PowerPoint^®2010 All-in-One For Dummies^®

PowerPoint® 2010 All-in-One For Dummies®

Published byWiley Publishing, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030-5774

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Copyright © 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2010925704

ISBN: 978-0-470-50099-6

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

About the Author

Peter Weverka is the bestselling author of several For Dummies books, as well as other computer books about various topics. Peter’s humor-ous articles and stories — none related to computers, thankfully — have appeared in Harper’s, SPY, The Argonaut, and other magazines for grown-ups.

Dedication

For Aiko Sofia and Henry Gabriel.

Author’s Acknowledgments

This book owes a lot to many hard-working people at Wiley Publishing in Indiana. I would like once again to thank Steve Hayes for his good advice, his encouragement, and the opportunity to write another For Dummies book.

It was a pleasure — once again — to work with Susan Christophersen, who knows the editing craft as well as any editor I have ever worked with.

Technical editor Joyce Neilson made sure that all the explanations in this book are indeed accurate, and I would like to thank her for her excellent work and suggestions for improving this book. I would also like to thank Rich Tennant for the witty cartoons you will find on the pages of this book, and Estalita Slivoskey for writing the index.

These people at the Wiley offices in Indianapolis gave their all to this book, and I want to acknowledge them by name: Carl Byers, Melanie Hoffman, and Patrick Redmond.

Finally, I owe my family — Sofia, Henry, and Addie — a debt for tolerating my vampire-like working hours and eerie demeanor at the breakfast table. How will I ever repay you?

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments at http://dummies.custhelp.com. For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002.

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Acquisitions and Editorial

Project and Copy Editor: Susan Christophersen

Executive Editor: Steve Hayes

Technical Editor: Joyce Nielsen

Editorial Manager: Jodi Jensen

Editorial Assistant: Amanda Graham

Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case

Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)

Composition Services

Project Coordinator: Patrick Redmond

Layout and Graphics: Carl Byers

Proofreader: Lisa Young Stiers

Indexer: Estalita Slivoskey

Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies

Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher

Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher

Mary Bednarek, Executive Acquisitions Director

Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director

Publishing for Consumer Dummies

Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher

Composition Services

Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

Introduction

Only a few years ago, PowerPoint was a novelty. Then, all of a sudden, speakers started giving PowerPoint presentations at conferences and seminars. Audiences welcomed PowerPoint. The slides made presentations more interesting and lively. You could gaze at the slides while you listened to the speaker. Speakers — especially speakers who weren’t comfortable talking before an audience — liked PowerPoint, too. PowerPoint took away some of the burdens of public speaking. The program made it easier to speak in front of strangers.

PowerPoint became a staple of conferences, seminars, and corporate boardrooms. Then the novelty wore off, and audiences started grumbling. The presentations were too much alike. You saw bulleted list after bulleted list. Presentations followed the same tired formula — introductory slides followed by “key point” slides following by a tidy conclusion. Writing in the New Yorker, Ian Parker declared that PowerPoint is “a social instrument, turning middle managers into bullet-point dandies.” Edward Tufte, professor of information design at Yale University, lamented the program’s “charjunk” and “PowerPointPhluff.” In a Wired essay called “PowerPoint Is Evil,” he wrote, “PowerPoint style routinely disrupts, dominates, and trivializes content.”

Despite these complaints, speakers have not abandoned PowerPoint, and audiences still welcome it. But expectations have risen. Audiences expect the presenter to use PowerPoint skillfully and creatively. The audience knows when a presenter is just going through the motions and when a presenter is using PowerPoint to explore a subject and show it in a new light.

This book was written with the goal of showing you how to use the PowerPoint software, but also how to use it with skill and imagination. I tell you which buttons to click to complete tasks, but I also show you how PowerPoint can be a means of communicating and connecting with your audience. I show you how to build a persuasive presentation, one that brings the audience around to your side. No matter how much experience you have with PowerPoint, this book will make you a better, more proficient, more confident user of the program.

What’s in This Book, Anyway?

This book is jam-packed with how-to’s, advice, shortcuts, and tips for getting the most out of PowerPoint. Here’s a bare outline of the seven parts of this book:

♦ Book I: Getting Started in PowerPoint: Explains the PowerPoint interface and how to get around on-screen, as well as basic tasks such as how to create presentations and view presentations in different ways. You can also find advice for formulating and designing presentations.

♦ Book II: Building Your Presentation: Shows how to create, manipulate, and format slides, as well as how to handle the master slides and master styles that make it possible to format many slides simultaneously. You discover how to design the look of your presentation and enter lists, text, and text boxes.

♦ Book III: Communicating with Tables, Charts, and Diagrams: Explores the many techniques for creating, designing, and formatting tables, charts, and diagrams.

♦ Book IV: Embellishing Your Slides with Graphics and Shapes: Demonstrates how to create lines, shapes, text-box shapes, and WordArt images. You also find out how to adorn a presentation with photographs, graphics, and clip-art images.

♦ Book V: Flash and Dash: Shows how to take advantage of transitions and animations, as well as make video and sound a part of a presentation.

♦ Book VI: Giving a Presentation: Explores all the different ways to deliver a presentation — in person, as a self-running presentation, as a user-run presentation, and as a video. You find out how to write slide notes and print presentations, as well as deliver them over the Internet and on CDs.

♦ Book VII: PowerPoint for Power Users: Looks into customizing PowerPoint, designing templates, collaborating with others, linking and embedding, and understanding macros.

What Makes This Book Special

You are holding in your hands a computer book designed to make learning PowerPoint as easy and comfortable as possible. Besides the fact that this book is easy to read, it’s different from other books about PowerPoint.

Easy-to-look-up information

This book is a reference, and that means that readers have to be able to find out how to do something quickly. To that end, I have taken great pains to make sure that the material in this book is well organized and easy to find. The descriptive headings help you find information quickly. The bulleted and numbered lists make accomplishing a task simpler. The tables make options easier to understand.

I want you to be able to look down the page and see in a heading or list the name of the topic that concerns you. I want you to be able to find what you need quickly. Compare the table of contents in this book to the book next to it on the bookstore shelf. This book is better organized than the others.

A task-oriented approach

Most computer books describe what the software is, but this book shows you how to use the software. I assume that you came to this book because you want to know how to do something — animate a slide, create a chart, design a look for your presentation. You came to the right place. This book shows you how to make PowerPoint work for you.

Meaningful screen shots

The screen shots in this book show only the part of the screen that illustrates what is being explained in the text. When an explanation refers to one part of the screen, only that part of the screen is shown. I took great care to make sure that the screen shots serve to help you understand the PowerPoint features and how they work.

Foolish Assumptions

Please forgive me, but I made some foolish assumptions about you, the reader of this book. I assumed that:

♦ You own a copy of PowerPoint 2010, the latest version of PowerPoint, and you have installed it on your computer.

♦ You use the Windows operating system. Even if yours is an old version of Windows, all the methods in this book apply.

♦ You are kind to foreign tourists and small animals.

Conventions Used in This Book

I want you to understand all the instructions in this book, and in that spirit, I’ve adopted a few conventions.

Where you see boldface letters or numbers in this book, it means to type the letters or numbers. For example, “Enter 25 in the Percentage text box” means to do exactly that: Enter the number 25.

Sometimes two tabs on the ribbon have the same name. To distinguish tabs with the same name from one another, I sometimes include one tab’s “Tools” heading in parentheses if there could be any confusion about which tab I’m referring to. For example, when you see the words “(Table Tools) Design tab,” I’m referring to the Design tab for creating tables, not the Design tab for changing a slide’s appearance. (Book I, Chapter 3 describes the ribbon and the tabs in detail.)

To show you how to step through command sequences, I use the ⇒ symbol. For example, you can click the File tab and choose Share⇒Create a Video to create a video of a presentation. The ⇒ symbol is just a shorthand method of saying “Choose Share and then choose Create a Video.”

To give most commands, you can press combinations of keys. For example, pressing Ctrl+S saves the file you’re working on. In other words, you can hold down the Ctrl key and press the S key to save a file. Where you see Ctrl+, Alt+, or Shift+ and a key name or key names, press the keys simultaneously.

Yet another way to give a command is to click a button. When I tell you to click a button, you see a small illustration of the button in the margin of this book (unless the button is too large to fit in the margin). The button shown here is the Save button, the one you can click to save a presentation.

Icons Used in This Book

To help you get the most out of this book, I’ve placed icons here and there. Here’s what the icons mean:

Next to the Tip icon, you can find shortcuts and tricks of the trade to make your visit to PowerPoint Land more enjoyable.

Where you see the Warning icon, tread softly and carefully. It means that you are about to do something that you may regret later.

When I explain a juicy fact that bears remembering, I mark it with a Remember icon. When you see this icon, prick up your ears. You will discover something that you need to remember throughout your adventures with PowerPoint.

When I am forced to describe high-tech stuff, a Technical Stuff icon appears in the margin. You don’t have to read what’s beside the Technical Stuff icons if you don’t want to, although these technical descriptions often help you understand how a software feature works.

Good Luck, Reader!

If you have a comment about this book, a question, or a shortcut you would like to share with me, send an e-mail message to me at this address: peterwev@gmail.com. Be advised that I usually can’t answer e-mail right away because I’m too darned busy. I do appreciate comments and questions, however, because they help me pass my dreary days in captivity.

Book I

Getting Started in PowerPoint

Contents at a Glance

Chapter 1: Introducing PowerPoint

PowerPoint Slides

Some PowerPoint Jargon

PowerPoint as a Communication Tool

A Whirlwind Tour of PowerPoint

Chapter 2: PowerPoint Nuts and Bolts

Starting PowerPoint

Creating a New Presentation

Saving Your Presentation Files

Navigating the Save As and Open Dialog Boxes

Opening and Closing Presentations

Entering the Document Properties

Shortcut Commands Worth Knowing

Chapter 3: Finding Your Way around the PowerPoint Screen

A Brief Geography Lesson

Knowing Your Way around the PowerPoint Interface

Zooming In, Zooming Out

Getting a Better View of Your Work

Hiding and Displaying the Slides Pane and Notes Pane

Displaying, Hiding, and Reading the Ruler

Chapter 4: Planning Ahead for a Solid Presentation

Formulating Your Presentation

Designing Your Presentation

Delivering Your Presentation

Chapter 1: Introducing PowerPoint

In This Chapter

Taking a peek at PowerPoint

Understanding PowerPoint jargon

Communicating by way of PowerPoint presentations

Taking a quick tour of the program

In this short chapter, I take you to the end of a pier, briefly explain what swimming is, and push you in the water. As you thrash about, I tell you what a PowerPoint presentation is and explain some PowerPoint jargon. Then I fish you out of the water and take you on a whirlwind tour of PowerPoint. By the time you finish reading this chapter, you will know what creating a PowerPoint presentation entails.

PowerPoint Slides

Figure 1-1 (top) shows the PowerPoint window. That thing in the middle is a slide, PowerPoint’s word for an image that you show your audience. Surrounding the slide are many tools for entering text and decorating slides. When the time comes to show your slides, you dispense with the tools and make the slide fill the screen, as shown in Figure 1-1 (bottom). Throughout this book, you will find instructions for making slides and for constructing a presentation, the PowerPoint word that describes all the slides, from first to last, that you show to your audience.

Some PowerPoint Jargon

To make PowerPoint do your bidding, you need to know a little jargon:

♦ Presentation: All the slides, from start to finish, that you show your audience. Sometimes presentations are called “slide shows.” Presentations are saved in presentation files (.pptx files).

♦ Slides: The images you create with PowerPoint. During a presentation, slides appear on-screen one after the other. Don’t be put off by the word slide and dreary memories of sitting through your uncle’s vacation slide-show. You don’t need a slide projector to show these slides. You can now plug a laptop or other computer into special monitors that display PowerPoint slides. (Book II, Chapter 1 describes how to create slides.)

♦ Notes: Printed pages that you, the speaker, write and print so that you know what to say during a presentation. Only the speaker sees notes. (Book VI, Chapter 2 explains notes.)

♦ Handout: Printed pages that you may give to the audience after a presentation. A handout shows the slides in the presentation. Handouts are also known by the somewhat derogatory term “leave-behinds.” (Book VI, Chapter 2 explains handouts.)

PowerPoint as a Communication Tool

PowerPoint isn’t just a speaker’s aid, but a means of communicating something to an audience — an idea, a business plan, a marketing strategy. PowerPoint has become so popular in part because it relieves the burden of public speaking. A nervous public speaker (and who isn’t a nervous public speaker?) can avert the attention of the audience to the slides and allow the slides to carry the day. But those slides in and of themselves can be great means of communication. PowerPoint offers numerous ways to communicate with an audience above and beyond what can be said in words:

♦ Colors: Your color choices set the tone and suggest what you want to convey in your presentation. Book II, Chapter 3 explains how to choose colors; Book VII, Chapter 2 describes how to incorporate a company’s colors (and logo) in a presentation.

♦ Photographs and other images: A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. Spare yourself from having to speak thousands of words by including pictures in your presentation. Book IV, Chapters 3 and 4 explain how to grace a slide with pictures and clip-art images.

♦ Tables: Support your proposal with table data. No one will be able to refute you. Book III, Chapter 1 explains how to create tables.

♦ Charts: For comparing and presenting data, nothing beats a chart. Book III, Chapter 2 explains charts.

♦ Diagrams: With diagrams, the audience can literally visualize a rela-tionship, concept, or idea. Book III, Chapter 3 explains how to create diagrams.

♦ Shapes and text-box shapes: You can use lines, shapes, and text box shapes (shapes with words on them) to illustrate your ideas. Book IV, Chapter 1 shows how to draw lines and shapes.

♦ Sound and video: Include sound and video to make your presentation a feast for the ears and eyes. Book V explains sound and video.

A Whirlwind Tour of PowerPoint

To help you understand what you’re getting into, the rest of this chapter provides a whirlwind tour of PowerPoint. It explains what creating a presentation entails, from inserting the first slide to putting on the finishing touches. Better fasten your safety belt.

Creating the slides

After you create a new presentation, your next task is to insert the slides (see Book II, Chapter 1). As shown in Figure 1-2, PowerPoint offers many preformatted slide layouts. These layouts are available on the New Slide drop-down list, the drop-down list you open when you want to insert a slide. Each layout is designed for presenting information a certain way.

As you create slides, you can jot down notes in the Notes pane. You can use the notes later on to formulate your presentation and decide what you’ll say to your audience while each slide is on-screen.

To help complete tasks, you can change views. Figure 1-2 shows the PowerPoint window in Slide Sorter view. This view is best for moving, copying, and deleting slides. PowerPoint offers the View tab and View buttons for changing your view of a presentation. The program offers many different views, each designed to help with a different task.

Designing your presentation

The next step is to think about the appearance of your presentation (see Book II, Chapter 3). Figure 1-3 shows the Design tab, where you make most of the decisions that pertain to the presentation’s look. Starting here, you can change the slides’ colors and backgrounds. You can also choose a new “theme” for your presentation — an all-encompassing design that applies to all (or most of) the slides. If you’re the type of person who doesn’t run with the herd, you can overhaul one of these themes and in effect redesign it by switching to Slide Master view and tinkering with the master slides (see Book II, Chapter 2).

Choose a design for your presentation early on. The fonts, graphics, shapes, tables, and charts you put in your presentation have to fit the design. If you change designs after you’ve created the majority of your slides, you may have to choose new font colors and graphics. You may have to redesign your tables, charts, and diagrams as well because they don’t fit into the new design you chose.

Inserting tables, charts, diagrams, and shapes

A PowerPoint presentation should be more than a loose collection of bulleted lists. Starting on the Insert tab, you can place tables (see Book III, Chapter 1), charts (Book III, Chapter 2), and diagrams (Book III, Chapter 3) on slides. You can also adorn your slides with text boxes, WordArt images, and shapes (see Book IV, Chapter 1). And when you include a bulleted or numbered list, you can employ nonstandard bullets and numbering schemes to make your lists a little different from everybody else’s (see Book II, Chapter 5).

Use your imagination. Try to take advantage of all the features that PowerPoint provides for communicating with an audience.

“Animating” your slides

As I mentioned earlier, PowerPoint slides can play video and sound (see Book V). You can also enliven a presentation by “animating” it (see Book V, Chapter 1). Starting on the Transitions tab, you can make slide items — bulleted lists, shapes, and clip art — arrive and leave the screen from different directions. Starting on the Animations tab, you can make the items on a slide move on the screen.

Showing your presentation

During a presentation, you can draw on the slides, as shown in Figure 1-4. You can also blank the screen, show slides out of order, and detour your presentation into a customized slide show (see Book VI, Chapter 1). Most presentations are made to be delivered in person by a speaker, but you can deliver presentations from afar by choosing commands on the Slide Show tab. These kinds of presentations can run in your absence:

♦ Self-running presentation: A presentation that runs on its own and can be exhibited at a trade show or other public place (see Book VI, Chapter 3).

♦ User-run presentation: A presentation that others can run. Special buttons permit individuals to go from slide to slide (see Book VI, Chapter 4).

♦ A handout: A printed copy of a presentation (see Book VI, Chapter 2).

♦ A CD: A packaged CD copy of a presentation that others can show on their computers (and you can take on the road). People who don’t have PowerPoint can view presentations after they are packed for a CD (see Book VI, Chapter 5).

♦ A video presentation: A presentation recorded in a video that others can play in their video players (see Book VI, Chapter 5).

I hope you enjoyed this tour of PowerPoint. Before you disembark, please check your surroundings to make sure you haven’t left anything on the bus. Enjoy your stay in PowerPoint Land.