Basics of a good presentation

• Know your audience (as much as possible)
• Use your PowerPoint to communicate; not as a substitute for notes
• Proofread, spell-check,review & test
• Consider the overall readability (font size, spatial layout, too much content on one slide, etc.)
• Keep it simple -- don’t overuse effects, graphics, etc.
• Avoid the edge of the slide, if possible.
• Use bullets and short to the point blurbs
• For oral presentations and lectures:

Be mindful of the back row

Don’t read from the slides; the slides should illustrate the topic

Do include highlights – the most relevant or pertinent information

Do make handouts and provide additional information online or in a separate handout

• Finally, save often when creating a presentation AND always make numerous backups.

Getting started (making a presentation)

To start a presentation or PowerPoint
project:

• Start new and design from scratch
• Use a template
• Use a guided wizard
• Use a template or guided wizard and modify it (quickest!)

For the purposes of this exercise, we’ll start from scratch, but use some pre-built features such as color schemes and graphics.

START

File>New

The New document sidebar menu should popup

Choose New> Blank Presentation

Note:

From Design Template will bring up a list of pre-designed templates

From AutoContent Wizard will bring up preformatted PowerPoint presentations,
which can serve as good examples

New from Existing Presentation will clone a presentation on your computer/disk/flash drive that you have already created

Any of these can be used and then modified to suit your content

Design layout

DESIGN

Choose a slide layout that is text based.

 

Text layouts are layouts designed for written content such as bulleted lists, written hyperlinks, quotations, etc.

Content layouts are layouts designed for basic visual elements such as images, photographs, screenshots, video, graphs, tables, and more.

Other layouts provide a variety of specific layouts to make multimedia and other content easy to embed.

Color schemes: making custom colors & backgrounds

COLOR SCHEME

Use the side menu pop-ups OR use Format>Slide Design to choose colors.

Under the arrow on the Slide Layout Side menu>Slide Design – Color Templates; From the main menu>Format>Slide Design>Color Schemes

Choose a color scheme.

We will make it more unique (or easier to read!) next.

From this menu we can change the colors for every part of our presentation.

Let’s make our own background color. Click on Custom.

 

 

For help developing a color palette, try this website:
http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html

 

Check your color scheme in the preview, and change any other colors needed.

 

Duplicating slides & the Master slide

CREATING SLIDES QUICKLY

Now we are ready to create the rest of our slides and add in even more media!

Using the Slide Master vs. duplicating slides

Two quick ways of populating your slides with the same layout, headers, etc. are using the Slide Master and duplicating slides. PowerPoint always creates a master slide, when either a design template or color scheme is chosen.

 

A Slide Master will apply whatever elements you assign to the master slide to each and every slide, except for the first slide (if you choose to skip that one). Additionally, to change an element placed on the master slide, you only edit the master slide. The master slide can be very helpful when setting up multimedia, kiosk displays, or in adding in some elements to a presentation, such as the title to every slide.

 

A second means (and in some ways, easier) is to duplicate slides.

Duplicating slides is very easy to do.

 

Duplicate slides easy way

Control + D

OR

Main menu: Edit>Duplicate

 

Working
with the Master Slide

 

View>Master>Slide
Master

Note: When you are done editing to return to the Normalview. View>Normal

If you use a master slide and are having trouble removing a box or graphic, double-check to see if it is on the actual slide or the master slide.

Duplicate/create 4 slides.

Aligning boxes

ALIGNING BOXES

 Click on one of the text boxes. The box will highlight and the cursor turns to the 4 arrow symbol. 

Move your boxes where you would like them to be.

 

Introductory slide (background image, text and music)

 

INTRODUCTION SLIDE (SLIDE 1):BACKGROUND IMAGE, TEXT, AND MUSIC

Add a title.

Click on the top box, and type in your presentation title.

Choose a font and size.

Notes about nonstandard fonts: While it is acceptable to use a nonstandard font (e.g., one that is not a commonly used on the web or in Microsoft applications), using a common font (Arial, Times New Roman, Comic sans, etc.) will alleviate potential problems. If you will be using a computer that is not yours (and may not have the font loaded), you will need to embed the fonts during the final saving of the presentation.

Another option is to create your font as a graphic (gifs) and add it as a graphical element.
Kind of boring, but it’s a start! Let’s live it up!

Background graphics

BACKGROUND GRAPHICS

Check Omit background graphics from master unless you want to include the background image on each slide.
Click on the color dropdown, which will popup to Fill Effects.

 

More effects include backgrounds, gradients, and patterns!

 

 

 

 

We are going to add in a photograph (or graphic) as a background.
Click on Picture. Browse to find the picture.

 

 

Select picture. Now we see a preview. Looks terrible! We will need to move our text boxes around, change font, etc.

 

Click Apply to save background.

Move your text boxes around and change your font colors as desired.

Next, we will give the title box a background color to make it stand out more.

 

Text boxes and format autoshape

CUSTOMIZING TEXT BOXES

Double-click on the textbox which needs a new background.

Format AutoShape is an excellent tool to crop, create transparencies, and more. A white fill with a percentage of transparency will emphasize a title without losing a background graphic completely.

Grouping and layering

GROUPING AND LAYERING

Boxes can be layered; brought to the front or sent behind another, or grouped (uniting two or more images together). Grouping is helpful when placing multiple objects on more than one slide, such as a forward and backward button. By grouping them together, they can be applied to any slides, with the same alignment to each other (e.g., spacing, location, etc.) Another option is to put them on the Slide Master.

Under the Draw menu>Order

 

Music

MUSIC

Now let’s add some introductory music.

 

 

Insert>Movies and Sounds>Sound from Clip Organizer

 

 

Movies and sounds> For movies and sounds on your computer

(Note: Be very careful when using movies on your computer to ensure that you also take the movie file with you when you present; otherwise, you may have broken links!)

Word Art & Hyperlinks

WORDART and HYPERLINKS

 

Insert>Picture>WordArt

Choose a format.

 

 

Choose font and type.

Right click to pull up the properties menu and edit the WordArt appearance.

 

Hyperlinks
can be added to any object in PowerPoint. Hyperlinks
can be added from the Properties menu (Right click) or under the Main Menu
Insert>Hyperlink

 

After editing your WordArt text, click Hyperlink.

Type
in a URL and click ok.

 

Embedding Multimedia (Youtube example)

EMBEDDING MEDIA

(YouTube and other web based media)

One of the advantages of embedding YouTube (or other flash files hosted on the web) into Powerpoint is that as long as there is an internet connection, everything should run correctly.

Note: Embedding movies and other multimedia works, too, as long all files are saved on the same disc/flashdrive/computer.

View>Toolbars>Control Box

The Control Box is where all kinds of scripting action can happen and it is very powerful.

 

 

Return to the blank slide and draw a square as big as you would like the movie to be.

Reformat the URL (Youtube URLs need to be reformatted as in this example; other URLs may not)
Example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aIUra9pSr4
http://www.youtube.com/v/0aIUra9pSr4
In other words remove watch?
Change = to /
Do NOT Embed Movie.
You can change the alignment, change the background color behind the movie, and other visual elements.
Done!

 

Right click on the square, Click on the popup Property box.

 

Reformat the URL (Youtube videos need to have the URL reformatted; other website URLs may not need this step).

Example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aIUra9pSr4

http://www.youtube.com/v/0aIUra9pSr4

In other words remove watch?

Change = to /

Do NOT Embed Movie.

You can change the alignment, change the background color behind the movie, and other visual elements.

Done!

Transitions

TRANSITIONS AND NAVIGATION

Let's add a nifty transition from slide to slide.

 

Navigation & Action Buttons

Action Settings provide a means of providing some interactivity through telling Powerpoint to do a specific task, such as open a website. An Action Button is a preconfigured graphic which is packaged with a choice of Action Settings. Action Buttons include clickable forward/backward navigation, a help button, and even a customizable button. Action Settings can be added to most any graphic or sound by using the Right Click properties menu.

Let's add some linking buttons between sides.

Main Menu > Slide Show

Action Buttons> Choose

As you can see there are a lot of choices including:

• Link to:
• a slide within the presentation (e.g., navigational elements such as next slide, previous slide, a specific slide within the presentation for navigation, end, etc) or another Powerpoint presentation

Examples: Using one Powerpoint presentation for a menu structure (only navigational elements)and then mini presentations linked from there, see the Cataloging Tutorial, http://www.libs.uga.edu/catalog/tutorial/

• a link outside of Powerpoint
  Examples: Launch GIL Client, the GIL OPAC, GALILEO, etc. with a single button click
  In order to run a program, it must be loaded on the user’s (or presenter’s) machine; however, this feature will not always work due to security settings
• Add in an effect based upon a mouse click.
• Other choices are greyed out, because they are not really suited to Action Buttons, but are for use other objects.

NOTE: To place an Action Button on every slide, you could add it to the Master Slide. If you only want it to appear on some slides, copy and paste.

Choose Hyperlink to Next Slide.

Click OK.