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If you don't want to see any of the outline view -- just the slide as in the old days of PowerPoint 97 -- press Ctrl while you click the Slide View button. This time you'll get only the slide view.

PowerPoint Design Templates 
There are tons of templates that come with PowerPoint 2000. The problem is that you may not find them all because they're not all installed. To install all of them (they require only a paltry 3 MB of disk space), insert your Office 2000 disc and click Start|Settings|Control Panel. When the Control Panel opens, double-click Add/Remove Programs. Now double-click on your Office 2000 installation (or whatever it's called).

When the Office Setup dialog box opens, click Add or Remove Features. Click the small plus sign (+) at the left of Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows. Next, click Design Templates and choose "Run all from My Computer." Click Update Now to continue. When Setup completes, click OK, then click OK to close the Add/Remove dialog box. Close Control Panel.

To see the templates, run PowerPoint and choose File|New. When the dialog opens, click the Design Templates tab.

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To check this out, open a blank slide and click the Text Box button in the Drawing toolbar (its icon looks like a printed sheet with a large A on its upper-left-hand corner). Add some text to the Text Box. Next, right-click the Text Box and choose Custom Animation.

When the Custom Animation dialog box opens, click the arrow at the right side of the Introduce Text list box and select By Letter. Now, click the top list box under "Entry animation and sound" and select Appear from the list. Expand the second list box and select Typewriter as your sound.

Click the Order & Timing tab and select the radio button labeled "Automatically" and then click OK. Now press F5 to run your slide show.

Hiding PowerPoint Slides 
Let's suppose that you're preparing for a big presentation. Here's a suggestion: create slides that show all of the data that you used to reach a conclusion. Create slides for any question that you think might arise. Nobody can anticipate all questions, but you'll have a pretty good idea.

Now, you can hide all the extra slides that you won't need to display unless prompted by a question. Just navigate to a slide that you want to hide and choose Slide Show|Hide Slide. Now press F5 to run the show, and you'll find that the hidden slide won't automatically appear.

If you need to show the hidden slides, then move the mouse and a button will appear in the bottom left of the window. Click this button and choose Go|By Title|your hidden slide name or number.

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Graduated Backgrounds In PowerPoint 
A graduated background adds pizzazz. To see how such a background looks on one of your slides, run PowerPoint and open the slide show. Choose Format | Background. When the Background dialog box opens, click the arrow at the right side of the list box and then select Fill Effects.

In Fill Effects, click the Gradient tab. Now select the 'Preset' radio button. Next, click the arrow at the right side of the 'Preset colors' list box and make a selection. Click OK and then, back in Fill Effects, click Apply.

PowerPoint Movies 
PowerPoint doesn't limit you to the custom animations you can apply to PowerPoint objects -- you can also insert short movies into PowerPoint slides. To check this out, run PowerPoint and open a blank slide. Choose Insert|Picture|ClipArt. When Insert ClipArt opens, click the Motion Clips tab. Next click Academic and insert the school bus cartoon. Press F5 to view the slide show. 

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• Run PowerPoint and then choose Insert|Picture|ClipArt. 
• When the Insert ClipArt dialog box opens, click the Seasons topic. In that group, you'll find some leaves of various colors. Insert one leaf of each color and then close the dialog box.
• With all of the leaves still selected in your slide, choose Slide Show|Custom Animation.
• Click the 'Entry animation and sound' list box and choose Crawl.
• Click the list box to the right and choose From Top.
• Click the Order & Timing tab and select the radio button labeled 'Automatically.' 
• Click the spin box up arrow once to set the timing to one second.
• Click OK to close the dialog box and save your settings.
• Use your mouse to separate all of the leaves and then drag them to the bottom of the slide.
• Press F5 to view the slide show.
• To add more leaves, follow the above procedure as many times as you wish.

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Using the Office Clipboard in PowerPoint 
When working with PowerPoint (or other Office 2000 programs), you'll find the new Office Clipboard handy. Suppose, as an example, that you need to insert several Clip Art pictures into a series of slides.

First, choose View/Toolbars/Clipboard to open the Clipboard toolbar. Now choose Insert/Picture/Clip Art. In the Insert Clip Art dialog box, right-click a picture and choose Copy. Select another picture and copy it. Next, close the Insert Clip Art dialog box (click on the X in the upper right corner).

Now you can click the first item to insert the first Clip Art selection into the slide. Press Ctrl + M, then press Enter to create a new slide and click the second item to insert that picture onto the second slide. After you're finished with the Clipboard contents, you can click the Clear Clipboard button to start fresh.

Importing Into PowerPoint 
Many people like to work in Word as much as possible and then import the Word document into PowerPoint. To do this, run Word and open the document you want to use in PowerPoint. Now choose File/Send To/Microsoft PowerPoint. This will open PowerPoint and load the current Word document into a new slide show.

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To do this, choose Tools/AutoCorrect. Into the 'Replace' entry box, type

wwd (for our example)
and then type
Wonderful World of Disney
into the 'With' entry box. Finally, click Add, then OK.

Now if you type in wwd, you'll get your company name as soon as you press Space, or any punctuation mark.

Drawing Lines In PowerPoint 
You know that you can draw a perfectly straight line in PowerPoint by holding down the Shift key while you draw the line. But, did you know that you can also draw the straight line at a perfect angle as well? To try this, click the Line tool and then hold down the Shift key while you draw a line. Without releasing the mouse button or the Shift key, move the mouse to drag the line around in a circle. The line will snap into position every 15 degrees.

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One way to make some of your JPG files even smaller is to use a freeware program called JPG Cleaner, which you can download at http://www.pppr.sk/rainbow/ 

Cool PowerPoint Labels 
Here's an effect that you can use to enhance some of your graphic objects in PowerPoint. Try this: run PowerPoint and open a blank slide. Now choose Insert/Picture/ClipArt. When the Insert ClipArt dialog box opens, select a picture, right-click it and choose Insert. Close the ClipArt dialog box.

Now, to create the effect, let's place a semitransparent white rectangle over a portion (or all) of the picture. To do this, click the Rectangle tool (in the Drawing toolbar) and draw the rectangle over whatever portion of the picture you choose. Next, right click the rectangle and choose Format AutoShape. When the dialog box opens, click the Colors and Lines tab. Under Fill, click the arrow at the right side of the Color list box and choose white. Select the check box labeled Semitransparent and click OK to close the dialog box and save your setting selection.

Sizing Pictures In PowerPoint 
Sizing pictures in PowerPoint slides is an easy job. All you have to do is grab the picture by a corner and drag. This should increase the picture size without changing the aspect ratio. But, if you want to be absolutely sure that you don't change the aspect ratio, hold down Ctrl while you use the mouse to size the picture.

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ClipArt Information In PowerPoint 
Suppose you decide to insert a particular ClipArt picture into a PowerPoint slide. How much do you really know about that picture? Do you know how large it is (in bytes)? What if you think you'd like to use the same picture again. Can you find it easily, or will you have to do a manual search?

You can get all this information very easily. Just run PowerPoint and choose Insert/Picture/ClipArt. When the Insert ClipArt dialog opens, locate a picture that you want to use. Right-click the picture and choose Clip Properties. This will open the Clip Properties dialog box, where you'll find the file size along with the name and path of the file. Since you now know the name of the file, you can save that information and locate the same picture again later. To locate the picture, choose Insert/Picture/ClipArt. Type the file name into the "Search for clips" entry box and press Enter.

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Now select the picture, and then choose Draw/Ungroup. Next, choose Slide Show, Custom Animation. When the dialog box opens, click the Effects tab. In the "Check to animate slide objects" list, click the first object. Then hold down the Shift key and scroll down to select the last object. With all objects selected, click the arrow at the right side of the "Entry animation and sound" list box and select an effect.

Now click the Order & Timing tab and then select the radio button labeled Automatically. Click OK to close the dialog box and then press F5 to run the slide show. Each part of the ClipArt ! picture will appear as you instructed when you chose an effect.

Rehearsing PowerPoint Timing 
When you want to run your PowerPoint slide show automatically, you need to set the appropriate timing for each slide. To do this, open the slide show you want to work with and choose Slide Show/Rehearse Timings. When the slide show opens, you'll see a small timer on the screen. Watch the timer and decide when you need to move to the next slide. When ready, click the screen to move to the next slide. The timer will reset to zero and begin timing your new slide. When you reach the last slide, PowerPoint will ask if you want to save the timings. Click Yes if you're happy with the timings and No if you're not happy.

Inserting ClipArt In PowerPoint 
You often need to insert more than one ClipArt picture into a PowerPoint slide. You don't have to keep closing and opening ClipArt to do this. Just right click the picture you want to use and choose Insert. Now, you can move to another picture and insert it using the same method. When you've finished inserting ClipArt, click the Close box (the X in the upper right corner) to close the Insert ClipArt dialog box.

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Run PowerPoint and open a blank slide. Create three or four new slides and Insert/Picture/ClipArt to place a ClipArt picture on each of the new slides to help you see what is happening. In slide view, choose Slide Show/Custom Shows. When the Custom Shows dialog box opens, click New. Type in a name for your new custom show (anything you want).

You'll see the slides in your new show listed under "Slides in presentation." Let's suppose that you created a show with four slides. Click Slide 1 and then hold down Ctrl while you click Slide 3. After you select the slides you want in your custom show, click Add. Now click OK to close the dialog box and apply your selections. Back in Custom Shows, click Close to close the dialog box.

To start your custom presentation. Choose Slide Show, Custom Shows. When the Custom Shows dialog box opens, select the custom show you just created and click Show. PowerPoint will run the slide show using only the slides that you added to the custom show. When you choose Slide Show, View Show, PowerPoint will display all the slides in your original show. And, of course, you can create more than one custom slide show.

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When the Recolor Picture dialog box opens, click the arrows at the right side of the "New" color list boxes and select your new colors. When you finish, click OK. Back in the Format Picture dialog box, click OK again to close the dialog box and record your selections.

Fourth Of July Fireworks In PowerPoint 
If  you want to jazz up your presentation, try this animated fireworks display.

To create the slide, run PowerPoint and open a blank slide. Choose AutoShapes/Block Arrows/Chevron. Use the mouse to draw the chevron. Now, click the Free Rotate tool (it's near the bottom left of the PowerPoint window) and then use the mouse to rotate the chevron to a vertical position. This is your rocket. Move the rocket near the top of the slide.

With the rocket in place, you can now add some explosions to the slide. To do this, choose AutoShapes/Starts and Banners and choose one of the explosions. Use the mouse to draw the explosion over the rocket. With the explosion figure selected, click the arrow at the right side of the Fill Color button (its icon is a paint bucket) and select a color for your explosion. You will probably also want to recolor your rocket using Fill Color.

Once you get all your drawings in place, it's time to animate them. Read next tip.

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First, click the rocket to select it. Now choose Slide Show/Custom Animation. When the dialog box opens, click the Effects tab and then click the arrow at the right side of the top list box under ''Entry animation and sound." Select Fly from the list and then accept the default of "From Bottom" and click the arrow at the right side of the "After animation" list box and select Hide After Animation.

Under "Check to animate slide objects" click Explosion 1. Next, click the arrow at the right side of the "Entry animation and sound" list box and select Flash Once from the list. Click the arrow at the right side of the second list box under "Entry animation and sound" and select Explosion.

Click the Order & Timing tab now and select the radio button labeled "Automatically." Select the second object in the "Animation order" list and again select the "Automatically" radio button. Click OK to close the dialog box and record your settings.

Press F5 to run your slide show. The rocket should move up from the bottom and then disappear. The explosion figure will flash on the screen and you will hear the explosion sound.

An Object Drawing Macro For PowerPoint 
Here's a PowerPoint macro that automatically draws circles of random colors in random positions on a slide. The parameters are set to place the circles approximately in the center portion of a 10" X 7.5" (On-screen Show).

To enter the macro, run PowerPoint and open a new blank slide show. Choose File/Save As and name your slide show and save it. Next press Alt + F8 and click in the "Macro name" entry box and type in Draw Circles. Click Create and then enter the macro as shown here. Note that PowerPoint will add the Sub Draw Circles and End Sub lines for you.

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Precise Object Selection In PowerPoint 
There are times when you need to select a very small object in PowerPoint. Or perhaps you need to select an object that's hidden behind another object. Try this: press Esc to make sure that nothing is selected. Now, press the Tab key until the desired object is selected.

To see how this works, first draw a small rectangle. Next draw a larger rectangle over the small one so the small one is completely obscured. Press Esc to make sure all are deselected and then press Tab until the small rectangle is selected. You will see the handles to indicate that it's selected.

A PowerPoint Intermission Animation 
When you're presenting a PowerPoint slide show, you might want to use an animated slide during the intermission period. You can set this up to run continuously until you start the next part of the show.

As an example, suppose you create a slide that contains only the title of your presentation using WordArt (choose Insert/Picture/WordArt). With the WordArt in place, right click it and choose Custom Animation. Click the WordArt object to select it. Next click the arrow at the right side of the "Entry animation and sound" list box and select Swivel from the list. Now click the Order & Timing tab and select the "Automatically" radio button. Leave the timing at the default of 00:00 and click OK to close the dialog box and apply the settings. Click Slide Show/Set Up Show. When the dialog box opens, select the "Loop continuously until Esc'"check box and click OK to close the dialog box. Next choose Slide Show/Slide Transition and select the "Autom! atically after" check box. Set the time to two seconds and click Apply to close the dialog box and save your new selections. Now press F5 to view the animated slide.

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From the picture tool bar,

• Set the transparent color can be done one at a time. 
• Cropping tool only works for the side handle. 
• Shift & click will make square or circle

To set a tab

• Set the ruler, left, center, right.
• Start typing using the tab key to move cell to cell

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• Open the Excel sheet and highlighted the area you want to make a chart to.
•  (don’t include total columns)
• Make sure no blank row or column among the data sheet area.
• Copy that area into the clipboard.
• Go to the PowerPoint screen, double click in the chart area to open.
• Select the first cell in front of the first column and top of the first row.
• Click Edit, past link

PowerPoint 97 chart is the Microsoft graph.
The default sheet showing up on the screen can have 5 column/row