Saving Presentation

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One of the most basic tasks in PowerPoint is being able to save your work; this is probably the most important task as well. There are many users who have burnt their fingers for not saving their work in time and losing hours of hard work. The following are the basic steps to save a presentation.

Step 1 − Click on the File tab to launch the Backstage view and select Save.

Step 2 − In the Save As dialog, type in the file name and click "Save".

Step 3 − The default file format is .pptx. If you want to save the file with a different name, choose one of the file types from the "Save as type" dropdown list.

If you are working on an already saved file, the "Save" option in the Backstage view will directly save the file in the existing format with the existing name. If you want to change the format or filename of an existing file, use the Save As option instead.

Slide Orientations

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In the recent years, presentations are being used for more than just as a high end replacement for transparencies and projectors. With its unique features, PowerPoint is becoming quite versatile in the kind of information it can depict and very flexible in its usage. The slide orientations are invaluable part of this improved list of PowerPoint features. Like most other applications PowerPoint supports two orientations: landscape and portrait.

The Landscape layout is the default PowerPoint layout and it is probably the more commonly used one. In the landscape layout, the longer edge is horizontal so the slides align better with the screens and projectors.

The Portrait layout is where the shorter edge is horizontal. This is sometimes better for print depending on the kind of content you want to present.

Slide orientations in PowerPoint can be changed from the Design ribbon using the Slide Orientation command.

Setting Backgrounds

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As PowerPoint is a design-based program, backgrounds are effective ways of improving the aesthetics and readability of the slides. The Themes in PowerPoint help select the backgrounds by default, so every time you change the theme, the default background is set automatically. Theme includes more than just backgrounds, so you can retain other aspects of the theme while changing the default background.

Given below are the steps to apply backgrounds in PowerPoint.

Step 1 − In the Design ribbon, under the Background group, click the Background Styles command.

Step 2 − Select one of the background styles that suits your requirements.

 

Step 3 − To edit the background for a specific slide, right-click on the desired background slide and select "Apply to Selected Slides".

Step 4 − Selected slide(s) now have the new background.

The graphics in the slide background can distract you from the actual content, in such cases you can hide the graphics and retain a plain background till you finish working on the content. To do this, select the slide and check the "Hide Background Graphics" checkbox.

Presentation Views

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PowerPoint supports multiple views to allow users to gain the maximum from the features available in the program. Each view supports a different set of functions and is designed accordingly.

PowerPoint views can be accessed from two locations.

• Views can be accessed quickly from the bottom bar just to the left of the zoom settings.

• Views can also be accessed from the Presentation Views section in the View ribbon

Here is a short description of the various views and their features.

Normal View

This is the default view in PowerPoint and this is primarily used to create and edit slides. You can create/ delete/ edit/ rearrange slides, add/ remove/ modify content and manipulate sections from this view.

Slide Sorter View

This view is primarily used to sort slides and rearrange them. This view is also ideal to add or remove sections as it presents the slides in a more compact manner making it easier to rearrange them.

Reading View

This view is new to PowerPoint 2010 and it was created mainly to review the slideshow without losing access to rest of the Windows applications. Typically, when you run the slideshow, the presentation takes up the entire screen so other applications cannot be accessed from the taskbar. In the reading view the taskbar is still available while viewing the slideshow which is convenient. You cannot make any modifications when on this view.

SlidesShow

This is the traditional slideshow view available in all the earlier versions of PowerPoint. This view is used to run the slideshow during presentation.

Sidebars

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PowerPoint slides have a left-hand side bar which offers two invaluable views. These views are great to review the slides and edit them. The side bar is available in the Normal view and by default, it is set to the Slides tab.

Slides Tab

This tab shows all the slides stacked vertically in a sequential manner. You can select individual slides from this tab and also perform some tasks like changing slide layouts, reordering slides, inserting new slides, deleting slides, etc. Although you cannot edit the slide contents from this tab, you can select the slide and make edits from the slide displayed to the right.

Outline Tab

This is the tab right next to the Slides tab and as the name suggests, this provides the outline for the slide. This section just displays all the textual content from every slide - this can be very useful if there is a lot of non-text content in the slide and reviewing just the written part gets difficult. Unlike in the slides tab, you can edit the text from this section.

If you need greater viewing space, you can close the sidebar by click on the X on the top right of this bar.

To recover the sidebar, just click on the Normal view icon again.

Working With Outlines

PowerPoint is a great program that allows you to bring together text, images, shapes and multimedia. However, sometimes you may just want to review the text without focusing on the non-text aspects of the slide deck. This is where the Outline view in PowerPoint is quite useful. The Outline view can be accessed from the tab adjacent to the Slide tab in the Normal view.

The outline view shows just the text content from various slides. This view does not show the text entered in the non-text box like SmartArt, WordArt or any other shapes.

By default, the outline pane size is the same as the slide tab pane; hence it is small. However, you can drag the pane out to increase the size to improve readability.

Managing Sections

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Given the popularity of PowerPoint and its versatility, there are situations when you are dealing with very large slide decks or just collaborating with different people to build the slides. In such cases, it is always helpful to be able to segregate the slides into smaller groups and work with these groups. PowerPoint 2010 introduces the concept of sections to achieve this. Here are the main functions you can execute with sections.

Creating Sections

The steps to create a new section are as follows. You can execute these steps from the Normal view or the Slide Sorter view.

Step 1 − In the Normal view or the Slide Sorter view, right-click at the position where you want to add the section and select add section.

 

Step 2 − The new section gets added to the presentation with all the subsequent slides being included in this section.

 

Step 3 − By default, the new section is named "Untitled Section" but you can change the section name. Right-click on the section and select "Rename Section".

 

Step 4 − In the Rename Section dialog box, enter the new section name. This accepts all the characters including alphabets, numbers, special characters, punctuations, etc.

Step 5 − Click on the "Rename" button on the dialog to rename the section.

 

Rearranging Sections

One of the advantages of sections is that you can not only group slides together, but also rearrange them as one set. Instead of having to move each slide individually, you can move the entire section. Just like rearranging slides you can drag and move the sections. Alternately, you can right-click on the section and move it up or down as shown below.

If there are many slides to work with, you can collapse them so you view just the sections. This makes rearranging them less confusing too.

 

 

Deleting Sections

PowerPoint 2010 provides three options to delete sections. The table below explains the function of each option.

 

S.No	Delete Option & Description
1	Remove Section Deletes the selected section and merges slides with the previous section.
2	Remove Section & Slide Deletes the selected section and all the slides in the section.
3	Remove All Sections Deletes all the sections and merges all the slides into a presentation without sections.