Microsoft PowerPoint is an amazing presentation program that makes communicating information to an audience easy, using pictures, words, animation and animations. Furthermore, its collaborative nature makes sharing and editing presentations with collaborators simple and efficient.
The View area at the bottom of your screen includes buttons that allow you to switch PowerPoint views between Normal, Slide Sorter, Reader and Slide Show modes.
Create a presentation
Microsoft PowerPoint is one of the most versatile presentation software options available today, enabling you to create slideshows of images and text that help your audience grasp your points more easily. Furthermore, this program allows users to add soundtracks and videos as well as edit slide layouts, font sizes and colors for an enhanced professional presentation.
To create a presentation in PowerPoint, select one of its preloaded templates. From there you can modify its text, layout and other elements until your presentation stands out from others. Save as a PDF file so it can be shared or as an archive copy in case anything goes amiss during its delivery.
Be sure to include high-quality graphics and pictures that will captivate your audience when making presentations. Limit text to what is most pertinent, using short sentences and bullet points instead of paragraphs of text so as not to lose their attention. Incorporating contrasting colors such as light background with dark text may also help.
Enhance your PowerPoint presentation with shapes and SmartArt. These tools are great for illustrating concepts or timelines, or including line charts that display trends over time. However, multimedia elements should be limited since they could distract audiences.
After your presentation is ready to go live, it’s a wise idea to perform a run-through test to make sure it flows logically and that no grammatical errors or key points have been missed. Furthermore, check for technical problems which might impede audience comprehension of what your presentation aims to communicate.
When you’re ready to present, click the Slide Show button in the lower-right corner of the screen to access your slideshow. Use either right or left arrow keys to navigate between slides; additionally you can view both slide pane and note pad while presenting.
Add text
Text can be added to a PowerPoint presentation by clicking in a designated text placeholder. Once clicked, your cursor becomes active to show where to enter text. Once your desired text has been entered, use PowerPoint’s formatting options to customize its appearance further.
If you need more text than the built-in text placeholders allow, a text box can be added. To do this, navigate to the Insert tab, click Text Box in the Text group, and left-click and drag your mouse pointer over one of its corners to resize it.
To edit text, click within it and use the formatting tools available on the ribbon to format the text – such as bold (CTRL+B), italics (CTRL+I), underlining and strikethrough (both CTRL+U/CTRL+S). Changing font size, typeface and color allows you to further personalize its look and enhance readability.
Microsoft PowerPoint goes beyond basic formatting options by offering additional features that make presentations more effective, such as character spacing options that change the default space between letters in any font you select – this enables you to quickly adapt text for each slide you present and achieve a look and feel consistent with its look.
Text can be an essential element of a PowerPoint presentation, but images and other visual aids should also be utilized to help keep audiences engaged and understand your points more quickly. Visuals also serve to break up long passages of text which may cause people to tune out during long lectures.
When creating a PowerPoint presentation, there are numerous templates that come pre-installed with text boxes and other content to save you time and get your presentation underway more quickly. Some templates even include starting paragraphs which you can replace with your own words – making the presentation more interesting for audiences at once!
Add images
Add images to a PowerPoint presentation can make the details of your message clearer and more exciting. You can add photos you have saved, clip art from Microsoft Office applications or search online for images to incorporate. This program offers various methods for inserting images, but each requires following some standard procedures. Once you have your picture ready to add into your presentation, open up the slide on which it belongs and drag-and-drop. Simply navigate to the Insert tab on the ribbon bar at the top of your screen, select Pictures/Online Pictures, and a drop-down list will appear, showing all photos/graphics stored locally on your computer as well as pictures available through Microsoft online.
Clicking any content placeholder already on a slide and choosing Pictures or Online Pictures will bring up the file browser for that slide. This option embeds images inside of PowerPoint presentations, which may increase file sizes as users must have the original version to view them properly; additionally, a link will be created so it will download automatically when people open up your file in future.
Apart from using the Picture Format tab, you can also utilize Home and Options tabs to modify how a picture appears in your presentation. Here you can customize its color, change its size, add artistic effects or even change its background color accordingly. To resize images simply drag their corners to make them smaller or larger.
Your image can also benefit from having a picture border applied, which will feature a line with specified color and weight (thickness). Doing this adds an effortless professional appearance to your presentation, or if a large image doesn’t fit on its slide you can crop it out to fill any empty space on its slides.
Add a video
Microsoft PowerPoint makes it easy and convenient to add videos into presentations with its video capability, whether using an online service or uploading one from your computer. Both methods offer simple solutions; however, when embedding videos, be mindful that each additional one increases file size; to minimize this impact use only smaller videos that fit easily onto slides.
Step one in adding videos to a PowerPoint presentation involves opening and selecting a slide before clicking on the Media button in the ribbon, which will reveal a drop-down menu with options like “Video on My PC” or “Online Video.” When you select one of these options, either its contents will be embedded directly into your presentation or linked; though some presenters may prefer this latter approach as editing becomes impossible once linked; furthermore if they switch computers the video may no longer be accessible.
When uploading videos from websites, be sure that the file format is MP4. Microsoft PowerPoint prefers this video format because it provides the ideal balance of video quality and performance. Furthermore, shorter videos will likely be more engaging for viewers than longer ones and will keep their attention longer.
Once you’ve uploaded a video to PowerPoint, a set of tabs called Video Tools will appear on the toolbar to allow for editing various aspects of it; these tools include changing title/description of video along with playback settings as well as setting delays before video begins playing.
Additionally, you can use the Video Format tab to format a video’s appearance. This includes customizing its poster frame image that appears before playing it; hiding or looping until stopping; as well as customizing accessibility options so they are accessible to people with visual impairments.
