Intermediate PowerPoint: PowerPoint Essentials, #2

Also by M.L. Humphrey

Listing of all books by M.L. Humphrey

Word Essentials

Word for Beginners

Intermediate Word

Excel Essentials

Excel for Beginners

Intermediate Excel

50 Useful Excel Functions

50 More Excel Functions

Access Essentials

Access for Beginners

Intermediate Access

PowerPoint Essentials

PowerPoint for Beginners

Intermediate PowerPoint

Intermediate PowerPoint

PowerPoint Essentials - Book 2

M.L. Humphrey

Contents

Introduction

Basic Terminology

Additional Text and Slide Formatting Options

Insert an Equation

Insert WordArt

Shapes

Rulers, Gridlines, and Guides

Headers and Footers

Charts

Insert SmartArt

Insert a Video

Insert Online Pictures

Insert Photo Album

Master Slides: Just a Quick Note

Changing The Background Of All Slides At Once

Select All

Sections

Comments

Incorporating Group Edits

Zoom and Views

Save As PDF

Save As JPG, PNG, or GIF

Slide Transitions

Conclusion

About the Author

Copyright

Introduction

In PowerPoint for Beginners we covered the basics of what you need to know to use PowerPoint if you're using PowerPoint 2013 or an equivalent version of PowerPoint. The discussion covered the basics of navigating and using PowerPoint but relied heavily on using Microsoft's templates rather than trying to create a presentation from scratch. While there was discussion of basic text formatting and how to present your slides, there were a number of areas that weren't covered in that guide.

Probably the most significant of those topics were using shapes, charts, and SmartArt. But there were other topics that weren't covered such using WordArt, equations, and symbols, inserting videos or online photos, using slide transitions, saving presentations as PDFs or images, and inserting headers and footers.

So that's what this guide will cover. It assumes that you already read PowerPoint for Beginners or know the basics of working in PowerPoint and moves on from there.

Alright then. With that said, let's get started.

Basic Terminology

First, let's cover some basic terminology so that you know what I'm referring to when I say certain things. Most of this is the same as what was used in PowerPoint for Beginners but without quite as much detail.

Tab

I refer to the menu choices at the top of the screen (File, Home, Insert, Design, Transitions, Animations, Slide Show, Review, and View) as tabs. If you click on one you’ll see that the way it’s highlighted sort of looks like an old-time filing system.

Click

If I tell you to click on something, that means to use your mouse (or trackpad) to move the arrow on the screen over to a specific location and left-click or right-click on the option. (See the next definition for the difference between left-click and right-click).

If you left-click, this selects the item. If you right-click, this generally creates a dropdown list of options to choose from. If I don't tell you which to do, left- or right-click, then left-click.

Left-click/Right-click

If you look at your mouse or your trackpad, you generally have two flat buttons to press. One is on the left side, one is on the right. If I say left-click that means to press down on the button on the left. If I say right-click that means press down on the button on the right.

Select or Highlight

If I tell you to select text, that means to left-click at the end of the text you want to select, hold that left-click, and move your cursor to the other end of the text you want to select.

Another option is to use the Shift key. Go to one end of the text you want to select. Hold down the shift key and use the arrow keys to move to the other end of the text you want to select. If you arrow up or down, that will select an entire row at a time.

The text you’ve selected will then be highlighted in gray.

If you need to select text that isn’t touching you can do this by selecting your first section of text and then holding down the Ctrl key and selecting your second section of text using your mouse. (You can’t arrow to the second section of text or you’ll lose your already selected text.)

Dropdown Menu

A dropdown menu provides you a list of choices to select from.

If you right-click on a PowerPoint slide, you will see what I’m going to refer to as a dropdown menu. (Sometimes it will actually drop upward if you’re towards the bottom of the document.)

There are also dropdown menus available for some of the options listed under the tabs at the top of the screen. For example, if you go to the Home tab, you’ll see small arrows below or next to some of the options, like the Layout option and the Section option in the Slides section. Clicking on those little arrows will give you a dropdown menu with a list of choices to choose from.

Dialogue Box

Dialogue boxes are pop-up boxes that cover specialized settings. For example, when you right-click on a PowerPoint content slide and choose Font, Paragraph, or Hyperlink from the dropdown menu that will open a dialogue box.

Dialogue boxes often allow the most granular level of control over an option.

Panes

Another place where you have a granular level of control over an option is in the formatting panes that are occasionally visible on the right-hand side of your presentation slide. To see one, right-click on a slide and choose Format Shape from the dropdown menu. This will bring up the Format Shape pane to the right of your slide. Since this is a separate section from the main slide, I refer to it as a pane.

I also refer to the list of slides on the left-hand side in the default view as a pane. So think of pane as just a separate section in your main work area.

Scroll Bar

PowerPoint has multiple scroll bars that are normally visible. One is on the right-hand side of the slides that are displayed in the pane on the left-hand side of your screen (but only when there are enough slides to require scrolling). The other is on the right-hand side of the current slide that you’re viewing in the main display section of PowerPoint when there are at least two slides in your presentation.

You can either click in the space above or below the scroll bar to move up or down a small amount or you can left-click on the bar, hold the left-click, and drag the bar up or down to move more quickly. You can also use the arrows at the top and the bottom to move up and down through your document.

In the default view where you can see an entire slide in the main screen, the right-hand scroll bar will move you through your presentation. Clicking on the scroll bar for the left-hand pane will keep you on the current slide but show you