Makin' It Better

There are a number of things that you can do to improve a PowerPoint presentation.  We'll focus on some of the key techniques here.

Some of the Tools

This is an outline of what we will cover.

We'll be looking at changing the order of slides, adding your own text (not as regular bullet items), running the spelling checker, enhancing slides with lines and boxes, using callouts, and enhancing your slides with clip art.

Different Views

Remember that you have different layouts so you can view your presentation in ways that support both the creation and editing processes.

Once you have a number of slides in your presentation, you are likely to need to change the order of the slides.

Click on the "slide sorter" view to get started.

Change the Slide Order

The slide sorter view shows you thumbnails for each of the slides in your presentation.  Even through these are very small replicas, you get generally see enough detail that you can identify your slides.

Click and drag a slide to get it into the location you want.  This is just like arranging your slides on a light table.  It is quick and easy.  Get used to doing it.

Notice that this lets you "tune" your talk and you develop the presentation materials.

Supplement with Text

Adding text to your presentation slides is a vital skill.

Unfortunately, the way you do this is not very obvious.  Look for the icon (it looks like a page with a large letter A and some lines that represent text).  (Be careful: you don't want to use the "Word Art" icon.)

 Using the text box icon is relatively straight forward.

• Click on the text box icon to get started.
• Click inside your slide near where you want to place the text.  A small text box will appear that this location.
• You can now start typing.  It works about the same a word processor at this point.
• When you have typed the contents of the text box, click on the margin.  This will let you move the text box or modify the appearance of the text in the text box.

Select Text vs. Text Box

You have to be very careful when handling text boxes.

It appears as though text boxes that are selected have two "states."  Actually, when you click on some text, you select just the text, not the text box.  You can tell this if you look carefully at the outline around the text.  It is "stripes."

If you click on this outline, then you get the other "state" -- you have selected the text box.  The putline now appears as dots or a "cross-hatched" pattern.

You need to be able to distinguish between these two types of selections.  Remember: look carefully at the outline.  Is it strips (text selected) or dots (text box selected).

It makes a big difference.  Let me show you more.

Modify Text

When just the text is selected (you have the surrounding dots), you can do the word process things.

You can add letters and delete them.  You can also click and drag to highlight part of the text and apply the bold, italics and underline formats.

Note that you are working on the details in the text box when just the text is selected.

Modify a Text Box

When you have selected the text box, by clicking on the outline around the text, you will see the dot pattern of the surrounding line.  Look carefully for it.

Now you can move the text box to another location by clicking and dragging anywhere on the dotted outline.

You can change the format of all the text in the text box at once.  This includes the size, style and appearance of the type.

You can also cut the text box and paste it elsewhere.

Note that all these are big operations that you are performing on all the text at one time.  You are treating the text box as a PowerPoint object.

Spelling Check

You should make sure that you use the spelling checker.  It is located on the Tools menu.

Having misspelled words in your presentation is very distracting.

The spelling checker is the same one that is used in the other Microsoft Office applications.