PowerPoint Workshop

 Microsoft's Presentation package allows 'slideshows' to be created, printed and/or played on your PC. It is a method of publshing for a specific purpose and is easy to use as it edits in a similar way to WORD.

Mastery seems to occur once slides don't betray their origin by looking too 'Powepointy'. There follow some hints on making your presentation unique. All techniques apply to PowerPoint97 onwards.

Slide Masters   Formatting Pictures   Overlaying/ Ordering Elements   Animation Settings   Action Settings   Slideshow Setup   Pack & Go   Saving as HTML (Web Pages)  

Slide Masters
There are 2 slide masters you can change in the View-Master menu:
  1. Title Master- The first type of slide usually used for main title slides (the first template in the 'New Slide' window)
  2. Slide Master- The general type of slide that applies to all other 'New Slide' templates
Changing the Master Slide means all slides based upon it change. This way you can have common backgrounds or logos enhancing a corporate image.
Any element you place or format on a master slide applies to the slides based on it in general. Element you might like to include for that professional touch:
  • Place a picture on the slide and format it to 'Watermark'
  • Place a button with an action to go back to the first slide
  • Place a company logo at the corner of each slide or on the Title slide
  • place a chosen graphic on each slide
  • Format text colours & fonts to appear as default throughout

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Formatting Pictures
Every inserted picture (usually in .gif or .jpg format for memory efficiency and including clip/wordart) can be Right-Clicked and Picture Formated.
In the dialogue that appears you can specify brightness, size and various attributes which can change the look for the graphic.
A handy setting is for 'Watercolour' so that you can later Right-Click and send the graphic to the back (see below) to make it into a subtle background.

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Overlaying/ Ordering Elements
Elements appear with a fuzzy box with squares on it when you select them. A slide has these 'placeholders' (frames/ texboxes etc) so that each element may be precisely placed and sized.
You can also Right-Click a selected element and send it to the back or bring it to the front etc. This allows you to 'layer' objects so, for instance, one watermarked graphic the size of the slide can be sent behind everything else so it becomes a background for that slide.

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Animation Settings
Every element, including text can be Right-Clicked and have Animation Settings set. These determine how the element makes its entrance.
Use this feature sparingly and subtley. Too much whooshing and single letters dropping in can become tiresome. It can, however introduce a bit of humour and life into a dull subject.
It is possible to create 'Pythonesque' type animations using this technique. Also animation is useful for adding life to children's stories/ kiosk presentations etc.

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Action Settings
These are defined again by the eponymous menu in the Right-Click. They allow you to specify what happens, if anything, when a user clicks the mouse (or passes it over) an element.
You can make a click or mouseover open a file, web page, another presentation, go to a specific slide etc. Essential for an interactive presentation and, with a bit of imagination, can provide exactly the same functionality as a web site or even a control interface.

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Slideshow Setup
The types of slideshow on offer in Tools-Set Up Show vary according to how you wish to use it. You can specify an automatic show (if you have put timings for each slide in), or a presented by speaker show and other options.
A handy tip is to 'Loop' your show so that the first slide returns, otherwise, you just get a black screen at the end of the show.
You can rehearse a show and the timings you set by your clicks can be saved as the respective timings for each silde.

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Pack & Go
The idea of this is that you can pack up a presentation (File-Pack & Go) and save it to a disk. The presentation can then be taken and played on another computer even if it doesn't have PowerPoint on it.
Great in theory, but many people simply take their laptop with them or ensure they have saved their original file in a format the displaying computer can handle (for PowerPoint this is a .ppt file and, as usual, is usually not compatible with earlier versions). Part of the problem with Pack & Go is that the size of the presentation is increased by having the PowerPoint player added and sometimes this takes say,as 20 slide show over the limit to fit on a Floppy Disk.
Of course, if you have Zip or CDRW facilities on both machines etc this isn't a problem. Emailling a presentation takes time due to its size, so zipping (compressing) using a WinZip-type utlity may be useful.

Back to Top Saving as HTML (Web Pages) Anyone with a Web Browser could view your presentation if you saved it and uploaded all the necessary files to the web. You can see an example here of a Burton Manor interactive presentation simply saved as a web site and uploaded for you.
Remember that all images, linked files need to be included in the upload for it all to work. PowerPoint puts all of these and the other pages in a separate folder to the start page.
The original PowerPoint97 presentation is included here for you to pilfer/ learn from as you wish.

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