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101 Tips Every PowerPoint®
User Should Know (for PowerPoint 2002/2003/2007)
By Ellen Finkelstein Author of How to Do Everything with
PowerPoint 2007 www.ellenfinkelstein.com
Faster Easier Better
Excerpt especially for
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ii
101 Tips Every PowerPoint User Should Know
Published by Rainbow Resources Publishing
2010 Coral Lane
Fairfield, IA 52556
USA
Copyright 2009 by Ellen Finkelstein, Inc., Fairfield, Iowa.
All rights reserved.
For information, e-mail [email protected] Made in the United States of America
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108
of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written
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Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. Requests to
the Publisher for permission should be addressed to
[email protected] or Ellen Finkelstein, Rainbow Resources
Publishing, at the above address.
Limit of liability/disclaimer of warranty: the publisher and the author make no
representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the
contents of this work and disclaim all warranties, including warranties of fitness
for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created by sales or promotional
materials. The advice and strategies in this book may not be suitable for every
situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not
engaged in providing legal, accounting, or other professional services. Neither
the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. The
fact that an organization or Web site is referred to in this work does not mean
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Microsoft and PowerPoint are either registered trademarks or trademarks of
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Rainbow Resources Publishing is not associated with any product or vendor
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101 Tips Every PowerPoint User Should Know
iii
About the Author Ellen Finkelstein has been teaching and writing
about PowerPoint since 1994. She is the author of How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office
PowerPoint 2007 (and earlier editions on PowerPoint 2000, 2002, and 2003) as well as
the co-author (with Pavel Samsonov, PhD) of PowerPoint for Teachers: Dynamic
Presentations and Interactive Classroom Projects.
Ellen has written articles on PowerPoint for, and been quoted in, numerous magazines and Web
sites.
Her Web site, at www.ellenfinkelstein.com,
contains PowerPoint tips and tutorials, including the PowerPoint Tips Blog. The free PowerPoint
Tips Newsletter is e-mailed to over 4,700 subscribers each month. You can sign up for
your own copy on her Web site.
iv
Acknowledgments & Dedication I’d like to thank Diane Comey for helping me
with marketing and Diana Rivera for her professional-quality assistance.
I’m grateful to my family for supporting me
while I write.
***
To MMY, for teaching me how to find the true secret of inner creativity, intelligence, and bliss.
***
101 Tips Every PowerPoint User Should Know
v
Introduction PowerPoint is so easy to use that most people
never formally learn it. They don’t take a course; they don’t read a book. They just start
to use it.
English is a language that is easy to speak, but hard to speak well. PowerPoint is similar. To
use it efficiently and get quality results, you need to learn more about it.
I wrote this book because I saw that people
used PowerPoint inefficiently. They didn’t know
any shortcuts or techniques for getting the job done easily, so they struggled needlessly. They
used the program like a lumbering elephant, rather than an agile gazelle.
For example, some people would copy and
paste text from Microsoft Word into PowerPoint and then resize it, on slide after slide, not
knowing that they could import the text as an outline and automatically get the proper
formatting (see Tip #6). Others would struggle to line up objects on a slide, because they
didn’t know about PowerPoint’s Align or Distribute command (see Tip #26). I could give
you countless other examples, but why
emphasize the pain?
This book will eliminate a lot of struggling with PowerPoint. Read the tips, try them out, and
incorporate them into your daily workflow.
vi
You’ll be amazed at how much time you save
and how much better your slides look. You may even become the PowerPoint guru in your
office!
I hope this book helps you work more efficiently and get more professional results.
Anything that reduces suffering is a good thing!
101 Tips Every PowerPoint User Should Know
vii
Table of Contents (of full version)
About the Author ................................................. iii Acknowledgments & Dedication .......................... iv Introduction .......................................................... v Table of Contents ............................................... vii Chapter 1: Views and User Interface ...................1 Chapter 2: Text ....................................................5 Chapter 3: Layout, Design & Backgrounds ........ 16 Chapter 4: AutoShapes ...................................... 26 Chapter 5: Photos and Clip Art ........................... 35 Chapter 6: Charts ............................................... 44 Chapter 7: Multimedia ........................................ 49 Chapter 8: Organize content .............................. 55 Chapter 9: Customization ................................... 67 Chapter 10: Delivery .......................................... 71 Bonus A: Keyboard shortcuts ............................. 82 Bonus B: Image Tips .......................................... 85 Bonus C: Design tips .......................................... 91 Learn more! ........................................................ 94 Get more tips for free! ........................................ 94 Visit EllenFinkelstein.com................................... 94 Buy a great book! ............................................... 94 More about 101 Tips Every PowerPoint User
Should Know ..................................................... 95
101 Tips Every PowerPoint User Should Know
1
Chapter 1: Views and User Interface
1. Select objects on a busy slide
When you have objects overlapping on a slide, it may be difficult to select the
object you want. For example, you may find yourself selecting the text
placeholder when you want to select an image. Instead, select any object and
repeatedly press the Tab key. PowerPoint selects object after object until the object
you need is selected.
2
Chapter 2: Text
2. Add space between paragraphs, or
bulleted text Don’t press Enter to get extra spacing
between bullets. Instead, add spacing after each paragraph. This method looks
better and is faster if you need to edit
your text. Select the placeholder. Choose Format> Line Spacing. In the After
Paragraph section, choose Lines or Points, and change the number. For example, to
add an extra line between bullets, enter 1 in the After Paragraph section and set the
drop-down list to Lines. For less extra space, enter .5 instead.
In PowerPoint 2007, go to Home tab>
Paragraph group, and click the dialog box launcher arrow at the right end of the
group’s title. In the Spacing section adjust the spacing — in points — in either
the Before or After box — but not both.
101 Tips Every PowerPoint User Should Know
3
3. Remove bullets Select the text and click the Bullets
button on the Formatting toolbar to deselect it. (In PowerPoint 2007, right-
click if necessary to display the mini
toolbar, and click the Bullets button there.) However, you still have a hanging
indent (lines after the first line are indented). With the text still selected,
drag the left indent marker (see the previous tip) to the left to line it up with
the first line indent marker (the down-facing arrow at the top of the ruler).
4
Chapter 3: Layout, Design & Backgrounds
4. Distribute objects evenly To make three or more objects
equidistant, select them and choose Draw>Align or Distribute. (In PowerPoint
2007, choose Format tab> Align drop-down arrow.) Choose Distribute
Horizontally or Distribute Vertically. To distribute them equally across the slide,
first choose Relative to Slide.
101 Tips Every PowerPoint User Should Know
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Chapter 4: AutoShapes
5. Wrap text in AutoShapes
By default, text that you enter in AutoShapes does not wrap, as you see on
the left. To fix this, double-click the AutoShape to open the Format
AutoShape dialog box. Click the Text Box tab and check the Word Wrap Text in
AutoShape check box to get the result on the right. (In PowerPoint 2007, the
default is to wrap the text. If you don’t want to wrap, right-click, and choose
Format Shape. In the Text Box category,
uncheck the Wrap Text in Shape check box.)
6
Chapter 5: Photos and Clip Art
6. Create a colorized photo
An easy way to create a background is to colorize a photo — to convert it to shades
of one color. Choose Insert> Picture> From File and insert the photo. Select the
photo and the Picture toolbar should
appear; if not, right-click any toolbar and choose Picture. From the Color drop-down
list on the Picture toolbar, choose Grayscale.
Now insert a rectangle and completely
cover the photo. Double-click the rectangle. On the Colors and Lines tab of
the Format AutoShape dialog box, set the Line Color to No Line. In the Fill section,
choose the color you want. Then drag the Transparency slider to about 50%. To
create one file that you can insert as a background, select the photo and the
rectangle, right-click, and choose Save as
Picture. Then insert the picture. You can now delete the original photo and
rectangle.
101 Tips Every PowerPoint User Should Know
7
Original
Grayscale
Final
8
In PowerPoint 2007, you can quickly
colorize a photo. Select the image, and choose Format tab> Adjust group>
Recolor drop-down list. There you can choose one of the options, or choose
More Variations, to recolor the image to any color you want.
101 Tips Every PowerPoint User Should Know
9
Chapter 6: Charts
7. Widen the bars in a bar chart
To make your bar chart stand out more clearly, widen the bars. Double-click the
chart to activate it and then click the bars to select all the bars in a series. (All the
bars in a series have the same color.) Right-click, and choose Format Data
Series. In the Format Data Series dialog box, click the Options tab (in PowerPoint
2007, click the Series Options category) and reduce the Gap Width. Click
OK/Close. Repeat for the other series of
bars.
10
Chapter 7: Multimedia
8. Play music throughout a presentation
If you just insert a sound without any other settings, it stops when you go to
the next slide. To play it throughout, select the sound icon, right-click it, and
choose Custom Animation. Click the
arrow to the right of the sound in the task pane, and choose Effect Options.
In the Play Sound dialog box, choose the
Effects tab. In the Stop Playing section, choose the After XXX Slides option. Enter
999 in the box (the largest number allowed) so the sound will play
throughout all your slides. Click OK.
101 Tips Every PowerPoint User Should Know
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Chapter 8: Organize content
9. Create a presentation in Microsoft
Word or Notepad Use unindented text for slide titles. For
first-level bulleted text, place a tab before each line of text. Place two tabs before
each line of second-level bulleted text. (I don’t recommend bullets at all, and
certainly not second-level bulleted text.) Return to PowerPoint, choose File> Open
(in PowerPoint 2007, choose Office Button> Open), choose All Outlines from
the Files of Type drop-down list in the
dialog box, find your outline document, and double-click it. Presto! Instant
presentation!
12
Chapter 10: Delivery
10. Create a slide list
A slide list is very useful for navigating when you deliver your presentation,
especially if you may be jumping around. Display the Outline tab of the Outline
pane. Press Alt+Shift+1 to collapse the
entire outline to just slide titles; this shortcut toggles between collapsing and
expanding the outline. (In PowerPoint 2007, right-click in the Outline pane, and
choose Collapse> Collapse All.) Choose File> Print. (In PowerPoint 2007, choose
Office Button> Print.) From the Print What drop-down list, choose Outline
View. Click OK.
101 Tips Every PowerPoint User Should Know
13
Learn more!
Get more tips for free!
Sign up for the free, monthly PowerPoint Tips Newsletter at EllenFinkelstein.com. You’ll learn
techniques to improve your content, create great graphics, and professionally deliver your
presentation.
Visit EllenFinkelstein.com
EllenFinkelstein.com offers PowerPoint tips, tutorials, and techniques to help you create
better presentations. You’ll also find free
backgrounds, articles, and more. Visit us!
Buy a great book!
Do you need to learn more about PowerPoint? Would you like to become a PowerPoint expert?
Go to our e-store and buy one of the following:
How to Do Everything with PowerPoint 2007 How to Do Everything with PowerPoint 2003
How to Do Everything with PowerPoint 2002 PowerPoint for Teachers: Dynamic
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101 Tips Every PowerPoint User Should Know
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