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lot of text slides in a presentation, it seems inevitable that some will
have more text than will comfortably fit on a slide and some that leave a
few lonely-looking lines at the top of the slide. You can always bump the text size up and down to fit the text to the slide, but it looks less than professional to have the text size jump up and down from slide to slide. Adjusting the spacing between lines of text often looks better. To adjust the line spacing for a whole block of text, click the text once to get an I-beam insertion cursor, then press the Esc key. This selects the entire text block. Next, choose Format, Line Spacing to open the Line Spacing dialog box. Here, you can make three different spacing adjustments:
You can use the Up or Down arrow to make spacing adjustments or type the
value you want directly in the text boxes in the Line Spacing dialog
box. And you can make your adjustments in your choice of units, Lines or
Points. Click Preview to see the effect of your changes. Sometimes you need to apply
line spacing to some but not all of the lines in a text block. Suppose, for
example, that you have first- and second-level bullet points and want the
second-level bullets to sit closer to the first-level bullet they |
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If you want to
change the style of the text that appears when you type things that aren't
the title or the slide body, do the following:
Make all the changes that you want there, and click OK. From that point on, new text will be created in that style. To Set the formatting for the title or slide body objects, go to the Slide Master and format these objects on the master [Top] |
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| Hit the ESCAPE
key to insure that nothing is current selected, then repeatedly hit the TAB
key, which will toggle you through a selection of all of the objects on a
slide. This is useful for selecting very small objects, or objects that are
covered up by other larger objects.
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If you're making
a PowerPoint presentation that you intend to distribute to lots of different
people, here are some important things to watch out for that will cause
problems:
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| If you want to
create printable pages that have notes or descriptive text associated each
slide, PowerPoint has a feature designed to do just this called Notes Pages,
or Speaker's Notes (depending on which version you're using). To view the
Notes page for any slide, go to the View menu and select Notes Pages. You
will see an image of your slide there, and a placeholder for adding your
script, notes, or any other text you wish. You can cut-and-paste text from
Word here if you like. To print these pages, bring up the Print dialog, and
at the bottom of the dialog where it says "Print What:", select
Notes Pages. These pages were originally designed to be used as audience
hand outs (with space for the audience to take notes) but were also used by
many as speaker's notes: the text block would have the script of the
presentation, to be used by the speaker, or for sales binders to educated
sales people.
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| Although you only
have two background designs automatically supplied with the Masters
(counting both the Slide Master and the Title Master), you can have any
design you want on any slide. From the Format menu, select Background. Check
the box that says "omit background items" and this will make the
slide ignore the Slide Master's design. You are now free to add whatever
design you want to this slide. If you want to do this to many slides at
once, go to the Slide Sorter, select the slides, and then use the Format
menu command. Remember though that if you choose to do something like put a
photographic background on many of your slides instead of doing it once on
the Master, that your file size may increase dramatically.
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Prior to PowerPoint 97, there was no internal file
compression code inside of PowerPoint, and files could get pretty big
quickly. The most common cause of large files is the addition of large
bitmaps. PowerPoint 97 compresses these bitmaps, but previous versions do
not. To keep your presentations as small as you can, try reducing the
resolution of your bitmaps, which will bring their size down tremendously.
For viewing on screen, the bitmaps don't need to be more than 96 dpi; they
won't print nicely until they're up around 150 or higher, but the screen
always displays at 96 dpi, so if the primary viewing medium is the screen,
there's no point in having the bitmaps be a higher resolution. Also, the
bitmap format can make a big difference to your file sizes. JPEG and PNG
both have good internal compression code. GIF has some, but not as good as
JPEG. BMP files are the largest; TIFF files will also be very large.
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Anything you draw with the pencil tool, you can edit.
To get the object into "points mode", either double-click on the
object, or select it then hit the Enter key. You will then see points at
every vertex, which you can move. You can add points by holding down the
shift key and clicking, you can subtract points by holding down the ALT key
while clicking, and you can of course just drag points around.
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Each slide has what is referred to as a "color
scheme". The scheme colors are the colors that appear in the little
pop-ups for different controls. PowerPoint templates come with multiple
color schemes built in, which you can change by using the Format/Color
Scheme menu command. You can also use this to create your own schemes. Every
slide can have a different color scheme. Different color schemes can be used
to break out sections of a long presentation.
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When you add
a hyperlink to a presentation, you must be careful that the target of the
hyperlink is available. If you are giving the presentation offsite using a
laptop, all the targets need to be on the laptop as well, unless your laptop
is actively connected to the Internet. An alternative is to copy Web site
documents you think you will need to your laptop and hyperlink to those
documents. The advantage is that you don't have to depend on getting a good
connection to the Internet at your offsite location.
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You can add all of your own clip art to the Microsoft
Clip Gallery. Click Insert Clip Art on the Drawing toolbar. In the Gallery,
click Import Clips. From the dialog box, find the graphic file, and double
click it. Unfortunately, there is no preview feature to let you view the
files. Instead, you can choose Insert>Picture>from File and start
searching. Here you will have a preview box. Once you have found the file
you want, remember its name and location. Then go back to the Clip Gallery
and import it.
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PowerPoint offers some powerful graphics-editing capabilities. For example, if you have a clip art picture that you could use a portion of, all you have to do is separate what you want from what you don't, and get rid of the portion you don't want. For example, let's say you want to keep only the dog portion of the Veterinary Medicine picture in the Animals category. First, insert the picture in your slide by clicking the Insert Clip Art button on the Drawing toolbar or by pulling down the Insert menu, pointing at Picture, and choosing Clip Art. Select the category, click the picture, and choose Insert Clip. Back on the slide, right-click the picture, choose Grouping, and select Ungroup. Answer Yes to verify that you want to convert the picture to PowerPoint objects. Next, click somewhere on the slide away from the picture to deselect every object, then click on an individual object you'd like to get rid of and press Delete. Continue this process until all the unwanted parts have been deleted. Finally, select the remaining parts of the picture, right-click, choose Grouping, and select Group. Doing so will make the remaining picture act as a single unit. [Top] |
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For the most part, PowerPoint makes you animate individual objects. A few days ago we showed you how to animate individual parts of a clip art picture all at once. The trick there was to make sure each object was selected before you opened the Custom Animation dialog box. If you've never animated text in a numbered or bulleted list, you might wonder how you do so--do you animate each bullet point individually or do you select all the pieces of text as you did with the clip art picture? Fortunately, you don't have to do either. As long as your list items exist as individual paragraphs inside a single text box, PowerPoint makes it real easy on you. To animate individual bullet points inside a text object, just right-click inside the bulleted or numbered list and choose Custom Animation. On the Effects tab, choose an effect (something like Fly From Right, Zoom In, Wipe Down, or Peek From Top are good choices here) and, if desired, a sound. You can choose to hide or dim each previous bullet when a new one appears by selecting an option from the After Animation palette. Next, select a Grouped By setting--the default option is 1st Level Paragraphs. This is the most vital setting with numbered or bulleted lists--be sure to preview the current setting to make sure it works the way you want. Now, click the Order & Timing tab, and determine when the animation should start--when you click the mouse, or immediately after a certain number of seconds. Finally, click OK when your list is set up the way you want it. [Top] |
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By default, PowerPoint links to sound files greater than 100KB. So, if
you embed your sound file into your PowerPoint presentation and send
your presentation by email, or play your presentation on another
machine, the sound file will not play.
To embed your sound file into PowerPoint:
The sounds you re-insert this way and any sounds (with file sizes less than 4000KB or about 4MB) will be embedded into your PPT file, not linked. Your PowerPoint presentation (PPT file), will now be larger and the sounds won't get lost when distributing your presentation. [Top] |
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In order to insert a Macromedia Flash movie into PowerPoint, be sure that Flash Media Player is installed.
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PowerPoint makes it possible to show your presentation to your audience on one screen while controlling the presentation from another. This is very helpful if you have made lots of notes in your presentation that you do not want your audience to see. In order to use this function, your system must support dual monitors which usually consists of adding a second PCI graphics card. Check with your PC manufacture for further details. Here is how to set it up in PowerPoint:
That's it! Now you can show your presentation to your audience while viewing the same presentation along with all of your notes on another. [Top] |
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[PowerPoint 2002, 2003 & 2004] In this tip, I will show you how you can play different music or sound tracks across different slides in the same PowerPoint presentation. Here's how:
[Top] |
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PowerPoint makes it possible to change the background on one or more slides so
that you are not stuck with the same one throughout your presentation. Here's
how:
You can even change multiple slides at one time. Here's how:
[Top] |
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By holding down the Shift key on your keyboard with the Oval button selected on
the Drawing toolbar, you can make a perfect circle while you draw. Draw a
perfect square using the same method except that you would use the Rectangle
tool on the Drawing toolbar. If you would like to insert many circles at one time, here's how:
[Top] |
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The overall design of your presentation is just as important as the message it
sends. As a matter of fact, the better the design, the better the information is
received and retained. These tips will give you some basic guidelines to help
you design a successful presentation.
Stay away from using all caps in your presentation. Many people find it hard to read words where all the letters are the same size. This also takes up a great deal of horizontal space. If it is a larger font size that you would be trying to achieve by using all caps, then just go ahead and use a larger font size or a different font style instead.
Do not use more than 6 bulleted references per slide. More than this makes the slide hard to read and can make for a lengthy discussion on one slide. Bullets should not have more than 6 words. A bullet reference should not be complete sentences, they serve as highlighted points of interest.
Be sure that you use descriptive titles on all of your slides. This will grab the audiences interest right a way and also helps to prepare them mentally for the topic at hand. As an example, if I were to just start talking about using a soft damp cloth and wipe gently in one direction...you will eventually catch on that I am talking about cleaning your LCD monitor screen. So, to prepare your audience for the topic, title your slide: "Cleaning Your LCD Monitor Screen".
Try to use very common fonts in your presentation. The most commonly used are; Arial, Helvetica or Verdana. Be sure that you do not use bold or italics throughout your presentation. Use these to emphasize your text so that your important points stand out.
Stay away from image formats such as BMP (bitmap) and TIF. Try to use JPG format for your images. JPG is a compressed format that will greatly reduce the file size of your presentation but will keep the high quality image that you require. Also, your image size will affect the file size. So, keep your images to a size that your audience can comfortably see, but won't create a huge file size.
Nothing says "Amateur" more than spelling errors and bad grammar. Carefully double check your slides. Be sure that it reads correctly. The best way I have found to check the readability of a presentation is to read it out loud. [Top] |
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If you would like to insert an e-mail address into a PowerPoint slide, here's
how:
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If you have a particular slide that you would like to use as a reference slide
and refer back to it during your presentation. You can hide the slide, make a
note of its number or title and recall that slide whenever needed. Here's how:
You can recall this slide during the presentation by opening the Slide Show Controls menu. From here, click Go, then you can recall the slide by choosing either the "Title" or "Slide Navigator" options. [Top] |
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If your presentation is quickly becoming too large in file size and you need to
save some space. You can compress the graphics in your presentation with very
minimal impact on the quality of your images. Here's how:
Figure #1 [Top] |
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[PowerPoint 2003] In PowerPoint 2003, there are over two dozen available layouts to select from. Here's how to access them: Start PowerPoint 2003. Then, on the Format menu, click Slide Layout. You will now see layouts for text and a variety of content. Another key feature for customizing layouts is the Slide Master. Using this feature gives you the ability to customize the positioning and the appearance of all layouts at once. Or, make a variety of formatting changes one time that will effect all of the slides in your presentation. To access the Slide Master; go to the View menu, then select Master>> Slide Master. Once in Slide Master view, you can:
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