Beginners tips on using PowerPoint^®

Making an effective presentation
When you are creating your presentation, a good rule to remember is to “KISS”, or Keep It Stupid Simple.  Only put in information that is essential. Outline your thoughts. If you are reading aloud what you have written in the slide, you will surely bore your audience.

• Use dark backgrounds and light colors for your text.
• Use text that is 24pt or larger.
• Use Arial or Helvetica fonts, not “Times” or any other serif font. They are bolder and easier to read.
• Use a consistent background throughout. Changing backgrounds, fonts, graphics makes your reader confused.
• Add Clip art only to add impact to a specific message — not on every slide.

Creating a new presentation
You have a choice of opening an auto template and using that as your style for your presentation, or click blank presentation if you are creative and would like to make one of your own.

Before starting to enter your text for your presentation, consider the following:
Are you making Overheads, an On Screen presentation, or a large-format poster?  Make sure you chose the proper layout in the page set up dialog box. It will substantial change the layout of your window.

Selecting Objects
If you are selecting a text box to move it, after you clicked in the text box, there is a grid-like border around it, now click on that border and it will change your cursor from a text cursor to an arrow. You can now adjust the box surrounding that text box by clicking and holding the border boxes by moving in or out, up or down.

You can select an object by moving your cursor over to it and clicking on it. If you would like to select more than one object at a time, hold down the shift key and click on the objects you want.

Aligning objects
This is a simple tool to help you line things up in your presentation. Simply select each of the items you wish to align, click the draw box at the bottom left of the PowerPoint^® window, select align or distribute, and select the appropriate edge you wish to align.

Grouping Objects
Select each of the items you wish to group by holding down the shift key and clicking. Then click on the draw box at the bottom left of the PowerPoint^® window and select group.

Importing Graphics
PowerPoint understands many formats such as: GIF, BMP, JPEG and TIFF.  The importing graphics help page will give you more information about importing your graphics into PowerPoint^®.
Use the Insert function at the top of the PowerPoint^® window. Select “picture”, then “from file”, then search in the appropriate place where you have saved your graphic.

We don’t recommend copy and paste from one software program to PowerPoin^®t. This does not always work. We have imaged slides with blank spaces in them from individuals who did this approach.

Landscape vs. Portrait
Some of your graphics may need the portrait layout. PowerPoin^®t does not enable you to use portrait and landscape slides in the same presentation. We recommend using either one or the other, landscape is preferred. If you need to insert portrait graphics in your landscape presentation, just insert your graphics in that layout. There will be blank spaces on the sides, but it is better than not having them at all.

On Screen Presentations

Movies
Inserting a movie in Microsoft^® Windows: choose insert, then Object, then Media Clip. A dialog box will come up, you then search for your file and select it, then exit.
Inserting a movie in Macintosh^®, choose insert, then movie. A dialog box will appear, you will search for the file you want and select it.

Playback options: select the movie object and choose tools, then play settings which will let you pick sound or movie. Selecting “Start Play” will allow you to set when the movie is to start. The “Click on Object box” will start your movie as you click on its icon. The “Transition” option lets you determine when to start the movie. The “Start” option will play the movie the transition to the slide begins. The “plus” (+) option lets you determine how long after the slide transition ends before PowerPoint starts the movie.

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