When Power Point takes you to a blank slide, do a practice exercise by creating a 6-slide presentation about yourself. It should have a title page, e.g., "The Life and Times of . .. (your name)." Each of the following pages can talk about different facts about you or episodes in your life. You should save your creation from time to time in a file with your name and today's date.
To add a new slide in any PowerPoint View Mode except Slide Show mode, go to the Insert menu and select
"New Slide." You can also use the keyboard shortcut, Command-M (Command Key is also known as the Apple key) or click on the New Slide Icon: 
.
In Normal and Slide View, the new slide will be inserted into the space after the slide you are working on. In
Slide Sorter and Outline View, you can position the cursor where you want
the new slide to be added before you choose to add a new slide.
There are five modes in which to view and work on PowerPoint presentations. You can easily change back and forth from one mode to another either throught the View menu or by clicking on one of the five icons at the bottom left hand corner of the screen.
The Five View Modes:
A. Transitions: This feature allows you to select a special effect for the transition between your slides. It can add a fun element to your presentation and helps to keep your audience's attention focused on the screen between slides. To select different transitions between slides:
B. Slide Layout: You can change the layout of each slide in this mode by choosing "Slide Layout" under the Format menu. The Slide Layout dialog box will appear on the screen. There are 21 different preset slide layouts, each with a different combination of text, blank space, graphs, charts, tables, clip art, or objects. When you click on a layout, its title will appear in the bottom right corner of the Slide Layout dialog box. Choose a layout by determining which elements you want in your slide. If the layout you want is not among these, you can custom create a slide by adding individual elements to a preexisting slide layout or to a blank slide. To work on an element, double click on the area it covers on the slide.
C. To Stretch, Shrink, or Crop: You can
change the amount of
space
given to each element by stretching or shrinking the box surrounding. To
stretch or shrink, select the element you would like to resize by clicking
on it. Move one of the eight small, solid squares surrounding it by
clicking
on them and holding the mouse button down while you move the mouse; use
the corner squares if you want to preserve the proportions of the picture.
You can crop a picture by selecting the cropping tool 
located on the Picture Tool Bar
(If the Picture Toolbar is not there, you can open it by going to the View menu, clicking on the Toolbar option,
and checking the Picture option [make sure there is a check mark next to the Picture toolbar].). To crop, click on the icon and
maneuver the cropping "handles" on your picture.
D. Object: This is an open area that may be filled with one of many different images or texts taken from other Microsoft programs. Some options include an Excel worksheet or chart, a Word document, a Microsoft graph or organizational chart, WordArt, or a Microsoft Movie or Voice Annotation. To add an object click on "Object..." in the Insert menu and choose from the many options.
E. Text: PowerPoint text can be organized like an outline. Instead of presenting your audience with long paragraphs of text, structure your text to highlight the main points about which you will talk. Hints: Use large font, make one main point per slide, and minimalize the amount of text. Substitute graphs or other visuals for lengthy texts. Check out "Effective Presentations" for more tips.
F. Animating Text: One great feature of PowerPoint that helps to highlight each concept as you speak is progressive disclosure. This allows you reveal main bullet points one at a time.
G. Tables: To create a table, go to the Insert menu and choose
Table or click on the table icon on the Standard Toolbar: 
.
The Insert Word Table dialog box will appear where
you can adjust the number of rows and columns. Click OK and it will create a table. If you want to
insert a table by clicking on the icon, hold the mouse button down on the icon
while you move the mouse to adjust the number of rows and columns.
You can modify the shading and borders of your tables by double-clicking on your table or going to the Format menu and selecting Table. The pop-up window will offer you the options for borders, shadings, and sizes of textboxes.
H. Excel Sheets: To insert an Excel sheet onto your slide, go to Insert menu, select "Object," and choose one of the Excel options. You can alternatively copy from an Excel spreadsheet and paste it directly to Powerpoint. If you do not know how to use Excel, refer to an Excel manual.
I. Organizational Charts: To create an organizational chart, go to Insert menu, select Pictures, and then click on Organizational Chart.
Enter text into each box of the chart separately by clicking on the box and entering your text in the correct places. Add new boxes by clicking on the buttons at the top of the window labeled "Subordinate," "Co-worker," "Manager," and "Assistant." Change the relationships between these boxes through the Styles menu. Change the look of your chart by changing the color of boxes, lines, and texts by going to the Box menu and selecting "Color."
When you have finished creating your organizational chart, click on the small square in the upper left corner of the window. It will ask if you want to update the object in your Powerpoint presentation. Select "yes" and PowerPoint will then display your organizational chart on the slide.
J. Graphs: To add a graph to your slide,
go to Insert menu and select Charts or click on the Chart icon: 
.
A sample data sheet and graph will pop up. Enter the information into the data
sheet just as you would in Excel. You will
see the graph change after each entry. Close the Microsoft Graph
window by going to File Menu and select Updata and return to Presentation or using the keyboard shortcut, Command-Q.
The graph alone will appear on your slide, and you will not see the datasheet.
If your data sheet is ever closed, you can reopen it by double-clicking the graph on the slide.
If you want to change the type of charts you have, first open Microsoft Graph and the spreadsheet by double-clicking the graph
on the slide. Go to the Chart menu and select "Chart Type," or click on the arrow part of the Chart Type Icon: 
.
The left side of this icon illustrates the types of charts you can make. You can change the
look of your graph by manipulating the color, font, and 3-D view. To do this, go to Charts menu and select "Charts Options" or "3-D View."
K. Clip Art: Add clip art to any slide you're working on, at any time, by going to Insert menu and selecting the "Clip Art" option from the "Picture" category. This will take you to the PowerPoint Clip Art Gallery. I suggest you view all the clip art, since what is available in PowerPoint's gallery may to some extent dictate what you end up including in your presentation. Choose a clip art image and click on the button labeled "OK." The image will appear on your PowerPoint slide. You can position it anywhere on the screen, and you can crop it, stretch it, or shrink it.
L. Using graphics from the World Wide Web:
You can use any image from the Web in place of a clip art image. Under the Apple menu, select Netscape or Internet Explorer.
Some images resist being copied using the above method. To get around this problem, you can copy just about any thing you see on the Macintosh display by typing "4" while holding down the Command and shift keys; click and drag a selection box around the image you want. When you let up on the mouse, the image will be saved as a pdf file on the desktop, with the name "Picture 1.pdf" (or 2 or 3 or 100.pdf, depending on how many previous Picture files are there).
Return to the PowerPoint slide where you wish to insert the image and choose Insert/Picture/from file on the Insert menu. The image can then be stretched or shrunk to the size you want.
Some images are too large (memory-wise) to be inserted using the above methods. They will make your powerpoint presentation needlessly large and slow to load. In such cases you'll want to open the image file in an application such as GraphicConverter in order to scale it down.
M. Help: PowerPoint has great online help. In addition, PowerPoint user's guide books are available for use in rooms 200B and 200C. Ask the person working in the lab if you would like to see one of these.
**IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT PRINTING**: Be sure to choose "Handouts: 6 slides per page" or "Outline View" under "Print What" on the print dialog box. Otherwise each slide will take one whole page. This will overwork our printer. Also, you should select "grayscale," not black and white.
Be sure to review Tips for Effective Presentations.
Good luck!
page last modified on August 28, 2006 by lep1