Ressources Powerpoint

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