MS PowerPoint

Build a Presentation

Everyone who know tha basics, can create multimedia presentations using Microsoft PowerPoint. Microsoft PowerPoint is a powerful tool to create professional looking presentations and slide shows. PowerPoint allows you to construct presentations from scratch or by using the easy to use wizard. This tutorial will help you get started with Microsoft PowerPoint and may solve some of your problems.

The fastest, easiest, and safest way to edit the text of your presentation is by working with the outline. Flip into Normal view, choose the Outline tab from the navigation pane on the left side of the screen, and enter or edit text here to quickly build content.

Editing Slides in Outline View

If you have a good idea of what you want to say or if you're willing to use one of Microsoft's ready-made presentations to suggest content the simplest way to get a presentation on its feet in no time is to work directly on the outline. Enter text for the slide's title and body, and then you can select, click and drag, copy, move, and delete, just as you would in any other Office program.

Tips: To maximize the editing area when working with an outline in Normal view, click the divider between the Outline pane and the slide and drag it to the right as far as you can while still being able to see the current slide. If you want to see formatted text in your outline, click the Show Formatting button on the Outlining toolbar.

You can use the Tab key while in Outline view to demote one outline level. When you press the Tab key, PowerPoint demotes the current line of text that is, it moves the current line one level lower in the hierarchy. (You can accomplish the same result by clicking the Demote button on the Outlining toolbar.)

Similarly, you can promote a line one level by pressing Shift+Tab (essentially the "back tab" key). Clicking the Promote button on the Outlining toolbar does the same thing.

Note: The Tab key behaves differently in the outline pane, where it promotes and demotes lines in the presentation's hierarchy. When you're working in the slide pane, a tab is just a tab.

When you promote a line in the outline to the highest level, it becomes the title of a new slide. Thus, a quick and easy way to insert a new slide in a presentation is to press Enter and press Shift+Tab (or click the Promote button) as many times as necessary to reach the top level. (The new slide uses the generic Title and Text layout.)

You can type your entire presentation this way, promoting and demoting as you go: When you type a line at the highest level of the hierarchy, it automatically becomes the title of a new slide; any line below the top level turns into a bullet point (nested however deep you might want) in the slide's text placeholder.

Tips: If your slides start getting too wordy and you want to turn high-level bullet points into slides of their own, select the points (one at a time, holding down the Shift key as you click each one from top to bottom) and promote them to the highest level. PowerPoint automatically turns all of them into slides, with the old high-level bullet points now serving as titles.