Diving into PowerPoint

Returning to Our Presentation
We're going to continue working with the presentation we created with the AutoContent Wizard in the first hour. If you closed PowerPoint, you can return to the earlier presentation (as long as you saved it) after you open PowerPoint again.

Select File on the main menu, and click at the bottom of the panel where you can see your most recently saved files.

You can also select File, Open, or locate the file under all of your My Recent Documents by pressing the Windows button of your keyboard (between the Ctrl and Alt keys).





Now that we've created a basic presentation with text, let's spend a few minutes learning how to revise the wizard's generic content.

The fact is that for all the bells and whistles we might eventually add, the core of any presentation will probably be the main message: text. Therefore, creating and revising text is a great way to begin and to learn some of the more advanced aspects of the program.

If you view the presentation in the main window (Normal view), you can see the Outline (or Slides thumbnail) panel on the left and the Notes panel beneath the slide (see Figure 2.1). If you left off in the Slide Sorter view, double-click any slide to open it in Normal view.

Figure 2.1. By deleting or backspacing through the original slide title of Mission Statement, we can easily replace it with a new title: Goals and Objectives.


The first slide is the Title slide. It might also have a subtitle if you entered one into the wizard. Let's start with the second slide, which is the most common type: the Title and Bullet layout. Click it in the Slide or Outline panel, or press PgDn to go to the second slide

Changing Text in a Placeholder
Let's change the title from Mission Statement to Goals and Objectives. Notice that the placeholder itself is selected. We'll click inside the title placeholder and do one of several things to revise our text:

If we click at the beginning of the placeholder, we can press the Del key on the keyboard to erase the current text and type in our own.

If we click at the end of the placeholder, we can press the Backspace key on the keyboard to erase the text and type in our own.

We can also drag our cursor through the text to select it and then simply type our replacement text in its place. Or press the Del key on our keyboard to erase the text, and type in our own text.

To exit the placeholder when you're finished editing its text, do not press the Enter key. Doing so puts an extra line into the placeholder. Just click elsewhere on the slide or in PowerPoint.





Now that you've edited the title, take a look at the Outline panel on the left. If you happen to be in the Slides thumbnail panel, click the Outline tab in the left panel

Introducing the Outline Panel
Notice that for the slide you've just edited, the title in the Outline panel reflects the change you just made. The text Goals and Objectives has replaced Mission Statement.

You can edit the bullets in two ways:

Select the bullet placeholder within the slide and then edit the placeholder text

Make the change in the Outline panel and watch the text change in the slide

Bullets are different from titles in that they're a unit of separate concepts. To edit individual bullets, treat them as you did the title: either delete or backspace through them or drag through each one and replace the text. To add another bullet, use a carriage return (press the Enter key).





You can also make your text revisions in the Outline panel. To add another bullet, use a carriage return at the end of the previous bullet, as shown in Figure 2.2.

Figure 2.2. Text revisions using the Outline panel.


As you work in the Outline panel, you can drag through a line of text and overwrite it, or forward or backspace to delete and replace the text. Then you can add a new bullet with a carriage return.

At this point, you can also experiment with overcoming mistakes. If you mistype an entry or add a bullet in the wrong place, just press Ctrl+Z to undo the last revision you made. Doing so again and again reverses steps you took all the way back to 99 levels of undo (see Figure 2.3).

Figure 2.3. Clicking the Undo button or pressing Ctrl+Z reverses any mistake you just made.


To redo a step that you undid, press the key combination Ctrl+Y. Remember that you must undo and redo in the same sequence that the steps were originally performed.





In this way, you can quickly revise your AutoContent Wizard presentation by going through the titles and bullets and changing the content from the generic cues to your own pertinent information.
Creating a New Slide
Revising what's already there is a good start, but what about creating your own slides? There are three ways to add a new slide to your presentation:

On the main menu, select Insert, Slide

Click the New Slide icon above the task pane (see Figure 2.4)

Figure 2.4. Adding a new slide opens a new blank Title and Bullet slide and also accesses the Slide Layout task pane.


Press Ctrl+M

If you're a Microsoft Word user and are comfortable with Word's Outline view, you can select Send to PowerPoint under the File menu in Word, and automatically generate an outline containing a complete set of title and bullet slides in PowerPoint.





A new blank slide appears in Normal view, and the Slide Layout task pane springs into action on the right (see Figure 2.4).

The default layout is highlighted in the Layout task pane—that is, a Title and Bullet slide. We'll accept that layout for now and begin working with the new blank slide.