2 Presentation Basics
2 Presentation Basics
Introduction
PowerPoint includes all of the features you need to produce professional-looking presentations.
When you create a PowerPoint presentation, it is made up of a series of slides. The slides contain
the information you want to communicate with your audience. This information can include text,
pictures, charts, video, sound, and more.
Before you begin adding information to slides, you'll need to know the basics of working with
slides. In this lesson, you'll learn how to start a new presentation, insert new slides, modify
a layout, move and copy slides, use placeholders, and save your presentation.
New presentations
When you open PowerPoint from the Start menu or from an icon on your desktop, a new
presentation with one slide appears by default. You can also create a new presentation while
PowerPoint is already open.
Click the Microsoft Office button, and choose New from the menu.
The New Presentation dialog box will appear. Blank presentation is selected by default.
Click Create, and a new presentation will open in the PowerPoint window.
The default slide that appears when you create a new presentation is a Title Slide layout.
Slide basics
Slides contain placeholders, or areas on a slide that are enclosed by dotted borders. Placeholders
can contain many different items, including text, pictures, and charts. Some placeholders
have placeholder text—or text you can replace—and thumbnail-sized icons that represent
specific commands such as Insert Picture, Insert Chart, and Insert Clip Art. Hover over each icon
to see the type of information you can insert.
About slide layouts
The placeholders are arranged in different layouts you can select when you insert a new slide or
that can be applied to existing slides. In the example above, the layout is called Title and
Content and includes title and content placeholders.
A slide layout arranges your slide content. Layouts contain different types of placeholders you
can use, depending on what information you want to include in your presentation. Each layout
has a descriptive name, but the image of the layout shows you how the placeholders are arranged
on the slide.
Slide basics
When you enter text or use the icons to insert items, the placeholder text and/or icons disappear
as soon as you start typing.
Click an option to select it. The slide will change in the presentation.
Working with slides
Click inside the Slides tab on the left task pane. A horizontal insertion point will appear.
Move the insertion point to the location where you want the copy of the slide to appear.
Click the Paste command on the Home tab. The copied slide will appear.
You can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+C to copy the slide and Ctrl+V to paste it.
To delete a slide:
Select the slide you want to delete.
Click the Delete command in the Slides group on the Home tab.
You can also delete a slide by pressing the Delete key on your keyboard.
To move a slide:
Select the slide you want to move on the Slides tab in the left task pane.
Click and drag the slide to a new location. The insertion point will appear.
Release the mouse button. The slide will appear in the new location.
In the bottom-right corner of the PowerPoint window are three view commands. From here, you
can change the view to Normal, Slide Sorter, or Slide Show view by clicking a command.
Normal is the default view and where you will create and edit your slides in the center slide pane,
and all of the slides will appear on the Slides tab in the left task pane.
Slide Sorter is a view of your slides in thumbnail form. The slides are presented horizontally,
which allows you to see more slides at the same time.
Slide Show view fills the computer screen with your presentation so you can see how the
presentation will appear to an audience.
If you are saving a document for the first time, you will need to use the Save As command;
however, if you have already saved a presentation, you can use the Save command.
Using the Save command saves the document in its current location using the same file name.
Compatibility mode
Sometimes you may need to work with presentations that were created in earlier versions of
PowerPoint. When you open these types of presentations, they will appear in Compatibility mode.
Compatibility mode disables certain features, so you'll only be able to access commands found in
the program that was used to create the presentation. For example, if you open a presentation
created in PowerPoint 2003, you can only use tabs and commands found in PowerPoint 2003.
If you want access to all of the PowerPoint 2007 features, you can save the presentation in the
PowerPoint 2007 file format.
Challenge!
Open PowerPoint.
Insert text on the default title slide.
Insert a Title and Content slide.
Insert a Two Content slide.
Practice moving slides.
Copy the title slide.
Delete one of the slides.
Save the presentation.