A Quick Tour of PowerPoint 2003
- Launching PowerPoint
- Choosing a Template
- Choosing a Layout
- Creating a Bulleted List
- Creating a Chart
- Choosing a Chart Type
- Formatting a Chart
- Navigating a Presentation
- Saving, Opening, and Closing Presentations
- Printing a Presentation
- Using Normal View
- Using the Outline Pane
- Using Slide Sorter View
- Using Transitions and Animation
- Viewing a Slide Show
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Suppose you need to create a set of charts by the end of the day, but you have never used PowerPoint. Don't panic—just by reading this chapter, you'll learn the most important things you need to know about creating a presentation in PowerPoint. One of the things you might discover is that learning the mechanics of PowerPoint really isn't that hard—it's no wonder that many millions of people use the product. However, you might also discover that learning how to create an attractive and effective presentation is an altogether different challenge—it's no wonder that so many people create so many bad-looking slides.
After taking the quick tour in this chapter, you'll be able to create bulleted lists and charts, format your slides, print them, run an onscreen slide show, and use the Outline and Slide Sorter views to reorganize a presentation.
You'll also learn how to use simple animation, and when to use it effectively.
This chapter gives you the bare-bones information—for details, turn to the referenced chapters. To create presentations that are not overdone and that will not embarrass you takes lots and lots of practice!
Launching PowerPoint
You can launch PowerPoint in a number of ways, depending on how your system is set up. But just about every user can start the program by doing this:
To launch PowerPoint:
- Click the Start button, point to or click All Programs, click Microsoft Office, and then click Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 (Figure 2.1).
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Figure
2.1 Choose Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 from the All Programs menu.
PowerPoint opens, with the Getting Started task pane in the right column (Figure 2.2).
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Figure
2.2 Select the New Presentation task pane to begin working.
The task panes are important elements introduced in PowerPoint 2002. Click the arrow at the top-right corner to see some of the other task panes that are available (Figure 2.3).
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Figure
2.3 Other task panes are available from a drop-down menu.
You will be using some of the other task panes regularly, so take a look at how they work (Figure 2.4). To access task panes when they are closed, simply select View > Task Pane.
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Figure
2.4 The task pane system opens many formatting options.