Microsoft PowerPoint training course for beginners

Microsoft PowerPoint training course for beginners

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Ready to give your talk?

The Biochemistry auditoriums in rooms 175 & B1118, have built-in computers. These Macintosh computers have drives for floppies, CDs, zip discs, pen drives, and are also on the Department’s network. Feel free to bring your personal laptop in and connect it to the built-in projection system in either of these rooms. Remember, to be safe, test your talk IN ADVANCE of your presentation date. The rooms are fob accessible.

Whenever you intend to “show” your presentation on a computer other than the one it is developed on, it is a good idea to place a copy of the file, AND a copy of any included movies, into a special transfer folder, then use that folder to move the files to the second computer.

• Place a folder called “Movies” in the same transfer folder as your presentation.
• Place the movies you want to include into this “Movies” folder.
• Use the Insert/Movies mode of PPT to place those movies into your presentation.
• Now, when you move the transfer folder to any other computer, a copy of each required movie goes too, AND, they are in a folder (relative path) that your presentation can recognize and use.

For security reasons, the computers in rooms 175 and B1118 do not appear on the Macintosh Chooser Appletalk menu. Instead, there is a separate server called “Maitre d” in the Biochemistry AppleTalk zone. Log on as “guest” via the chooser (no username or password required), or as “maitred.biochem.wisc.edu” via ftp (username: transfer, password: bioshow). Place a copy of your transfer folder (label with your name, please!) into the “pub” subdirectory of this server. You can retrieve it onto the auditorium Mac before your presentation. OR… go directly to one of the auditoriums and link to your computer from there and then transfer your files.

Note: The images and screen dumps throughout this tutorial are from Microsoft Office X on a Macintosh. The specific screens you see on YOUR computer will depend upon the version of PPT you are running and the current preference settings… Don’t panic! The menus and options are pretty much similar for any PPT version on Mac and PC.

Lesson 1. Getting started Master & Template

1) Open PowerPoint.

Double click on the Ha rdDrive folder icon

Double click on the Applic a tions folder then the Mic rosoft Offic e X folder

Double click on the Mic rosoft Powe rPoint program

2) Starting a new presentation. When you first open PPT, the program will show you the project gallery, choose PowerPoint and a blank presentation will open.

3) Selecting a slide layout. The next window to pop up will ask you about the general layout of the slides that you wish to use in this presentation. Although there are many options here (title slides, slides with or without additional text, slides with graphs, slides with clipart, etc) don’t let this bother you! Any particular slide can be changed later, and you can insert images, graphs, or movies at any stage on any kind of slide. You can see all 24 possible layouts by scrolling within this dialogue box.

Se le ct a generic slide layout with title and text called “Bulle ted List”, as shown above. Click on the indicated slide template, then click OK. The chosen slide (blank) will now fill your screen.

Note: depending upon how PPT is configured when first installed, and the settings in the PPT customize folder (Tools/customize), the various toolbars and menus may look different from platform to platform. Don’t panic! All PPT functions are available somewhere in the menus and toolbars, you may just have to hunt a bit to find them.

Key point: PPT can “work” with text in several different modes. If text is added into the title object box (“click to add title”), the program will forever recognize the particular information you placed on this slide as a “title object”, which means that it and all other similar title objects can be collectively and uniformly formatted by the Master Slide (see below). Likewise, any outline text added to the “body object” box (“click to add text”) can be collectively formatted for style, color, bullets, etc, on the master slide.

4) Use the Master Slide!!! You may set the background color, text size, font and style for each slide in your presentation by using the various menus at the top of the screen but it is much easier to pick a common format by specifying your preferences on the Master slide. This format will automatically be followed for all slides in your presentation, unless you turn it off for particular slides or chose to change any elements for a particular slide.

Choose the “View” menu, then “Ma ste r ” then “Slide Ma ste r ”

Choose the “Format” menu, and then explore the various options in the “Ma ste r layout”, “Slide color scheme”, “Ba ckground” and“Apply design” menu.

Insta ll any of these “looks” as your Master Slide, or chose your own fonts, colors, backgrounds and styles from among the many selections (e.g., Format menu, Fonts).

Contextual Menus are little menus that pop up when you click the mouse to show you many useful shortcuts. The Menu changes to fit whatever you click on. Windows users: The “right-click” on a

Windows computer is achieved by clicking and holding down the control key on a Macintosh.

Macintosh users: Start using the second mouse button! Hold down the control key and click on something with the mouse. You will find many useful shortcuts!

Lesson 2. Creating slides SlideView & OutlineView

The presentation you are going to create is one that you and your colleague, Christopher Columbus, will use to convince Queen Isabella to finance your new venture, called New World Expeditions. There are three views one can use to create PPT slides: Normal, Outline and Slide. In Slide View you see one slide at a time as you type the text and draw the graphics. In Outline view you see the outline of all the text on your slide. In Normal View, you see the outline, the slide and a place for speaker notes.

1) Return to the first blank slide in your presentation (NOT the Master slide), by c licking on the Slide icon in the views button in the lower left corner of your screen (or select Slides from the View menu)

2) Type the title of the first slide into the title box

Click in the title box, then type: We must a c t soon

Click inside the Body text box, then type the following short list, pressing return as indicated:

Favor able we a the r <rtn>

Inc r e ase in competition <rtn>

Ava ilable c r ew (don’t press <rtn>!)

Note : within a body box, the key takes you to the next line, and also creates the bullet for the next outline entry. If you ended up with an extra bullet, place the cursor after it, then press the delete key.

Click anywhere outside of the body or title boxes to deselect them.

3) Save your work by choosing “Save ” from the File menu, and selecting an appropriate file name (e.g. Pr a c tic e_1.ppt).

4) Now we will make 2 more slides from the Normal View. This method is a really slick way to enter lots of nicely formatted text. You can easily use it to create a lot of slides for a lecture.

Choose Normal from the View menu, or click the Norma l icon in the lower left corner of the screen.

Now click the New Slide button, or select New Slide from the Inse rt menu. This will create another “slide icon” in your outline and place the cursor next to it.

Type the title of slide 2: Expedition plan then press

Note: when you press return in Outline View, PPT moves to the next line, and keeps you at the same level in the outline in which you were working (in this case, since you are at the title level, PPT presents the new slide icon, and is ready for you to type a new title).

Click the “Demote” arrow (see image), to indent, or demote one level in the outline.

Type the two bullet items:

Pr epa r e a fle e t of thr e e ships <rtn>

Hand-se le ct a sta ff of able offic e rs and sailors (pressOption + <rtn>)

Note: Option + is equivalent to the “Promote” button. If you had just hit return at this point, you could have added more bullets to slide 2, but now you are ready to begin slide 3, instead.

Type in the following title for slide 3: Bene fits to Spain Now press theTab key to indent one level and type the following the same way you typed the bulleted items above.

… … …

Note: the SlideSorter view is an excellent way to cut and paste slides from one presentation into another, or to reorder and/or delete slides from within a presentation. Just remember that each presentation will take its master format from its own master slide, and if you transfer in slides from another PPT file, they will assume the new master’s format in font, size, color and background. Therefore, it may be a good idea to pick a layout and master slide “look” that you like, and stick with it for many of your (and your lab-group’s) presentations. That way, you can mix and match slides from various presentations without messing up their carefully chosen color schemes!

Lesson 3. Creating Graphics and Graphs

PPT contains text and drawing tools so you can create your own graphics to illustrate your presentation. In these Lessons, we will draw some simple pictures, then create a graph for inclusion on a slide. In subsequent Lessons (D) we will expand these processes by importing pre-existing graphics that you might already have prepared in another graphics program, or perhaps downloaded from the web.