines the position and size of basic title and text placeholders; the background and color scheme used for the presentation; and font settings, such as typefaces, colors, and sizes. In addition, Slide Masters can contain graphic and text objects that you want to appear on every slide.
You can edit the Slide Masters to change the appearance of all the slides in your presentation at once. This helps to ensure that the slides have a consistent appearance.
All the features described in the preceding list work together to control the appearance of your slides in much the same way that style sheets and templates control the appearance of Word documents. You can customize the appearance of individual slides by adding any of the following elements:
Title and body text:
Most slide layouts include placeholders for title and body text. You can type any text that you want into these placeholders. By default, PowerPoint formats the text according to the Slide Master, but you can easily override this formatting to use any font, size, styles like bold or italic, or text color that you want.
Text boxes:
You can add text anywhere on a slide by drawing a text box and then typing text. Text boxes enable you to add text that doesn’t fit conveniently in the title or body text placeholders.
Shapes:
You can use PowerPoint’s drawing tools to add a variety of shapes to your slides. You can use predefined AutoShapes, such as rectangles, circles, stars, arrows, and flowchart symbols. Alternatively, you can create your own shapes by using basic line, polygon, and freehand drawing tools.
Illustrations:
You can illustrate your slides by inserting clip art, photographs, and other graphic elements. PowerPoint comes with a large collection of clip art pictures you can use, and Microsoft provides an even larger collection of clip art images online. And, of course, you can insert photographs from your own picture library.
Charts and diagrams:
PowerPoint includes a slick diagramming feature called
SmartArt
that enables you to create several common types of diagrams, including organization charts, cycle diagrams, and others. In addition, you can insert pie charts, line or bar charts, and many other chart types.
Video and Sound:
You can add sound clips or video files to your slides. You can also add background music or a custom narration.
Starting PowerPoint
Here’s the procedure for starting PowerPoint in Windows 8, 8.1, or 10:
Get ready.
Light some votive candles. Take two Tylenol. Put on a pot of coffee. If you’re allergic to banana slugs, take an allergy pill. Sit in the lotus position facing Redmond, Washington, and recite the Windows creed three times:
Microsoft is my friend. Resistance is futile. No beer and no TV make Homer something something … .
Press the Windows key on your keyboard.
The Windows key is the one that has the fancy Windows flag printed on it. On most keyboards, it’s located between the Alt and Tab keys. When you press this button, Windows brings up the Start page, which lists your commonly used applications in large tiles.
Click the PowerPoint 2016 tile.
That’s all there is to it — PowerPoint starts up in a flash. (Note that you might have to scroll the Start screen to the right to find the PowerPoint 2016 tile.)
If you’re using Windows 7, the procedure is a little different:
Click the Start button.
The Start button is ordinarily found in the lower-left corner of the Windows display. When you click it, the Start menu appears. The Start menu works pretty much the same, no matter which version of Windows you're using.
If you can’t find the Start button, try moving the cursor all the way to the bottom edge of the screen and holding it there a moment. With luck on your side, you see the Start button appear. If not, try moving the cursor to the other three edges of the screen: top, left, and right. Sometimes the Start button hides behind these edges.
Point to All Programs on the Start menu.
After you click the Start button to reveal the Start menu, move the cursor up to the words All Programs and hold it there a moment. Yet another menu appears, revealing a bevy of commands.
Choose Microsoft Office ⇒ Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2016.
Your computer whirs and clicks and possibly makes other unmentionable noises while PowerPoint comes to life.
If you use PowerPoint frequently, it might appear in the Frequently Used Programs list directly on the Start menu so you don’t have to choose All Programs ⇒ Microsoft Office to get to it. If you want PowerPoint to always appear at the top of the Start menu, choose Start ⇒ All Programs ⇒ Microsoft Office. Then, right-click Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2016 and choose the Pin to Start Menu command.
If you hate clicking through menus but don’t mind typing, another way to start PowerPoint is to press your keyboard’s Windows key (usually found between the Ctrl and Alt keys), type the word powerpoint, and press the Enter key. (Note that this trick works only in Windows 7.)
Navigating the PowerPoint Interface
When you start PowerPoint, it greets you with the screen shown in Figure 1-1. This screen lets you create a blank presentation, open a recently used presentation, or create a new presentation based on a template. You can also take a video tour of PowerPoint.
Figure 1-1: PowerPoint’s opening screen.
For the purposes of this chapter, click Blank Presentation to get started with a new presentation. You will next be greeted with a screen that’s so cluttered with stuff that you’re soon ready to consider newsprint and markers as a viable alternative for your presentations. The center of the screen is mercifully blank, but the top part of the screen is chock-full of little icons and buttons and doohickeys. What is all that stuff?
Figure 1-2 shows the basic PowerPoint screen in all its cluttered glory. The following list points out the more important parts of the PowerPoint screen:
Figure 1-2: PowerPoint’s cluttered screen.
Ribbon: Across the top of the screen, just below the Microsoft PowerPoint title, is PowerPoint’s main user-interface gadget, called the Ribbon. If you’ve worked with earlier versions of PowerPoint, you were probably expecting to see a menu followed by one or more toolbars in this general vicinity. After meticulous research, Microsoft gurus decided that menus and toolbars are hard to use. So they replaced the menus and toolbars with the Ribbon, which combines the functions of both. The Ribbon takes some getting used to, but after you figure it out, it actually does become easier to use than the old menus and toolbars. The deepest and darkest secrets of PowerPoint are hidden on the Ribbon. Wear a helmet when exploring it.
Note that the exact appearance of the Ribbon varies a bit depending on the size of your monitor. On smaller monitors, PowerPoint may compress the Ribbon a bit by using smaller buttons and arranging them differently (for example, stacking them on top of one another instead of placing them side by side).
For more information about working with the Ribbon, see the section “Unraveling the Ribbon,” later in this chapter.
File tab:
The first tab on the Ribbon is called the File tab. You can click it to switch the program into a special mode called
Backstage View,
which provides access to various functions such as opening and saving files, creating new presentations, printing, and other similar chores. For more information, see the section “
Taking the Backstage Tour
,” later in this chapter.
Quick Access toolbar: Just above the Ribbon is the Quick Access toolbar, also called the QAT for short. Its sole purpose in life is to provide a convenient resting place for the PowerPoint commands you use the most often.
Initially, this toolbar contains just three: Save, Undo, and Redo. However, you can add more buttons if you want. To add any button to the QAT, right-click the button and choose Add to Quick Access Toolbar. You can also find a pull-down menu at the end of the QAT that lists several frequently used commands. You can use this menu to add these common commands to the QAT.
Current slide:
Right smack in the middle of the screen is where your current slide appears.
Slides pane:
To the left of the slide is an area that shows thumbnail icons of your slides. You can use this area to easily navigate to other slides in your presentation.
Task pane:
To the right of the slide is an area called the
task pane.
The task pane is designed to help you complete common tasks quickly. When you first start PowerPoint, the task pane isn’t visible, so you can’t see it in
Figure 1-1
. However, it appears whenever it’s needed, and you can see plenty of examples of it throughout this book.
Status bar: At the very bottom of the screen is the status bar, which tells you the slide that is currently displayed (for example, Slide 1 of 1).
You can configure the status bar by right-clicking anywhere on it. This right-click reveals a list of options that you can select or deselect to determine which elements appear on the status bar.
Zoom control:
PowerPoint automatically adjusts its zoom factor so that Slide View displays each slide in its entirety. You can change the size of your slide by using the zoom control slider that appears at the bottom right of the window.
You’ll never get anything done if you feel that you have to understand every pixel of the PowerPoint screen before you can do anything. Don’t worry about the stuff that you don’t understand; just concentrate on what you need to know to get the job done and worry about the bells and whistles later.
Unraveling the Ribbon
The Ribbon is Microsoft’s primary user interface gadget. Across the top of the Ribbon is a series of tabs. You can click one of these tabs to reveal a set of controls specific to that tab. For example, the Ribbon in Figure 1-2 (earlier in the chapter) shows the Home tab. Figure 1-3 shows the Ribbon with the Insert tab selected.
Figure 1-3: The Ribbon with the Insert tab selected.
Initially, the Ribbon displays the tabs described in Table 1-1.
Table 1-1 Basic Tabs on the Ribbon
Tab
Actions You Can Perform
File
Open, close, print, and share presentations
Home
Create and format slides
Insert
Insert various types of objects on slides
Design
Tweak the layout of a slide
Transitions
Change the transition effects that are applied when you switch from one slide to the next
Animations
Add animation effects to your slides
Slide Show
Present your slide show
Review
Proof and add comments to your presentations
View
Change the view
Besides these basic tabs, additional tabs appear from time to time. For example, if you select a picture, a Picture Tools tab appears with commands that let you manipulate the picture.
The commands on a Ribbon tab are organized into groups. Within each group, most of the commands are simple buttons that are similar to toolbar buttons in previous versions of PowerPoint.
Telling PowerPoint What to Do
The Ribbon contains scores of buttons that enable you to use any of PowerPoint’s many features for creating and formatting slides. Unfortunately, the Ribbon can sometimes be difficult to navigate, and if you’re like me, you’ll often find yourself unsure of which Ribbon tab contains the button you’re looking for.
That’s where the Tell Me What to Do box comes in. This search box is located above the right side of the Ribbon. Type what you want to do in this box and PowerPoint will take you directly to the Ribbon button that lets you do it. For example, if you type Open, the Open button from the File menu appears. This feature can be a great timesaver when you know what you want to do but you aren’t sure exactly where in the Ribbon the correct button is located.
The View from Here Is Great
Near the right edge of the status bar is a series of four View buttons. These buttons enable you to switch among the various views, or ways of looking at your presentation. Table 1-2 summarizes what each View button does.
Table 1-2 View Buttons
Button
What It Does
Switches to Normal View, which shows your slide, outline, and notes all at once. This is the default view for PowerPoint.
Switches to Slide Sorter View, which enables you to easily rearrange slides and add slide transitions and other special effects.
Switches to Reading View, which displays your slide show within a window.
Switches to Slide Show View, which displays your slides in full-screen mode. This is the view you use when you’re actually giving your presentation.
Taking the Backstage Tour
Every summer, I attend plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. A few years ago, I took the special backstage tour, which revealed all kinds of nifty secrets worthy of a Dan Brown novel.
This section takes a brief look at PowerPoint’s Backstage View feature, which provides access to document management features previously found on the File menu. When you click the File tab in the top-left corner of the PowerPoint window, PowerPoint switches to Backstage View, as shown in Figure 1-4.
Figure 1-4: Backstage View.
Initially, Backstage View displays information about the current presentation. However, the menu on the left — which bears a striking resemblance to what used to be called the File menu back in the day when programs had plain menus instead of fancy ribbons — provides access to the hidden features of PowerPoint available only to those who venture backstage.
You find out how to use the most important of these commands later in this chapter, and several of the more advanced commands on this menu are presented in later chapters.
Okay, the only secret I learned on the backstage tour at Ashland that was really worthy of a Dan Brown novel is the one about Psalm 46 in the King James translation of the Bible, which was published in 1611 — when William Shakespeare turned 46. If you count 46 words from the start of the Psalm, you get the word Shake. And if you count 46 words backwards from the end of the Psalm, you get the word Spear. Which clearly means that there’s a treasure buried directly beneath the stage in Ashland’s outdoor theater. Next year I’m taking a shovel.
Creating a New Presentation
The simplest way to create a new presentation is to start PowerPoint, click Blank Presentation on the opening screen (see Figure 1-1), and then edit the blank presentation to your liking.
After PowerPoint is started, you can also create a new presentation by clicking the File tab to switch to Backstage View and then clicking the New command. This action brings up the screen shown in Figure 1-5, which offers several ways to create a new presentation:
Choose Blank Presentation:
Double-click Blank Presentation to start a new presentation from scratch.
Choose a template:
You can select one of the displayed templates to create a new presentation based on the template’s design. Several templates are displayed on the New screen.
Search for a template:
You can type a search phrase into the Search text box and then click the magnifying glass icon. Doing this opens a list of templates that match your search criteria. Double-click one of these templates to create a presentation based on it.
Figure 1-5: Creating a new presentation on the New screen in Backstage View.
Editing text
In PowerPoint, slides are blank areas that you can adorn with various objects. The most common type of object is a text placeholder, a rectangular area that’s specially designated for holding text. (Other types of objects include shapes, such as circles or triangles; pictures imported from clip art files; and graphs.)
Most slides contain two text objects: one for the slide’s title and the other for its body text. However, you can add more text objects if you want, and you can remove the body text or title text object. You can even remove both to create a slide that contains no text.
