PowerPoint is a software program, which can be used with the help of digital projector along with computers in visual presentation of any subject. This article will tell you how to use PowerPoint on your computer easily. In a PowerPoint each page is represented as slide and moving each slide is like turning the page of a book. These slides are useful for presentations, because they can support the speaker with his ideas and sharpen the vision of the audience.
- When you open PowerPoint, in order to start the presentation, click ‘new slide’ in the ‘insert’ menu and another method is to click new slide that can be seen in the right most corner. As a default, you can see a white screened slide which is asking for a title and subtitle of the project.
- In the ‘View’ menu, by clicking ‘Master’ and the ‘slide master’, you can make any alterations to your presentation. A small toolbox will appear, which helps to rename or preserve master or insert new title to the master.
- The menu ‘View’ will provide a number of ways to look at the slides, like ‘normal view’ including thumbnail in the left and slide in the right, ‘slide sorter’ where slides will look like thumbnails in an array and ‘notes view’ where you can view description text based on the subject / picture.
- Task pane option in the ‘view’ menu will list the major tasks included which will appear in the right side of the PowerPoint .It may include slide design involving design templates, color schemes ,animation schemes and slide layout, custom animation, insert clipart, slide transition etc.
- There are already built in design templates in the PowerPoint, which can be used for presentation purpose or you can customize your own design. You can also search for a template from the web.
- ‘Slide layout’ from the ‘format’ menu includes Text layout, Content Layout ,Content and text Layout and Other Layout, which can also be obtained by clicking ‘slide layout’ in the task pane seen in the right. Where text allows only text, content and text allows any content (picture, chart, diagram etc.) along with the text in the slide.
- Inserting a picture can be done by clicking the picture from the ‘insert’ menu, else searching for the picture with ‘insert clipart’, if name is already known .We can use ‘Content Layout’ and ‘insert new slide’ and with the icon, can get the picture from file, clipart, chart/organization chart, table, media clip etc .We can insert text using ‘textbox’ even in the middle of designing to a slide if it necessitates.
- With the help of ‘font’ from the ‘format’ menu, style and size of font can be chosen, while ‘background’ will help in filling the background and foreground colors and custom color chosen will make the presentation more impressive.
- Other features of slide design include Color schemes and Animation schemes. Color Schemes help in filling or updating the color of the chart chosen with new color, which will harmonize the background color of the slide automatically.
- Animation schemes are of three modes- subtle, moderate and exciting in which subtle mode gives effects like fade in and dim, random bars etc. while moderate mode will provide ascend, rise up etc. Exciting mode involves ellipse motion, float etc. These entire Animation schemes will affect only the text or content and not the slide as a whole. Custom Animation will improve effect to the text or element that you choose.
- Slide Transition is another wonderful feature of PowerPoint which gives the slide a real look and feel. By clicking ‘slide transition’ from the ‘Slide Show’ menu, it can be opened; else it can be seen as one of the item in the task pane. It helps in controlling the movement of the slides.
- There is also a ‘modify transition’ option, which has speed and sound where speed can be slow, medium or fast and sound effects which give alert after each slide. You can also decide the timing of each slide by fixing it in ‘advance slide’.
- You can click or drag picture, graphics or resize with great ease in PowerPoint and also can add, delete and hide slide with just a right-click of the mouse.
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