Powerpoint Presentations Made Easy

Transcript

Contents PowerPoint Presentations Made Easy ............................................................................ 3 An Overview of the PowerPoint Menus ........................................................................... 4 Step 1: Creating Your Design Template .......................................................................... 6 Design Menu ............................................................................................................... 6 Choosing a Template................................................................................................... 7 Choosing Colors & Fonts ............................................................................................. 8 Modifying Backgrounds ............................................................................................. 14 Solid Fill ................................................................................................................. 14 Gradient Fill ............................................................................................................ 15 Picture Fill .............................................................................................................. 16 Texture Fill ............................................................................................................. 19 Pattern Fill .............................................................................................................. 20 Step #2: Adding and Formatting the Text ...................................................................... 22 Home Menu ............................................................................................................... 22 Basic Overview ...................................................................................................... 22 Formatting in the Slide Master View....................................................................... 27 Exploring Different Slide Layouts ........................................................................... 33 How to Add a New Slide ........................................................................................ 35 How to Delete a Slide............................................................................................. 36 Rearranging & Moving Slides ................................................................................. 36 Duplicating a Slide ................................................................................................. 37 Step #3: Inserting Screenshots or Graphics .................................................................. 39 Insert Menu ................................................................................................................ 39 How to Insert Videos .............................................................................................. 43 How to Insert Audios .............................................................................................. 45 Step #4: Adding Transitions and Animations to Your Slides ......................................... 46 Step #5: Creating a Slide Show .................................................................................... 48 Step #6: Reviewing Your Presentation .......................................................................... 49 Creating a PowerPoint Video..................................................................................... 49 Step #7: Printing Your Presentation .............................................................................. 51 Step #8: Reusing Your Slides ....................................................................................... 54 2 PowerPoint Presentations Made Easy So you’re creating your first PowerPoint presentation – congratulations for taking the next step in marketing your business to your clients. You will find your options open up with multimedia presentations by showcasing your product or service. With PowerPoint you can add sound bites, videos, photographs, charts, graphs, and much more. It truly is a dynamic platform. Why do you want to add these bells and whistles? First, using PowerPoint makes your presentation more interesting and more interactive with your audience. Whether you’re presenting to a room full of live people or presenting virtually in a webinar room, showing examples of your work, statistics, graphs, or simply sharing your desktop will keep your audience paying attention. Second, there are many different ways of learning, including auditory and visual. By simply speaking you will capture the attention of those auditory learners but by adding the visual PowerPoint slides, you will also capture your visual learners. Lastly, think about the topic of your presentation. If you are presenting a tutorial or howto presentation, using slides to showcase the steps of how to do something is much more concise and helpful than verbally trying to describe each step. Put yourself in the audience for just a moment. If you are teaching a course about how to install and use WordPress, for example, would you rather listen to the directions or see the steps? When it comes to computers and technology, adding PowerPoint slides to your presentation is highly recommended so your audience members can compare their own computer screens to what you’re showing on the slides. 3 An Overview of the PowerPoint Menus This guide will walk you through PowerPoint 2010 but you can certainly follow this guide while using older versions of PowerPoint as well. With each updated version Microsoft improves some features but there aren’t usually any drastic changes from one version to the next. The beauty of PowerPoint is that it’s dynamic but very user-friendly. All the icons are rather self-explanatory and if you do hit something by mistake, there’s an Undo arrow at the very top left corner of the window. Another tip is to save your work frequently. My new habit is to click the Save button after I finish each slide, which decreases my chances of losing the work if my computer crashes or hitting a wrong button and losing everything! When you first open up PowerPoint, you are greeted with a blank slide. This is your brand new presentation, ready to be customized to your liking. If you want to open up an existing presentation, click on the File tab, click on the Open folder, then search your hard drive for the correct PowerPoint file. 4 The first thing you need to do after opening up the PowerPoint program is get familiar with the main menu. You will find ten menus in PowerPoint located along the top of the screen – File, Home, Insert, Design, Transitions, Animations, Slideshow, Review, View, and Add-Ins. Below is just a brief introduction to them. I suggest that you play around with the menus to fully understand what the various tools do under each menu. Some you will use in every presentation, others you won’t use at all. 5 Step 1: Creating Your Design Template Even though the Design tab isn’t the first on the tool bar, it’s the easiest way to get your PowerPoint presentation started. Choosing a template, colors and optional design elements is much easier to do first, before you start adding the text to each slide. To start a new presentation, just open up PowerPoint and a blank, default slide will appear. This is the Title Slide. This is your blank slate where you can let your imagination run wild. Design Menu Page Setup allows you to change the size of the slide and the Slide Orientation allows you to make your slides portrait (vertical) or landscape (horizontal). There are many preloaded Themes available in PowerPoint and if you don’t have the time or desire to design your own layouts from scratch, these are fantastic, ready-made options. Even more design options are available at Microsoft’s website. Whichever preloaded theme you choose, you can customize it by choosing one of the color palettes, changing the fonts, or adding effects to the theme. This is where it’s really best to spend some time experimenting with your different options and seeing which design and color options works best for you. The Background menu allows you to create a custom background, using color gradations, textures, patterns or photo backgrounds. 6 Choosing a Template If you are a PowerPoint newbie or someone who does not have any design experience, go directly to the Design menu and select a pre-loaded template. When you hover over each of the template icons, you will see your blank slide change to the selected design and color. This is a great way to preview each pre-set template before committing to the design. To select a template, hover your mouse over any of the designs to see the preview. If you’re happy with the look of the template, click Save and you will notice the template shows up in the smaller left hand sidebar. 7 Choosing Colors & Fonts After you choose your preset template, you can start to customize the design even more. In the Design tab, click on the Colors link and you will see a dropdown box filled with preset color palettes. 8 When you mouse over each color selection, you will see the colors change in the preview screen while the design in the left sidebar reflects the default color choice. 9 If you don’t like the pre-designed color schemes you can opt to create your own. Just select “colors” from the themes submenu and “create new theme colors” from the dropdown menu. Now select the colors for your text, your background, and your hyperlinks. You’ll see a preview in the box to the right. Be sure to name your custom color scheme then click save. Changing the fonts on each of the slide layouts is just as easy as changing the colors. Click the Fonts link and hover over each font with your mouse to see the preview. 10 Click the font of your choice and save the project. The beauty of this process is you only have to make these changes once and ALL the layouts for the chosen theme will change only for this project. When you open up PowerPoint another time, all the default information for that theme will be intact. One note: if you want to add an image into your template design, you go through this process as described above but then click the View tab. Click Slide Master. 11 Choose the slide layout where you want the image to appear. Click Insert > Photo and then choose your image from your hard drive. 12 Once the image appears you can resize and reposition the image. Exit out of Master View and you will see your new image every time you choose that particular slide layout. There are about 40 built-in templates that come with your edition of PowerPoint covering a wide range of design types and colors. 13 You may also choose to go to Microsoft.com via the link in the dropdown box to choose additional themes online. Some are made by Microsoft and others are user made. If you have a larger budget, you can hire a graphic designer to create a custom made PowerPoint design template. Modifying Backgrounds Another way to add customization and your company branding to your slide show is to modify the background of your slides. Not only can you add your company colors but you can also add your logo or another brand image to the background of each slide. From the Design tab, click Background Styles in the upper right corner. Select a premade style (12 style options) or format a custom background by choosing “format background”. The Custom Background Options include: Solid Fill This option allows you to change the color of the background with another solid color. There is a small paint can icon which opens up a palette of color choices. Click on your color and see the immediate change. 14 On the color transparency scale, a setting of 0 will give you the boldest, darkest color. If you slide the scale upwards toward 100, you will see the color fading. You also have the option of hiding background graphics. If you like the change and want it on all your slides, select Apply To All. If the change is just for one slide, click Close. And if you fooled around too much and really hate your background creation, click Reset Background and it will go back to the default. One note: if you chose a template design that already has gradients, those gradients will remain intact, with only the color changing. Gradient Fill Another option for customizing your background is choosing a gradient fill. A gradient means that your chosen color will appear lighter or darker at certain points on the slide, almost like it’s fading in or out of view. This can be selected from the preset colors or by customizing the colors to your specifications. Make sure the gradient fill radio button is selected, hide background graphics if you wish by checking off the box, click preset dropdown menu and make your selection. 15 You can preview your selection in the main window and in the left side column. No selection is permanent until you click “apply to all” so feel free to experiment. Next you can choose the type of gradient – Linear, Radial, Rectangular, Path or Shade from Title. Again the best way to see what these do to your slide is to try them all. You can also select which direction you want it to start – corner, middle, bottom, or top using the “Direction” dropdown menu or by selecting the angle. You can add or remove gradient stops as well as add or subtract transparency. If you don’t like what you came up with, select “reset” background and it will revert to your original background. Once your slide background looks perfect click “apply to all”. This background will be set to all your slides. Picture Fill You can set a photo from your hard drive as the background to your slide. Make sure the picture or texture fill radio button is selected and then click on “file”. Select the photo you want to use from your computer, and click open. 16 You will have to stretch the photo to fit your slide by increasing or decreasing the percentages. (Left, bottom, right, top) 17 You can make your photo transparent by sliding the transparency slider. This is key because there will be text overlaying each slide. If you have a full-color photo with competing text on top of it, you will have a mess that no one can read. Adjust the photo transparency scale so it resembles a faded watermark; then the text will be more visible and won’t be competing with your background image. You also have the option of recoloring the picture and adjusting the brightness and contrast. PowerPoint has some preset coloring options you can choose. Click on Background Styles > Picture Color > Recolor. You can see a preview of your options. 18 Set contrast and brightness if you need to. If you don’t like what you’ve done just click reset background and your photo will go back the original. To make changes permanent select Apply To All and the background will apply to all your slides. Texture Fill To add texture to your background, select the texture dropdown menu. Choose from the provided textures, click to select, choose transparency and any custom tiling options you might want. If you have your own texture or pattern, save it on your computer and then upload it following the same instructions as the Picture Fill above. 19 Pattern Fill Choosing this option brings up several preloaded patterns to choose from, including stripes, checkerboards and bricks. You have the option of choosing a foreground and background color; just remember the same tips as we discussed earlier. If your background image or color is too dark or contrasting, it will be very difficult to see your slide text so choose wisely. 20 Be sure to click “Apply To All” when you are done to make changes to all your slides. There are plenty of ways to customize the appearance of your slide. Don’t let the amount of choices overwhelm you. Start out with the ones provided by PowerPoint and as you get comfortable using the software you can experiment with the various options. 21 Step #2: Adding and Formatting the Text This is a general overview of how to change the look of your text on each slide. Follow these instructions if you’re just learning PowerPoint or if you have individual changes to make on a single slide. In the next section we’ll discuss in more detail how to set all these functions using the Slide Master View, which allows you to make these changes only once so you don’t waste valuable time resetting all these features on each and every slide. Home Menu The default menu is Home. You’ll find the Clipboard, Slides, Font, Paragraph, Drawing and Editing submenus here. The Clipboard allows for cutting, copying and pasting. The Slides section is where you select a new blank slide to add to the presentation or to change the layout of the current slide. The Fonts section is where you choose the font style and size as well as bolding, italics or underlining features. Paragraph is where you can add bullet points or numerical lists, indents, columns, text direction, or change the line spacing. The Drawing section is where you can add a shape to your slides as well as change the color of the shape and / or its outline or even group images together so they are evenly aligned. The Editing section allows you to find and replace certain words or phrases throughout the whole presentation. Basic Overview To format your text you have a number of different options. As part of the Microsoft family, PowerPoint’s formatting menu is very similar to Word. The best way to find out how to use each option is to click and preview how your text appears. First, type some text inside the text box on a slide. Second, highlight it and under the Home tab, select the arrow next to the default font name. This brings up a whole list of available fonts and you can see what each one looks like. As you hover over each one with your mouse, the highlighted text will preview the chosen font. 22 After the font is selected, choose the size. Again, highlight the text, click the size arrow, and hover over each size to see a preview. Remember that if you’re doing a live presentation, people at the back of the room should be able to see the text, so don’t go small with a 12 or 14 point font. Choose a larger size for the slide title and a smaller size for the main text. One note: you may be tempted to add some personality or pizazz to your slides by choosing a fun-looking font. Always preview and test the different fonts because some may be fun and different but they may also be difficult to read in a slide show. Also, the font you choose will reflect your company’s image. What type of image do you want to project to your audience? 23 Once the font name and size is chosen, you can also add bold, italic or underline formatting, strikethrough text, or add shadow, change font color or character spacing. You can also change the case of the text to all upper case to all lower case and you can even toggle between the two. Simply highlight the text and click the icon for whichever formatting element you want to use. Aligning your text neatly on the slide is preferable for easy reading and organizing your thoughts. This is where the bullet points or numbered lists come in handy. Bullet points are set as a default for each theme so just start typing in the text box and most likely a bullet will appear at the beginning of the sentence. To change the look of the bullet, place your cursor at the beginning of the sentence then click the arrow next to the bullet icon. Click on the style you like and it will change. If you think a numbered list is more appropriate, follow the same instructions as above but click on the arrow next to the number list icon. Here you have a choice between 24 numerical or Roman numerals, or you can choose ABC order, such as in a research outline. Justify, center, left or right align are all descriptions of where on the slide you want the text to appear. There is no right or wrong choice here; it’s a matter of personal preference and design aesthetics. If some letters of your titles or main text will overlap a design element, you might want to experiment with using the left or right alignment, which means the title text will line up on the left or right side respectively. If the uneven lengths of your bullets or sentences don’t look right to you, try the Justify option. If you want to try something different with selected areas of text, select Text Direction. Place your cursor in the text box, click the arrow next to Text Direction, and highlight horizontal, rotate or stacked. You will see your chosen text change in the preview slide. This might be fun to use as part of your design template; maybe placing your company name or tagline along one edge of the slide. 25 Text align is different from the left, right, centered, or justified commands. Text Align indicates where in the text box the text should align. Your choices are top, middle or bottom. Each preloaded template has its own default alignment but it’s easy to change. Simply place the cursor in the text box, click the Align Text icon, and hover over each choice for a preview. 26 Columns allow you to fit more text in a single text box. You have the choice of one, two, or three columns. Use this option sparingly so as to avoid crowding your text and making it difficult to read. One note: Once you choose your text formatting, stay consistent on each slide. It can be very distracting to see different sizes, colors and fonts all mixed together on one slide or different on every slide in the presentation. Think about your audience and also the image you want to portray to them. Formatting in the Slide Master View 27 Using the following instructions will save you an amazing amount of time in the creation of your slides! Why change the font, size and alignment on multiple slides when you can do it once and be done? At the top of your page, click the View tab, then select the Slide Master view. You will see the main, large slide in the center of your page along with the preview left sidebar. The difference in the sidebar, however, is these are the different slide layouts for your chosen theme. 28 Click on one of the layouts on the left and it will appear in the larger, center part of your screen. This is NOT where you enter your slide text! To change the text formatting, just highlight the sample text on each of these slides and choose the font name, size, alignment, etc to suit your needs and your style. Take notes of the font names and sizes so you can be consistent among the different layouts. 29 One note: When you change the formatting on one of these layouts, it does NOT affect the other layouts in the preview screen. You DO have to click on each of the layouts you plan to use and make these same changes so your slideshow is consistent. Most themes have about 12 different layouts but chances are you won’t use each one. You will definitely see the value of doing these changes in the Slide Master view when you have a presentation with 40-50 slides! When you have made all your changes, click the Close Master View red button and you will return to the Normal working view. The Normal view shows your current slide in the large center portion of your screen with an overview of all the slides in your presentation in the left hand sidebar. Now you can start at the beginning of your slideshow and enter the text on each slide. You’ll notice all the formatting you just chose is now preset for each slide layout. 30 The Slide Sorter displays all the slides in a horizontal design and will also show which slides have transitions and / or animations. The Notes view shows your completed slide with blank space underneath for notes; this is especially helpful for the presenter to print out ahead of time to jot down speaking notes or bullet points. 31 And the Reading View brings up your slides to full screen, similar to the slide show option. Within the View menu are other tools that can help aide your design process. Placing checkmarks in the boxes next to Ruler places a ruler along the top and left side of the slide; Gridlines place gridlines along the surface of the slides; and Guides places a dotted line vertically and horizontally through the center of the slide. The gridlines and guides are especially helpful with aligning multiple images or other design elements on one slide. 32 Exploring Different Slide Layouts Now that your template design is completed, it’s time to start adding the text to your slides. One note: PowerPoint slides are supposed to complement your presentation, NOT be a word-for-word transcription of the presentation. A big mistake people make is adding too many words on each slide. This makes the slide very crowded and difficult to read but it also shifts the focus away from what the speaker is saying. I recommend using the slides as a way to summarize your presentation in bullet points or an outline form rather than full sentences. There are 10 different slide layouts to choose from in the Home > Layout menu. As a default, the first slide in a new presentation is always the Title Slide. If you click on the New Slide icon, the default selection is the Title and Content slide. These are the most commonly used layouts. 33 To choose a different slide layout, click “layout” from the Home menu and a dropdown box will appear with additional options. Below is a brief description of each layout. Pre-Designed Slide Layouts: o o o o o o o o Title slide – (default) Title and Subtitle Title and Content – Title on top with content Section header – text on top with Title on the bottom Two content – Title on top with 2 columns for content Comparison – 2 column slide with title and content with 1 major title on top Title Only – just one Title on top (no content) Blank – blank slide for anything you wish to add Content with Caption – 2 column slide with caption title and content on the left and a larger content column of the right 34 o Picture with Caption – Picture with title and small content section on the bottom Once you choose a slide layout, enter your content. Content can include bulleted text; an excel spread sheet; a photo; a video; clip art; a smart graphic; or even a chart. To add text, click on the visible text boxes on the slide and start typing when the cursor appears. When finished, click outside of the text box and the box rules will disappear. How to Add a New Slide Now that all your design and text formatting is in place, it’s time to create all your presentation slides. Your first slide will always be the Title Page layout. To add a new slide to your project, from the Home tab select “new slide”. Clicking the icon graphic of the New Slide will duplicate the current slide design and layout and add it in consecutive order to your presentation. If you click on the words New Slide, a drop down menu will appear - select the layout you wish to use and click on it. You will see the new slide in the left hand preview sidebar. 35 How to Delete a Slide To delete a slide, select the slide in the preview window to your left. You will notice that it’s highlighted. Click the delete button or Ctrl + x on your keyboard and it will disappear from your presentation. Rearranging & Moving Slides 36 Just like when writing you find that the one paragraph fits better at the top of the body rather than at the end, so it is with a slide show project. You can move slides by dragging and dropping the slides in the left preview column. Be sure to click on the slide you wish to move, while still holding down the left mouse button; drag your mouse and the slide to its new location. Duplicating a Slide On occasion you will find that you want to make a copy of a slide and use it in two different places in your slide show. This might be a special offer to your audience or a table of data that is worth mentioning a second time. To duplicate this slide, locate it in the left hand preview column. Click on it to highlight, then click on the word or arrow for New Slide. When the dropdown box appears, scroll toward the bottom and select “duplicate selected slides.” You will now see the duplicate slide in your preview column. 37 One note: the duplicated slide will appear immediately after the original slide. So if you duplicated slide #3, this new slide will appear as slide #4. If you want this newest slide to be #25, follow the directions above for rearranging slides. 38 Step #3: Inserting Screenshots or Graphics Even though you should have your design images in place, occasionally you will want to insert a screenshot or other image on a certain slide. This is extremely simple to do with the features of the Insert Menu. Insert Menu Just as the name implies you can insert various files into your slides using these tools. You’ll find Tables, Images, Illustrations, Links, Text, Symbols and Media submenus here. The Tables submenu allows a customized table to be inserted into your presentation. Click on the slide where you want the table inserted, then click on the Tables icon in the upper left. Select the number of columns and rows for a unified and neat look or upload an Excel spreadsheet that is already created. 39 The Images menu allows you to insert a picture, clipart, screenshot, or photo album to your presentation. These can be inserted as part of your overall slide design or you can just insert another image that illustrates your point. Click on the slide where the image is to be placed, select the type of image (picture, clipart, screenshot or photo album), choose the file from your hard drive, and you will see the image appear on the slide. Simply adjust the size and position of the image so it does not cover any design elements or text. Illustrations allows you to add shapes or text boxes to the slide (similar to the Home > Drawing section) as well as graph charts and smart art. These all add graphic design and color elements to your slides, which will attract attention and keep the presentation interesting. 40 Highlight the correct slide, select the appropriate icon, and follow the instructions for selecting the format and colors of your choice. 41 Links is where you can add hyperlinks to a website and is very similar to adding a link in WordPress or other blogging software. The Text section is where you can add text boxes, headers and footers, word art, dates and times, slide numbers or objects. I always recommend having the name of your 42 presentation along with your website URL in either the header or footer so people will always have a way to contact you in case they have to leave the presentation early. These can be set up as part of your design phase or it can be added at the end. Simply add the header and/or footer information once on any slide and it will automatically appear on the rest of your presentation slides. The Symbols section is where you can add mathematical equations or symbols, such as the copyright symbol, the trademark symbol, or other simple graphics. The Media section is where you can add video and audio clips into your presentation. How to Insert Videos Under the Insert > Media tab is where you have the option of adding video and / or audio clips to your presentations. This is an awesome function and can make your webinar or live presentation much more engaging and also valuable by offering these to your audience. To insert a video, click on the Media tab > Video. Here you have the option of choosing a video from your hard drive to insert. You also have the option of inserting a video from a website, such as your own personal website, a video hosted by Amazon S3, or even a YouTube website. 43 Once your chosen file is selected, the video is added to the selected slide. It’s generally a quick process but if the video is very long it will most likely take longer to insert. You now have the option to increase or change the size of the video and also reposition it on the slide. Always test the play button and it should play right away. A brand new tool bar called Video Tools opens up when the video is inserted and here is where you can adjust the video brightness, color or even put a frame or border around it. One note: you will notice the icons titled “Bring Forward” and “Send Backward”. You probably also noticed them when you tried inserting an image. Bring Forward means the image (or video) you just inserted will be on top of any background images and text copy that might already appear on that slide. For a video, this is most likely optimal so your audience can see the entire video. Send Backward means the image (or video) will become part of the slide background and any existing text boxes will be visible on top of the image or video. For faded images, this can be OK; the image can become part of the design template. But for videos, having text covering part of the video would be distracting so I recommend always setting videos in the Forward position. Why would you want to add a video? Maybe you created a YouTube video that complements your topic and instead of waiting for people to view it you want to show it to them during the presentation. Or maybe you want to show a sneak peek of a private, membership-only video to encourage your audience to enroll. Not only does this give you, the speaker, a quick break from talking but it can act as an additional sales tool or as an example that illustrates your point of view. How do you play the video during the presentation? You have full control over your presentation slides while speaking so when you get to the slide with the video, you will see the video control buttons underneath the video itself. At the appropriate time, simply click the Play button with your mouse and the video will start. You can pause or stop it at any point, especially if you have more information to add throughout the video. 44 How to Insert Audios Inserting an audio clip to your presentation is basically the same process as inserting a video but you will choose an mp3 audio file instead. A small audio player with control buttons will appear with a small speaker icon above it. This can be positioned anywhere on the slide without taking away from any charts or images you have showing. To play the audio, simply click the play button when you are ready. However, please note that the audio will stop playing if you advance to the next slide. Why do you want to include audio? Like video, audio will add some extra value to your presentation. Maybe you conducted an expert interview that ties in to your topic and you want to share it with your audience. Maybe you want to share testimonials from satisfied clients. Or maybe you want to share the newest promo for your podcast. You can also add humor or whimsy to your presentations by adding a Clip Art audio sound, such as applause, piano music or a telephone sound effect. You can also download more clip art effects at Office.com. 45 Step #4: Adding Transitions and Animations to Your Slides Remember that PowerPoint is a way to present slides in a moveable fashion as opposed to just being printed in booklet form. The Transitions menu allows you to add movement when you advance to the next slide. There are about 30 selections to choose from, including fading, turning like a page in a book, or rippling into view like water. These written descriptions don’t do these transition effects justice; go play and experiment with them! Under Effect Options, you can customize how the transition occurs (left to right, top to bottom, etc). You can also set the duration for each transition, if you want a sound during the transition, and if the transition occurs on a mouse click or after the slide is on screen for a certain amount of time. To add a transition, highlight your chosen slide, select the Transition menu, then choose your Transition effect from the center icons. Click on each icon to preview the transition. Choose your Effect Options and set the sound and duration. Then click Save. The Animations menu works in very much the same way as the Transitions menu but Animations give movement to the text on each slide. Very similar to the Transitions menu, there are dozens of choices as well as the Effect Options. You can also choose when the animation starts and how long it should last. To add animations, select the Animations menu, choose a particular slide, highlight the text you want animated, then choose your animation. Clicking on any of the icons will preview the animation for you. Choose the Effect Options (optional), and also set the duration and when the animation should start (with a mouse click, with the previous animation, or after the previous animation). 46 One note: stay consistent with whatever animation and transition option you choose. Just because you have multiple options to choose from doesn’t mean you have to use each and every one in a single presentation! Some options are easier on the eyes than others; likewise, if you make your transitions or animations too quick, you will lose the audience’s attention because they won’t be able to keep up. 47 Step #5: Creating a Slide Show The slideshow menu is where you can prescreen and set up your slideshow with the Start Slide Show, Setup and Monitors submenus. This is an optimal way to review your slide presentation as if you were sitting in the audience. You should take notes about whether the slide transitions or text animations are too quick or too distracting. To start the preview, simply click the From Beginning icon on the left of the menu bar. The slide show usually opens up in a full screen and whenever you click the mouse the slides will advance. The Broadcast Slide Show feature is new and allows you to broadcast your slide show to remote users to view in their browser window. This would be useful to share with remote team members or collaborators while you are still in control of forwarding the slides. If you plan to use this slideshow as a video, such as a marketing video published on YouTube, you will want to click on the Rehearse Timings icon under Set Up. This option will time how long each slide is on screen. You will have to click the mouse to advance all the transitions and animations but this is all timed. At the end of the rehearsal, play the slide show From Beginning and it will run automatically. Again, take notes in case you need to make changes. Resolution means how clear the slide looks in the full screen mode. Smaller screen resolutions are quicker to load during a presentation but the graphics and text may not be as sharp as you would like. The larger, full screen resolution sizes show better graphic detail but might take longer to load. The choice is really yours and is a good thing to test. 48 Step #6: Reviewing Your Presentation The Review menu is where you can edit the content of your slides with the Proofing, Language, Comments and Compare submenus. Spell check and a thesaurus are under the proofing features. Since this presentation will reflect your business, keep it professional and run spell check a few times before presenting live. Find another trusted person to proofread your slides, just in case spell check misses something grammatical. To initiate Spell Check, select the Review menu and click on the Spelling icon on the top left. You can begin spell check on any slide or select the first slide in the series. The Research icon allows you to search for a definition or synonym of a particular word using the selected online references built-in to PowerPoint. Simply click on the Research icon and a window will open on the right side. Input the word or phrase you want to research and you will see definitions, pronunciations, and translations into French and Spanish. By selecting the Translate icon, you can translate the entire presentation or just certain paragraphs into different languages. Highlight the text on the slide, click the Translate icon, and in the right window the translation will appear. If you want to use it, select the Insert button in the right window and the translation appears on your slide. The comments section is especially handy for remote collaborators working on the same project. Clicking New Comment brings up a PowerPoint sticky note with your name and date and enough space to write your comments or notes. Once the notes or changes are made to the slides, each comment can be edited or deleted. Clicking on the Compare submenu allows you to merge another presentation with the current project. You can pick and choose which slides to merge, which is convenient if you already have a branded call to action slide or opening slide that you want to use in every slide show. To close the Review menu and return to Home, click the End Review icon. Creating a PowerPoint Video Because PowerPoint has animation features, it’s a great tool to use for making videos. You can simply design your slides, add some music or record your own voice, and then film the slideshow. 49 Camtasia is a video recording and editing software created by Techsmith. They are also the makers of the screencapture programs Snagit and the free screencast program Jing. Both Camtasia and Snagit are compatible with PowerPoint and if you have them installed on your computer, you will see the Add-Ins menu when you open up PowerPoint. Follow all of the steps above for designing and creating your slides. Practice the timing of the slideshow by using the Rehearse Timings feature under the Slide Show menu. When you’re ready to record, click the Add-Ins menu. The red Record button will automatically open up your version of Camtasia for recording. You can also choose the small webcam icons to film via webcam. If you place the webcam window in the recording area, the webcam view will also record in the video. When you’re finished recording, save and edit in Camtasia. You can also use the free version of Jing to record your video but keep in mind that Jing only allows 5 minutes of recording and there is no way to edit your video when completed. 50 Step #7: Printing Your Presentation No doubt you’re wondering why on earth you need to print your presentation after you spent so much time adding transitions, animations and multimedia elements to it. It all goes back to the different learning styles and wanting to capture the attention of as many audience members as possible. Your visual presentation will captivate the visual learners. Your verbal presentation will attract those who learn best through auditory means. But there are still others in your audience who want to sit and read your presentation, as well as visual people who want to reference your presentation at a later date. Of course, printing yourself a copy of the slide show will also safeguard against losing the information in case of a computer malfunction or mistakenly erasing the files. In order to print your presentation, select the File menu on the top left corner. Select the Print option and additional selections appear to the right along with a preview window. You can change the number of copies as well as select the correct printer. Handouts are very popular and useful when presenting to a live audience so either go prepared with extras or save a sample to make copies at the presentation location. 51 You also have the option of printing all the slides, a single slide, or slides in a custom range. Determine which slides will hold the most value to your audience and include those in your handouts. The next field will have the default title of Full Page Slides. Click on the arrow because this might be the most important box on this page. This is where you choose your Handout Layouts. Some speakers prefer the Notes Page layout because is shrinks the size of the slide so the listener can take their own notes. This format is also popular for speakers who want to write their own bullet points to follow during their presentation. There are 9 layouts in total plus the option to put frames around each slide and fit it to the paper size. 52 Additional printing options include printing one side versus two sides; collated versus uncollated; landscape versus portrait orientation; and color versus grayscale or black and white. There isn’t any right or wrong choices when printing out your slides. Just keep in mind the image you want to portray and giving your audience the most valuable pieces of information that they can use. Underneath the color printing option is a small link titled Edit Header & Footer. Clicking this link opens up a box that allows you to place your contact information and date of presentation on the printouts themselves, without altering the slides. I highly recommend you use this option so your audience doesn’t have to look for your contact info within the presentation. Make it as simple as possible to contact you. 53 Step #8: Reusing Your Slides Smart business owners find ways to turn their hard work into other money-making projects and your PowerPoint slides should be no exception. Now that your presentation or webinar is finished, what else can you do with these slides? 1. Create a marketing video. Showcase your expertise on YouTube by selecting a few of the most interesting or useful slides, add some background music or a voiceover, and record using the rehearsed timing settings. Keep it short – no longer than 2 or 3 minutes – and embed the video on your website as well as on YouTube. Promote your video via social networking and get some buzz! 2. Create a special report. Save your slides as a PDF file by clicking on the File menu and then choosing Save As. Select PDF and you now have a special report that you can give away as a freebie to your list subscribers or sell to the public. 3. Bundle the PDF along with your webinar audio into a package for those who could not attend your presentation live. Not only does this give incentive to people to attend live (which makes for a more exciting presentation) but it also does not alienate people who had other plans. 4. Reuse your branded layout for future presentations. If you’re planning a series of webinars or if people are now offering you speaking gigs elsewhere, stick with your branded design for continuity purposes and for brand name recognition. Designing the slides is half the work, so why not reuse the design? 54