Ressources Powerpoint

1. The Ribbon Interface

PowerPoint creates slides for display (on a screen or through a projector), and also printing. Consequently the PowerPoint interface is mainly concerned with displaying either a single slide for editing or a group of slides for sorting or selecting. PowerPoint 2007 introduced the new ‘ribbon’ interface that replaced the previous menus and toolbars approach. This was a substantial change. PowerPoint 2010 adapted the interface slightly, replacing the obscure ‘Office button’ with the much more obvious File tab and introducing the ability to customise the options available in the ribbon.

In this unit we will look at the basic principles of using the ribbon and show the 2007 and 2010 differences so that the rest of the course will be easy to follow regardless of whether you are a 2007 or 2010 user. We will go on to look at the documents themselves – slides with their outlines and notes – and the different ways of viewing them for editing.

Ribbon

The most obvious change to the major Office applications from their 2003 versions is the replacement of the familiar menu bar/toolbar arrangement with the ribbon. As discussed above there are some changes to the ribbon from 2007 to 2010, in particular the replacement of the Office button by the File tab:

From now on, we will use PowerPoint 2010 for our screenshots and highlight any minor differences in the way the 2007 version works.

Whilst the headings towards the top of the application window may look like the menu options from Office 2003, when you click on one, instead of displaying a dropdown text menu, the appropriate ribbon will appear. In the screens above we are looking at the ‘Home’ ribbon and below we have clicked on the ‘Design’ ribbon tab

As you can see, no menu has appeared but the ribbon area now contains options relevant to Design tasks.

Let’s examine some of the items in the Design ribbon more closely. Whilst the old 2003 toolbars were useful, their functionality was limited – most of the tools were simply buttons with a few drop-downs and the occasional text box.

In the ribbon, moving the mouse over each tool will display a detailed description to explain its use, and most of the tools will display a pictorial menu when clicked.

In this example we have first positioned the mouse over the ‘Background Styles’ option:

As you can see, no menu has appeared but the ribbon area now contains options relevant to Design tasks.

Let’s examine some of the items in the Design ribbon more closely. Whilst the old 2003 toolbars were useful, their functionality was limited – most of the tools were simply buttons with a few drop-downs and the occasional text box.

In the ribbon, moving the mouse over each tool will display a detailed description to explain its use, and most of the tools will display a pictorial menu when clicked.

In this example we have first positioned the mouse over the ‘Background Styles’ option

As we can see, a very informative tip appears telling and showing us what the tool is designed to do. If we now click on the tool, rather than just a text menu, we see a ‘gallery’ of possible style settings with additional options available towards the bottom of the screen

The full functionality of dialog boxes (the detailed options which will be familiar to PowerPoint 2003 users) still exists, but it is positioned as a 'last resort' rather than the main method of accessing many options. Many of the 'control groups' (groupings of buttons/options) in each ribbon have a small icon to the bottom right. This displays the corresponding full dialog screen

In this screen we have highlighted the icon at the bottom of the Design > BackgroundControl group. Clicking here will display the old-style full dialog. It's worth noting that the cosmetics of the dialog boxes are taken from your Windows desktop settings so, if you've stuck with the angular, grey 'Windows Classic' theme, the dialog boxes will stick out like a sore thumb in the redesigned Office 2007/10 screens

Quick Access Toolbar

In Office 2007 (unlike the old toolbars from earlier versions) the ribbons are not easily customisable. You can't just drag tools onto them as you could with a toolbar. 2010 introduces a ribbon customisation feature which we will look at shortly, but even with this change, for most people it is likely that the Quick Access Toolbar will be the main area of customisation.

The Quick Access Toolbar is an area of the PowerPoint interface to which you can add tools from the overall list of PowerPoint.

To move the Quick Access Toolbar, right click in it and choose the appropriate option. You may well prefer to show it ‘Below the ribbon’ as there is more room, it is more visible and quicker to access.

You can add items to the Quick Access Toolbar by right clicking on any option from the Office Button or a ribbon and choosing ‘Add to Quick Access Toolbar’. To include commands that aren’t available elsewhere, right click on the Quick Access Toolbar and choose: ‘Customize Quick Access Toolbar’

Browse the menus of commands with the drop-down ‘Choose commands from:’ (highlighted above), then select the appropriate command and click the Add button to add it to the Quick Access Toolbar.

In order to make it easier to find items in the toolbar it’s a good idea to arrange them logically rather than at random. You can select any item already included in the Quick Access Toolbar and use the buttons on the right to move it up or down in the list of items. Alternatively, you can select the item in the right hand pane that you want your new button to appear below before you click the Add button. You can further structure your toolbar shortcuts by adding .

Particularly if you are a very competent user of previous versions of PowerPoint, the Quick Access Toolbar may be vital in making PowerPoint 2007 and 2010 bearable. Make it an early priority to add the tools you use most often to the Quick Access Toolbar. One of the most irritating aspects of the ribbon is the need to switch ribbons to get at options that would previously have been directly accessible via the toolbars. By adding the most frequently used options to the Quick Access Toolbar you can ensure that they are always one click away regardless of which ribbon is being displayed.

Try A Custom Ribbon

When Office 2007 was launched on a waiting world, the main reason given for no user-customisable ribbon seemed to be the difficulty of supporting a product without a consistent interface. Microsoft have rationalised the change by arguing that most people who changed their toolbars and thereby created a support problem did so by accident. Because, in Office 2010, changing a ribbon has to be a very deliberate action – involving choosing particular options and accepting the changes, there won’t be issues with people accidentally dragging things to the wrong place or closing them altogether. In addition, although you have pretty free access to create and populate your own custom ribbon tabs, what you can do with the built-in tabs is restricted. You can’t add commands to built-in tab groups and you can’t remove individual tools within a built-in tab group. However, you can add, move and remove whole tab groups and indeed move and hide whole tabs. There is also an option to reset all changes back to the original setting either for a selected ribbon tab, or for all ribbon and quick access toolbar customisations.

Let’s have a look at how to go about customising the ribbon. Right-clicking anywhere in the ribbon brings up a menu that includes the new ‘Customise the ribbon’ option. This takes you to a screen similar to the existing ’Customise the Quick Access Toolbar’ screen, but displaying the current ribbon contents

In the ‘Customise the Ribbon’ column each ribbon tab can be moved by selecting and using the Up/Down buttons to the right. You can also move items by dragging them within the Customise the Ribbon section, including dragging commands from one custom group to another. The expand button (little ‘+’ sign) to the left of each tab/group allows you to show the detailed contents, and the check box toggles the display of the whole tab. Beneath the view of the current ribbon options are buttons that create new custom tabs and new groups within tabs as well as modifying the currently selected item using the ‘rename’ button which allows you to choose different icons for groups and commands as well as to rename commands, groups and tabs.

One really useful feature of the new customisation options is the ability to ‘Export’ the combined ribbon and Quick Access Toolbar customisations to a file which you, or another user, can Import. However, there isn’t an easy way to associate particular documents with a specific customisation file.

Office Button/File tab

This is the other major change in the user interface between Office 2007 and 2010. Given the stated aim of the Office 2007 ribbon interface was to make everything more visible and easier to find, it seemed perverse to hide the ‘File’ commands behind an anonymous circle that looked more like a logo than a button. PowerPoint 2010 has corrected this aberration by replacing the Office Button with a File tab on the main ribbon interface.

It is not just the button/tab itself that has changed. The file tab now contains much more information than was previously the case. The new information screens are known as ‘backstage view’.

In both versions this is where you will find your application Options and an enhanced ‘Recent’ list allowing up to 50 most recent documents to be viewed. It also allows documents to be ‘pinned’ to the list to stop them falling off the bottom

PowerPoint 2010 includes a new document recovery option. In the bottom right-hand corner of this screen is the Recover Unsaved Presentations button. This gives you a chance of recovering a Presentation that you have forgotten to save before exiting PowerPoint. While it can be very useful as a last resort, it’s not a good idea to rely on this option!

Contextual Tabs

As part of the ribbon functionality, Office 2007/10 features 'contextual tabs'. These tabs appear when particular objects, such as tables or charts are selected. In the example below, clicking in a Text Box has changed the ribbon to display the 'Drawing Tools', Format tab

These contextual tabs replace the floating toolbars and some of the task panes that earlier versions of Office used. Task panes haven’t disappeared altogether, but they are used a lot less than previously (there are some examples of task panes shown in the screenshot below). In many cases the additional functionality of the ribbon has removed the need for a task pane.

For those task panes that have survived, such as the Clip Art and the Research pane, they no longer appear automatically but only when a specific option is selected. It is now possible to have several task panes displayed at the same time

Context menus

A right mouse click will still bring up shortcut or context menus and a mini toolbar. These have been enhanced to include many of the graphical features of the ribbon

Mini toolbar

In the above screen the 'mini toolbar' is displayed above the context menu. It contains the most commonly used formatting commands.

Status Bar

The Status Bar which normally sits at the bottom of the window being ignored, has also been improved. The view and zoom controls are now included towards the right of the bar, and right clicking anywhere in the bar provides access to the 'Customize Status Bar' menu which allows you to control exactly what is displayed in this area.

Views

To the bottom right of the screen is a set of tools to control the views – in PowerPoint the available views are (from left to right):

• Normal
• Slide Sorter
• Reading – (PowerPoint 2010 only)
• Slide Show

We will explain these views later in this unit.

To the right of the view buttons is a ‘zoom slider’ that controls the percentage zoom of the view.

Keyboard Shortcuts

In versions of Office prior to 2007, the 'ALT' key could be used with the underlined letters of menu options to select them. Most of these sequences still work in Office 2007 and 2010, in spite of there being no menus. In addition, pressing the ALT key will display a new set of shortcut options for accessing tabs and ribbon controls as 'overlays' as in the example below

The Ctrl+ keyboard shortcuts continue to work in PowerPoint 2007 and 2010 as they did before, and the tool tips include shortcut key assignments where available

Smart tags

Little icons appear by your cursor when you perform certain actions in PowerPoint. For example, when you 'Paste' something from the clipboard onto a slide a smart tag will appear which when clicked will present a list of choices associated with the action

2. What Is A PowerPoint Presentation?

This unit teaches the basic uses of that interface as well as providing an overview of what a PowerPoint presentation actually is. This is intended as grounding for beginners before proceeding to the more advanced units.

Speaker Support

Originally, presentations were mainly created as visual aids for some sort of talk or lecture delivered by a speaker. Before portable computers became commonplace, slides were real slides – either photographically produced 35mm film slides used with a projector, or transparent ‘foils’ laid on an overhead projector. Now that we have notebooks and data projectors, such presentations are almost invariably delivered directly from a presentation application such as PowerPoint.

Using a computer rather than a photographic slide or print out means that presentations can much more easily include different types of content such as sounds, transitions, animations and videos.

With the increased capabilities of computer-based presentations, the human speaker is no longer essential. Presentations can be designed to run unattended – either revolving endlessly or with some user interaction – and they can also serve as documents in their own right (taking the place of a conventional text-based report).

The common element is that the presentation will generally be designed to convey information as clearly and persuasively as possible to an audience.

Slides

Where a Word document has pages and an Excel workbook has worksheets, a PowerPoint presentation has slides. A slide can just contain text, or can include pictures or one or more videos, or a combination of different types of content. Slides can start off as a completely blank canvas for you to place objects wherever you like or, more commonly, will have some background design and even common content such as an organisation’s logo and details.

Graphics

Because presentations are frequently delivered to large audiences the content tends to be less detailed than Word documents or Excel spreadsheets. Instead, graphics and effects are used to add impact. For this reason, Graphics are a far more significant component of PowerPoint than they are of Word or Excel for example. Of the default PowerPoint ribbon tabs, four are principally concerned with objects or effects:

• Insert
• Design
• Transitions
• Animations

3. A First Slide

New slide

Before we go on to consider the underlying structure of a PowerPoint presentation, we’ll just look at an individual slide and insert some typical content types.

When you first launch PowerPoint you should see a new, blank presentation with a ‘Title’ slide already visible and waiting for your content. We’ll just follow the instructions on the slide itself and type in a title and subtitle

Now we can click on the ‘New Slide’ button on the Home ribbon tab, or just use the Control+m keyboard shortcut, to create a new ‘Title and Content’ slide. You will see a set of six icons in the centre of the content area, together with a ‘Click to add text’ prompt. We will examine the different content types represented by the icons in future units but, for now, we’ll type in some text bullet points and then use the in the Drawing group of the Home ribbon tab to add some simple graphics.

Text

A Title and Content slide includes a text ‘box’ which defaults to displaying text as bullet points. We can just type each of our points in followed by the Enter or Return key and PowerPoint will create our bullet points for us

Once we start entering text, PowerPoint assumes our ‘box’ is to be used as a text box and stops displaying the icons for the other content types.

Because our text is formatted as bullet points, we can demote and promote lines of text to different indentation levels using the Increase List Level and Decrease List Level buttons in the Paragraph group of the Home ribbon tab, or by using the Tab key increase or Shift+Tab to decrease the list level. If you use either of the ‘Increase’ options repeatedly you will see the text go down through the various list levels. Here we have just left our Text and Shapes headings at level 1 and increased the individual topics by one level

We have access to the same range of text formatting options as in the other Office applications either from the Font group of the Home ribbon or using the ‘mini toolbar’ that appears automatically when we select text

Here we have selected the word Typing and set the following font attributes:

• Font size
• Font colour
• Bold
• Italic

The mini toolbar also includes the Format Painter command which allows us to select any text that we have already formatted, click on the ‘painter’ and then drag it over other text to ‘paint’ that text with the copied formatting

Incidentally, there is a useful keyboard shortcut that works in Word and Outlook as well, to reset the formatting – select the text and use Control+Space to remove all the font formatting that you have applied in one go, without resetting the list levels.

So far we have been using the default placeholder defined automatically by PowerPoint when we started typing text.  We can insert text boxes of any shape or size and position them where we like on the slide. This is covered in more detail later in the course in the unit called Text Boxes.

Shapes

In the slide pictured below we have used the Shapes button in the Drawing group of the Home ribbon to display a drop-down gallery of shapes

We have first selected a right-arrow shape and drawn and dragged an appropriately sized rectangle on our slide to create the arrow, then down the same with the down arrow. When you select a shape, circles and squares will appear at the corners and edges of the shape – you can click on these and drag them to change the size and proportions. The green circle allows you to rotate the shape, and the yellow diamonds to change the proportions of the shape components

Here we have rotated the shape and then used the yellow diamond by the arrow-head to make the arrow-head shallower and the yellow diamond at the base to make the line narrower

We can move a single object by selecting it and then clicking in the object, away from all the size/shape handles. A four arrow headed cursor should appear and we can drag this to where we want to position our object. We can also use normal Copy and Paste buttons or keyboard shortcuts to copy our object.

We can select multiple shapes and other objects either by ‘drawing’ (pointing, clicking and dragging on the slide) a selection box that completely encloses them

or by holding down Shift and clicking on multiple objects.  When multiple objects are selected, formatting and size operations will affect them all in one go

Finally in this unit: once multiple objects have been selected, you can use the ‘Group’ option in the Home > Drawing > Arrange dropdown to group them together so that they behave as a single object. If you select a grouped object then the Arrange dropdown will display an ‘Ungroup’ option to allow you to restore them to separate objects that can be edited individually. Once ‘ungrouped’, selecting any previously grouped object will allow you to select ‘regroup’ from the Arrange options to restore your grouping.

Sample templates

As well as starting your slide design with a blank presentation, you can also start with an existing ‘template’. The Unit Templates and Slide Masters will look at setting up your own templates, but PowerPoint includes a set of Sample Templates and access to dozens of templates from Office.com that you might want to explore. You can find these templates in File, New or, for PowerPoint 2007, Office button, New.

4. Objects

In this unit we will look at the main types of content that might be included on a slide.

Getting Started explained how to add text and simple shapes to a slide. Here we will insert a new ‘Title and Content’ slide but, rather than type in any text, we will look at the 6 content icons that appear in the middle of our slide. In this unit we will just cover the basic uses of these content types. Later units will examine their more detailed properties and capabilities.

The six content icons allow us to add the following types of object:

• Table
• Chart
• Graphic
• Picture
• Clip art
• Media clip (movie)

We will set up six new slides, each including the different content types in turn.

Table

For each of our new slides we will type in an appropriate title and then click on the relevant content type icon. First we want to insert a table. This is often used to present financial information in a series of columns and rows but can be used whenever you need to include text or numbers in a grid

For a table you will be asked to choose the number of columns and rows

When you click 'OK' the table will be created ready for you to enter the required text

Chart

Charts are an alternative way to present numeric information and are particularly useful when you need to show the underlying message revealed by a large set of numbers or statistics

For a chart you first need to choose the type of chart. (Of course, Excel is the real ‘home’ of the charting functionality in the Office applications and our sister course on Excel goes into far greater detail on the whole area of creating and using charts.)

Once you have selected the most appropriate chart type to convey your message, you will see an Excel spreadsheet containing some default data that the chart is based on

You will need to overwrite the data with your own data. You can delete or insert columns or rows as required, then resize the data range by dragging the bottom right hand corner of the blue rectangle

Your PowerPoint chart will show the new data

Graphic

SmartArt Graphics have evolved from the rather more limited business diagrams available in Office 2003 and before. Whenever you want to present information diagrammatically, or in any kind of structured way, it’s probably worth considering SmartArt

Here is the gallery of potential SmartArt diagrams. Note that the ‘Picture’ category was introduced in the 2010 version and wasn’t available in the 2007 release

You can choose whichever type of graphic you want. Here we have chosen an organisation chart from the 'Hierarchy' section

SmartArt has its own set of editing and formatting tools included in the Design and Format contextual ribbons which appear whenever a SmartArt graphic is selected

Picture From File

You can use several methods to include a picture on your slide. If the picture exists as a file somewhere on your system you can use the ‘Picture from File’ option. There is also an indexed ‘Clip Art’ gallery that includes a wide range of different content types, including pictures. The benefit of using the gallery is the ability to search for a relevant picture – so, if you want to emphasise a point you are making about ‘change’ you could search the Clip Art gallery for ‘change’. You can also paste any copied picture or graphic directly to a slide from the clipboard (e.g. by pressing Ctrl V).

In this unit, we are covering the content icons so we’ll start with the Picture From File option

We then need to browse to locate the picture to include

Just like the SmartArt graphic, the Picture Tools options have their own ribbon and are common to the other office applications

Here's an example of some of the effects available. Here we have used the Recolor option, Brightness, a Picture Style and then Reflection and 3D Rotation effects

Clip Art

Here we have used the Clip Art task pane ‘Search for:’ box to find an illustration of ‘change’

Once again the Picture Tools ribbon tab is available to edit our object.

Media Clip

Just like when inserting a picture from a file, the ‘Insert Media Clip’ lets you browse through your system to find the video or movie file that you want to use.

There is a Video Tools ribbon to control the Format of the video and a Playback ribbon to set playback options

5. Slide Design

If you only create the occasional, simple presentation then you probably don’t need to know a great deal more than this about the underlying structure of a presentation. However, if you are a more frequent PowerPoint user or need to create more elaborate presentations, then an understanding of themes, templates and slide masters (all of which are ways of applying formatting styles automatically to all your slides) could save you considerable time and improve the consistency of your presentations.

Before we begin looking at the structure in detail, it’s worth pointing out that slides are not the only components of a PowerPoint presentation. You can also include notes and format the way notes and slides are combined in printed handouts to accompany a presentation.

Apart from the text and other objects we choose to add to our slide, its appearance is affected by several other PowerPoint features. We’ll start on the Design ribbon tab.

Page Setup

This is the first group in this ribbon. It contains the Page Setup and Slide Orientation tools. Page Setup allows you to configure the dimensions of your slides. You might want to do this to match the output format that your presentation is destined for. If you intend to print the presentation rather than display it, you can choose the normal paper sizes: for example A4 and A3 or even more extreme options such as a long thin ‘banner’. More commonly, you would choose one of the various On-screen show formats. As you can see, you can also change the orientation (portrait/landscape) here

Themes

A theme is just a set of formatting rules that PowerPoint will apply to objects in your slide.  Themes comprise four separate sets of elements:

• Colours – 4 text and background colours, 6 ‘accent’ colours and 2 for hyperlinks
• Fonts – 1 font for titles and another for body text
• Effects – lines, fills and effects for shapes and similar objects
• A Background style and background graphics

Office 2007 and 2010 include an extensive set of built-in themes but if you use one of these, there is always the risk that someone else presenting at the same occasion might have chosen the same one. It is easy enough to set up and save your own theme. One of the advantages of using themes is that, if you do create a personal theme or one for your organisation, then you can apply the same theme to content in the other Office applications such as Word documents, Excel spreadsheets or even emails.

To apply an existing theme, just click the required theme from the Themes Gallery.

You will notice that, as you hover over different themes, PowerPoint shows the effect of choosing that theme as a ‘live preview’ for the current slide

To customise an existing theme, or create your own custom theme, you can use the options to the right of the Themes gallery in the Themes group to choose different sets of colours, fonts and effects and the Background Styles option in the Background group to choose the background

For Colours, Fonts and Background Styles you can create your own settings as well as choosing from the built in lists. So, for example’ if you had a corporate colour scheme, you could select the Colours option, choose the ‘Create New Theme Colours’ option at the bottom of the dropdown list and choose each of the 12 colours for you colour scheme

Once you have set all the elements of your theme as you want theme, you can save the current theme as a new custom theme for use throughout Office: just select the ‘Save Current Theme’ option at the bottom of the Themes gallery drop down list and you will be prompted for a name for your new theme file which, by default, will be saved in the TemplatesDocument Themes folder.

There is one element of Themes that we have not covered. A Theme can include background graphics as well as the Background Styles. Background graphics are added and edited as part of the Slide Master which is what we will look at next.

6. Formatting Follows Function

The architectural maxim ‘form follows function’ has been an important influence on product design for over 100 years.  Applying it to design of slides can help make slides clearer and more effective – you should think about your slide’s layout in terms of the central message you want it to convey.

In practice, this means that we want the formatting and layout of our slides to emphasise the content which is most important.   This could mean anything from formatting key words in bold

…to structuring the whole slide in a way that supports your message…

Putting this principle into practice usually just means thinking carefully before you launch into your slide.  Beware of accepting the default formatting and layout options offered by PowerPoint – they might be right for your message, or they might not.  Here are a few examples where forethought can improve a slide:

• Order tables of numbers or charts in descending size order (e.g. largest cost item at the top, smallest at the bottom).
• Again, in tables of quantities or charts, think about grouping insignificant categories as ‘other’ so as not to swamp the slide.
• Order bullet points so the order is logical (e.g. most important point first; last bullet leads on to next slide).

Less can be more

Important features of slides can be made to stand out by de-emphasising less important features.  This approach can lead to clean slides because it reduces overall the amount of detail in the slide, so there is less for the eye and brain to process.

In this example we are thinking of including a graph in a slide

The grid is very dominant, and the thick line through the points of data makes them hard to see.  By de-emphasising the grid, and replacing the thick line through the points with a thin trend line[1] we can make the data clearer.