Powerpoint Training

Creating and Opening Presentations

PowerPoint files are called presentations.Whenever you start a new project in PowerPoint, you'll need to create a new presentation, which can either be blank or from a template. You'll also need to know how to open an existing presentation.

Saving and Sharing

Whenever you create a new presentation in PowerPoint, you'll need to know how to save in order to access and edit it later. As with previous versions of PowerPoint, you can save files to your computer. If you prefer, you can also save files to the cloud using OneDrive. You can even export and share presentations directly from PowerPoint.

 

Slide Basics

PowerPoint presentations are made up of a series of slides. Slides contain the information you will present to your audience. This might include text, pictures, and charts. Before you start creating presentations, you'll need to know the basics of working with slides and slide layouts.

 

 

 

Text Basics

If you're new to PowerPoint, you'll need to learn the basics of working with text. In this lesson, you'll learn how to cut, copy, paste, format, and find and replace text.

Applying Themes

A theme is a predefined combination of colors, fonts, and effects. Different themes also use different slide layouts. You've already been using a theme, even if you didn't know it: the default Office theme. You can choose from a variety of new themes at any time, giving your entire presentation a consistent, professional look.

 

Applying Transitions

If you've ever seen a PowerPoint presentation that had special effects between each slide, you've seen slide transitions. A transition can be as simple as fading to the next slide or as flashy as an eye-catching effect. PowerPoint makes it easy to apply transitions to some or all of your slides, giving your presentation a polished, professional look.

 

Managing Slides

As you add more slides to a presentation, it can be difficult to keep everything organized. Fortunately, PowerPoint offers tools to help you organize and prepare your slide show.

Printing

Even though PowerPoint presentations are designed to be viewed on a computer, there may be times when you want to print them. You can even print custom versions of a presentation, which can be especially helpful when presenting your slide show. The Print pane makes it easy to preview and print your presentation.

 

 

Presenting Your Slide Show

Once your slide show is complete, you'll need to learn how to present it to an audience. PowerPoint offers several tools and features to help make your presentation smooth, engaging, and professional.

 

 

 

Lists

To create effective PowerPoint presentations, it's important to make your slides easy for the audience to read. One of the most common ways of doing this is to format the text as a bulleted or numbered list. By default, when you type text into a placeholder, a bullet is placed at the beginning of each paragraph—automatically creating a bulleted list. If you want, you can modify a list by choosing a different bullet style or by switching to a numbered list.

Indents and Line Spacing

Indentation and line spacing are two important features you can use to change the way text appears on a slide. Indentation can be used to create multilevel lists or to visually set paragraphs apart from one another. Line spacing can be adjusted to improve readability or to fit more lines on the slide.

 

 

 

Inserting Pictures

Adding pictures can make your presentations more interesting and engaging. You can insert a picture from a file on your computer onto any slide. PowerPoint even includes tools for finding online pictures and adding screenshots to your presentation.

 

 

 

 

Formatting Pictures

There are a variety of ways to format the pictures in your slide show. The picture tools in PowerPoint make it easy to personalize and modify the images in interesting ways. PowerPoint allows you to change the picture style and shape, add a border, crop and compress pictures, add artistic effects, and more.

Shapes and WordArt

There are many features and commands you can use in PowerPoint to create visually appealing slides. Two of these features are WordArt and shapes. WordArt allows you to create stylized text with effects such as textures, shadows, and outlines. You can also insert and modify a variety of shapes like rectangles, circles, lines, arrows, callouts, and stars.

 

Arranging Objects

In PowerPoint, each slide may have multiple items, such as pictures, shapes, and text boxes. You can arrange the objects the way you want by aligning, ordering, grouping, and rotating them in various ways.

 

 

 

Animating Text and Objects

In PowerPoint, you can animate text and objects such as clip art, shapes, and pictures. Animation—or movement—on the slide can be used to draw the audience's attention to specific content or to make the slide easier to read.

Inserting Videos

PowerPoint allows you to insert a video onto a slide and play it during your presentation. This is a great way to make your presentation more engaging for your audience.

 

 

 

Inserting Audio

PowerPoint allows you to add audio to your presentation. For example, you could add background music to one slide, a sound effect to another, and even record your own narration or commentary. You can then edit the audio to customize it for your presentation.

 

 

 

Tables

Tables are another tool you can use to display information in PowerPoint. A table is a grid of cells arranged in rows and columns. Tables are useful for various tasks, such as presenting text information and numerical data. You can even customize tables to fit your presentation.

Charts

A chart is a tool you can use to communicate data graphically. Including a chart in a presentation allows your audience to see the meaning behind the numbers, which makes it easy to visualize comparisons and trends.

 

SmartArt Graphics

SmartArt allows you to communicate information with graphics instead of just using text. There are a variety of styles to choose from, which you can use to illustrate many different types of ideas.

 

 

 

Checking Spelling and Grammar

Worried about making mistakes when you type? Don't be. PowerPoint provides you with several proofing features — including the Spelling and Grammar tool —that can help you produce professional, error-free documents.

Reviewing Presentations

Before presenting your PowerPoint, you might decide to ask someone else to look over it. The two of you might even collaborate on a presentation. If you were revising a hard copy of a report, you might add comments in the margins or compare your rough and final drafts side by side. You can also do these things in PowerPoint using the Comments and Compare features.

Finalizing and Protecting Presentations

Before sharing a presentation, you'll want to make sure it doesn't include any information you want to keep private. You may also want to discourage others from editing your file. Fortunately, PowerPoint includes several tools to help finalize and protect your presentation.