Create More Powerful Presentations - Bertholf · Create More Powerful Presentations AACC 2003 1...

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Create More Powerful Presentations Roger L. Bertholf, Ph.D. 2003 AACC Annual Meeting Philadelphia, PA

Transcript of Create More Powerful Presentations - Bertholf · Create More Powerful Presentations AACC 2003 1...

Page 1: Create More Powerful Presentations - Bertholf · Create More Powerful Presentations AACC 2003 1 Introduction to PowerPoint "640K ought to be enough for anybody." Microsoft CEO Bill

Create More Powerful Presentations

Roger L. Bertholf, Ph.D. 2003 AACC Annual Meeting

Philadelphia, PA

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Create More Powerful Presentations AACC 2003 About the Presenter: Roger Bertholf is an associate professor of pathology in the University of Florida College of Medicine, and is director of clinical chemistry and toxicology at Shands Hospital in Jacksonville, FL. He is a diplomate of the American Board of Clinical Chemistry, with certificates in both clinical chemistry and toxicological chemistry, and is a fellow in the National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry. Presentations created using the techniques described in this workshop can be viewed at http://bertholf.net/rlb/Lectures. Contact Information: Mail Roger L. Bertholf, Ph.D.

Department of Pathology 655 West 8th Street Jacksonville, FL 32209

Phone (904) 244-5076 FAX (904) 244-4290 E-mail [email protected] or [email protected] Disclaimer: Although this workshop focuses exclusively on using Microsoft PowerPoint for creating presentations, the presenter does not specifically recommend this or any other presentation software product. The presenter has no financial interest in Microsoft Corporation, and does not receive any compensation, either directly or in the form of free or discounted software, for the use of Microsoft products in this presentation. Trademark Information: Throughout this document, references are made to Microsoft products. The following are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation: Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft Windows, including versions 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, and XP. 2003 Roger L. Bertholf. All rights reserved.

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Table of Contents 1 INTRODUCTION TO POWERPOINT..................................................................... 5

1.A PRESENTATION ESSENTIALS—ROGER’S RULES........................................................ 6 1.a (1) Limit text content............................................................................................ 6 1.a (2) The “busy” slide............................................................................................. 6 1.a (3) Laser pointer madness ................................................................................... 7 1.a (4) Speak to your audience .................................................................................. 7

1.B CREATING PRESENTATIONS....................................................................................... 8 1.C CHOOSING SLIDE LAYOUTS....................................................................................... 9 1.D USING SLIDE SORTER VIEW .................................................................................... 10

2 PRESENTATION APPEARANCE .......................................................................... 13 2.A MASTER SLIDE VIEW .............................................................................................. 13 2.B BACKGROUNDS ....................................................................................................... 14 2.C COLOR SCHEMES..................................................................................................... 16 2.D DESIGN TEMPLATES................................................................................................ 16

3 ADDING GRAPHICS ................................................................................................ 19 3.A CLIP ART ................................................................................................................ 20 3.B PICTURES ................................................................................................................ 21 3.C CREATING YOUR OWN GRAPHICS........................................................................... 21

3.c (1) Drawing Lines and Shapes........................................................................... 22 3.c (2) Coloring and Shading................................................................................... 25 3.c (3) 3-D Effects .................................................................................................... 26 3.c (4) Word Art ....................................................................................................... 26

3.D EQUATIONS ............................................................................................................. 27

4 ADDING TABLES AND CHARTS .......................................................................... 31 4.A TABLES ................................................................................................................... 31 4.B CHARTS................................................................................................................... 32

4.b (1) Selecting a Chart Type ................................................................................. 32 4.b (2) Adding Data ................................................................................................. 33 4.b (3) Editing Chart Appearance ........................................................................... 34 4.b (4) Linking Charts and Tables ........................................................................... 35

5 ANIMATIONS, SOUND, AND VIDEO ................................................................... 37 5.A SLIDE TRANSITIONS ................................................................................................ 38 5.B ANIMATING TEXT.................................................................................................... 38 5.C ANIMATING SHAPES AND DRAWINGS...................................................................... 39 5.D ADDING SOUND AND VIDEO ................................................................................... 41 5.E CONTROLLING PRESENTATIONS AND USING AUTORUN ........................................... 42

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES ....................................................................................... 45 BITMAP GRAPHICS EDITORS ........................................................................................... 45 POWERPOINT BACKGROUNDS AND TEMPLATES ............................................................ 45 PICTURES AND ILLUSTRATIONS...................................................................................... 46

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1 Introduction to PowerPoint "640K ought to be enough for anybody." Microsoft CEO Bill Gates in 1981, referring to computer RAM requirements. Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation software package that can be purchased alone or with the Microsoft Office Professional suite of applications (PowerPoint is not included in the Office Small Business Edition). PowerPoint can be used to create and manipulate vector graphics, audio, and video clips, and assemble these elements, along with text, into presentations. In this workshop, we will explore some of the capabilities of PowerPoint, and learn how these features can be used to create presentations that are visually appealing, educational, and entertaining. Participants in this workshop are expected to have some familiarity with basic computer functions such as file management, downloading media from the Internet, and menu navigation by standard Windows functions and shortcuts. Like all recent versions of Office applications, PowerPoint creates periodic backup copies of any file that is open, but users should regularly save any work in progress since these automatically generated backup files may or may not be restorable if a rebooting of the computer is required unexpectedly. As with any creative endeavor, good presentations can involve several hours’ work to construct, so it is also a very good idea to maintain separate backup copies of presentations on a network drive, floppy, or writable CD. Throughout this document, instructions for specific computer keystrokes will appear in brackets and in a different font: e.g., <Ctrl-Shift> indicates that the “Ctrl” should be pressed and held while the “Shift” key is pressed (simultaneously pressing both keys will often not work). Navigation paths through nested menus will be designated with sequential choices separated by ellipses: <Format. . .Font>. “Dialog box” refers to a small window that opens to present options for some type of user input. For historical reasons, recalling a time when most presentations were 35mm transparency slides, or “Kodachromes,” individual pages in a PowerPoint presentation are referred to as “slides.” This presentation and handout were created with Office XP applications, and some differences exist between PowerPoint 2002 (the version included in Office XP) and its predecessors, PowerPoint 97 and 2000. Most of these differences are subtle, or involve functions not covered in this workshop, so users of previous PowerPoint versions should not have any difficulty applying most of the techniques reviewed here. The PowerPoint 2002 version includes obvious changes to the editing display, and PowerPoint 97 did not have as extensive an integration with web resources as the later versions. Overall, however, most of the functions covered in this workshop are available in all three versions, and exceptions have been noted when they occur. One note of caution: Not all software versions are completely compatible, since features added to later versions may not be supported in earlier versions. A presentation created with PowerPoint 2002, for

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Create More Powerful Presentations AACC 2003 example, may not run properly in PowerPoint 97. However, users ordinarily have the option of saving the presentation in a format that will be compatible with former versions of the software. 1.a Presentation Essentials—Roger’s Rules Every presenter has a unique style, and any attempt to standardize the features of all presentations into a common style would be fruitless. There are, however, several practices that tend to contribute to the success of a presentation. On the other hand, there are habits that often detract from the effectiveness of a presentation. Elsewhere in this handout, there are some general guidelines for creating slides that will help improve the appearance and readability of your presentation. But I would like to share “Roger’s Rules” for delivering a professional, polished presentation. 1.a (1) Limit text content The most important part of any presentation is its content, and the purpose of PowerPoint is to enhance the ability of the speaker to communicate information to the audience. A perfectly effective speech can be made without the help of PowerPoint. PowerPoint is most effective in presenting information that is difficult to communicate verbally, such as tables, graphs, pictures, etc. Slides with exclusively text content are useful for emphasizing important points and providing some structure to the presentation, but use of text slides as speaker notes should be avoided, for at least two reasons: First, it should be your goal for the audience to listen to you, not sit and read your slides, and second, notes from which a speaker reads will ordinarily require too much text to be legibly displayed on a slide. There are many ways to create notes for your presentation, from printing the outline of your PowerPoint file (more on this later), to writing out your entire talk word for word. But you should make every effort to avoid using the displayed slides as your speaker notes. Remember, if all you do is read your slides, then the audience really doesn’t need you at all—they can read the slides all by themselves. That is not the kind of impression you want to leave. 1.a (2) The “busy” slide How many times have you heard a speaker apologize for a “busy” slide that contains so much information that it is impossible to read? I always wonder: “If it is bad enough to apologize for, why did you use it in the first place?” There is simply no excuse for wasting the audience’s time with a slide that either cannot be read or cannot be comprehended. There is nothing wrong with a highly complex illustration that may require several minutes for the speaker to explain. But the “busy” slide containing rows and rows of tabular data that are too small for anyone farther away than the first couple of rows to read conveys only one clear message: The speaker did not bother to summarize the data in a way that it could be displayed comprehensibly. You want to give your

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audience the impression that your talk was important enough for you to carefully prepare it, not that you were too preoccupied to modify a useless slide. 1.a (3) Laser pointer madness Sometimes I curse the day that laser pointers were invented. Presenters got along perfectly well without them for years. Without a pointer, the slide had to be designed simple enough to make its meaning clear without the use of a pointing device. That still is a worthy goal in the design of any slide. It boils down to this: A laser pointer should only be used to highlight a feature on a slide that is not otherwise obvious. Examples include unlabeled components of illustrations, histological features on photomicrographs, interesting elements of photographs, etc. For those uses, laser pointers are very helpful and enhance the effectiveness of the presentation. For almost any other use, though, the laser pointer is either useless or distracting, or both. It is particularly annoying when the speaker reads the text from a slide (which shouldn’t be done anyway, for reasons given above), and points out each word as he or she reads it, in an apparent “follow the bouncing ball” fashion. Pointing to each word in a sentence as you read it aloud is helpful when teaching a pre-schooler how to read, but does not impress an adult audience. Likewise, circling blocks of text or words, “scratching through” text as it is read, or otherwise using the laser pointer to expend nervous energy does not enhance the presentation, is distracting, and potentially insulting to your audience. After having read this admonition, you will, no doubt, notice the way every speaker you hear from now on uses the laser pointer. And you will see many, many of them do the exact things I warn against. Please do not be one of them. 1.a (4) Speak to your audience For most people, giving a presentation before an audience is at least moderately stressful, and for some, public speaking is an intensely frightening experience. It is perhaps for those reasons that many speakers spend nearly all their time looking at the slides. Sometimes, the slides are used as speaker notes, and as discussed above, this should be avoided. When using text, you should display as succinct a statement as possible on the slide. You may want to recite the statement, but this is not really necessary. Remember, your audience can read. Ideally, you should display the abbreviated statement you want to make, and while your audience reads it, expand upon it with your verbal comments, while looking at the audience. Review your slides enough times so you have nearly memorized their content and order, and you will be able to confidently move through your presentation without using the slides to remind you what you need to say next. Of course, it is perfectly acceptable—and sometimes essential—to look at your slides occasionally. Just remember that whenever you do, you are turning your back on the audience, and you should do that as briefly as possible. The audience wants to see your face.

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Create More Powerful Presentations AACC 2003 A very effective speaking technique is to introduce the content or subject of the next slide before your audience sees it, because their attention is most focused on you when you have completed the review of one slide and are ready to move to the next. If you move to the next slide before giving this introduction, then you have lost some of the audience’s attention since most will be digesting the content of the new slide. Memorizing the order of your slides and telling your audience what is coming next is a very effective way to pace your presentation and polish its appearance. 1.b Creating Presentations When the PowerPoint application is opened, the user is presented with several options, which may vary depending on the software version. These options include creating a new presentation, opening an existing presentation, opening the Design Templates dialog box, or using the “Autocontent Wizard.” Design templates may be added at any time, so it is rarely necessary to begin with that choice. The Autocontent Wizard is helpful for beginning users, but lacks some flexibility and will not be covered in this workshop. Once a presentation has been created and saved as a file, it can be reopened by selecting the choice “Open an existing presentation.” Some PowerPoint versions display a list of the most recently used PowerPoint files to select from. Of course, double-clicking on a PowerPoint presentation file name (a filename with the extension .ppt) in Windows Explorer or any directory or folder view opens PowerPoint and loads the presentation, as well. The “Blank presentation” choice creates a new file called “Presentation1” (note the file name in the title bar), and in some versions of PowerPoint, opens the “AutoLayout” dialog box. The first time you attempt to save a new presentation (or try to exit PowerPoint without saving the current presentation), you will be prompted to give the presentation a filename. In the Save File dialog box, you can also specify the format in which you want to save your presentation. The default format is a “presentation” (.ppt) file, but other choices include HTML (web page), formats compatible with older versions of PowerPoint, and various graphics formats. One of the keys to becoming comfortable with PowerPoint is understanding that virtually any change you make to an individual slide, or the entire presentation for that matter, is reversible up to the point where you save the file and/or exit the program. A different slide layout can be selected at any time, and a design template can be applied to the entire presentation or a single slide, and can be changed as many times as your patience will allow—none of these changes is permanent until the file is saved, either by the user in the middle of an editing session, or by the program when the user selects “Save changes” in the exit dialog box. To reverse recently made changes, the <Edit. . .Undo> is most useful. The undo function stores the most recent editing changes to a slide, and will reverse the changes in sequential order beginning with the most recent. The first—and a very important—consideration when creating a presentation is how the finished product will be viewed, because this affects the dimensions of individual slides. On-screen presentations using digital projectors should use a slide size that corresponds to the 3:4 aspect ratio (height:width) of computer displays. 35mm slides have a different

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aspect ratio (2:3). PowerPoint offers several pre-set options for slide sizes, and custom sizes can be created, too. The presentation can be resized at any time, but selection of the slide size before you begin creating the presentation is highly recommended, since resizing after elements such as text and graphics have been added to slides can affect spacing and margins. To select the slide size, go to <File. . .Page setup> and complete the dialog box. Note that landscape or portrait orientation can be selected, depending on whether you want the slide width to be the longest or shortest dimension, respectively. 1.c Choosing Slide Layouts Once a new presentation file has been created, and a slide size chosen, PowerPoint offers a variety of preset slide layouts. In some PowerPoint versions, the layout dialog box pops up automatically when a new slide is opened, or can be accessed at any time from the <Format. . .Slide layout> menu. In PowerPoint 2002, the slide layout can be chosen from selections that are displayed to the right of the slide editing workspace. Slide layouts—AutoLayout in the latest versions of PowerPoint—are a convenience, not a necessity. Any of the preset layouts that appear in the slide layout menu can be created manually. For example, one of the slide layouts includes a title and bulleted text. Both of these elements can be added to a blank slide without selecting the predetermined layout. Slide layouts have several advantages, though:

1. You are prompted for input into specific fields 2. Text is pre-formatted, and its placement is consistent from one slide to the next

3. Fewer keystrokes are required to add objects such as pictures, video, tables, and

charts.

4. Changes to Slide Master default settings affect all slides formatted with slide layout, but will not affect manually formatted text. (more on the Slide Master in the next chapter)

The layout of an individual slide can be changed after elements have been added, but problems may occur when this happens, because elements already added are not removed and their format may not correspond to elements in the new layout. For example, if you select a layout that includes a title and bulleted text, add bulleted text, then try to change the slide layout to a title and chart, the bulleted text will overlay the chart in the new layout, requiring that you manually resize and reposition the elements of the slide. Reorganizing the elements on the slide is not too difficult, but some consistencies from slide to slide— e.g. title placement—may be lost in the process. One of the biggest advantages of using the slide layout function is consistent formatting of the entire presentation. The Slide Master, which is discussed in the next chapter, specifies the format of certain elements of a slide, so that a consistent appearance is

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Create More Powerful Presentations AACC 2003 maintained in the presentation. Formatting of slide elements specified in the slide layout options are determined by the Slide Master. When you are ready to add another slide to your presentation, you can select <Insert. . .New slide> or click the new slide icon on the toolbar. 1.d Using Slide Sorter View PowerPoint starts in the normal editing view, which displays a single slide and, depending on the version and which functions are activated, provides an outline of text elements in a window to the left of the editing window. After you create and begin to add slides to your new presentation, you may eventually need to skip to another slide out of order, or perhaps change the order of the slides. One way to navigate through the presentation is by using the scrollbar or <PgUp> and <PgDn> keys. In PowerPoint 2002, several slides that precede or follow the slide currently in the editing window are displayed if the “Slides” tab is selected. Clicking on any one of the displayed slides will load it into the editing window. You can scroll through the slides displayed, and rearrange them as described below. However, slide sorter view is another way (and the only way in PowerPoint 97 and 2000) to find and organize the slides in your presentation. Slide sorter can be accessed by <View. . .Slide sorter> or by clicking the slide sorter button on the toolbar. Slide sorter presents all of the slides in your presentation, organized in rows and columns on a page. On an XVGA display (1024 X 768 resolution), the slides appear in five columns. Double-clicking on any slide opens that slide in the normal (editing) view. Single-clicking highlights a slide (the border appears thicker), and makes the highlighted slide subject to any of the commands available on the Edit menu (Cut, Copy, Delete, Duplicate). Right-clicking on a slide reveals a menu containing some of these commands, also. To relocate a slide, you can either click and hold while dragging the slide to its new location, or use the cut and paste functions on the edit menu. Right-clicking and dragging opens a menu that gives you the options of copying or moving the slide to the new location. You also can select multiple slides. If you want to select all of the slides, choose <Edit. . .Select all> and all of the slides will become highlighted. To select several slides in no particular order, hold down the Ctrl key and click on each slide you want to select. Note that, unlike the folder display in Windows, the slide sorter does not allow you to expand a box around items you want to select by holding down the left-click button on the mouse, Clicking on an already-selected slide while holding down the Crtl key will unselect the slide. Selecting one slide, and then pressing the Shift key while selecting a second slide selects all of the numerically intervening slides (i.e., to select slides 5 – 12, click on slide 5, then hold down the Shift key while clicking on slide 12). Selecting multiple slides is a useful function when you want to copy part of one

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presentation into another: Open both presentations and select slide view, select the slides you want to copy from one presentation, switch to the other presentation, click where you want to insert the slides, and choose <Edit. . .Paste> (or use the right-click menu).

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Notes

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2 Presentation Appearance “A person's life is dyed with the color of his imagination.” Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Emperor of Rome 161–180. With the exception of content, the most important feature of your presentation is its appearance. A consistent, non-distracting background, aesthetically matched colors, easily read text, and logical organization all enhance the impact your presentation will have on your audience. On the other hand, poorly chosen color schemes, fonts too small or ornate to be read easily, and inconsistencies between individual slide schemes create distractions that diminish the effectiveness of your presentation. Although content is indisputably the most important aspect of your presentation, and even professionally drawn graphics cannot save a poorly conceived lecture, many excellent lectures fail to achieve their potential impact due to a lackluster presentation. In this section we will review several features of PowerPoint to help you accomplish your goal of a visually satisfying presentation. 2.a Master Slide View The Slide Master is a very useful feature that allows you to set global attributes for certain elements of a presentation. The Slide Master view is activated by selecting <View. . .Master. . .Slide Master>. Note that there are additional “master” views, which include Handout Master and Notes Master. PowerPoint does not, by default, include the Title Master, but it can be created by selecting <Insert. . .New Title Master> when the Slide Master is open. The Title Master view is similar to the Slide Master, but applies to the title slide only, which sometimes is different from all other slides in a presentation. The Slide Master applies to every slide except the title slide (selected from the AutoLayout menu). If the presentation does not have a Title Master, though, the title slide will adopt the specifications of the Slide Master. The handout and notes master views provide options for the appearance of your handouts and speaker notes, respectively, which can be printed by selecting the corresponding options in the print menu. PowerPoint 97 and 2000 do not give you the opportunity to view how the handout or notes pages will look without actually printing them, but PowerPoint 2002 has a “Print Preview” option that includes handouts and notes. The master slide contains several elements that can be changed or added to slides, but there is one important caveat: Only elements added from AutoLayout slides are affected by the master slide specifications. This means that, if you open a new blank slide without specifying one of the slide layouts (described above), and then add a title, the appearance of the title will not automatically conform to the master slide. This same restriction holds for bulleted text, and it is the principal reason for using AutoLayouts.

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Create More Powerful Presentations AACC 2003 The primary elements that are formatted in the Slide Master are the font, size, color, and placement of title and bulleted text. Click on the text element you want to format, select <Format. . .Font>, and set the desired font attributes in the dialog box. Once these are formatted in the Slide Master, all AutoLayout slides including either a title, bulleted text, or both (except for the title slide) will adopt the specified text attributes. One important note about font sizes: Be certain that the text is sufficiently large to be read easily by anyone attending the presentation, even those in the back of the room. A good test is to display a slide containing bulleted text in the Slide Show (full screen) mode, which can be selected from the View menu or display toolbar. Step back several feet from your computer screen and try to read the text. It is much simpler to establish a satisfactory font size before you begin to add slides to your presentation, because resizing the text later affects spacing and margins, and may require considerable re-editing of individual slides. Setting appropriate font sizes before you begin to work on your presentation will save you save you a great deal time later, as you put the finishing touches on your lecture. The master slide also allows you to add information that will be displayed with each slide. Although these elements appear as footers on the unedited master slide, in reality they can be moved anywhere you like on the slide. There are three pre-formatted fields for date and time, slide number, and a footer of your choice, which might be your name or the name of your organization. You also can add graphics, such as your company’s logo, to the master slide, and it will appear on all slides. Recall, though, that the title slide has a separate master, so changes made to the Slide Master will not appear on the title slide, assuming the title slide is selected from the AutoLayout menu. Also, objects that are included on the Slide Master can only be edited within the Slide Master view; the objects that subsequently appear on individual slides will not be selectable in the normal editing view. The slide background can be set in the Slide Master view: <Format. . .Background>. All of the slides in the presentation will automatically change to the background set in the Slide Master, whether you select “Apply” or “Apply to all,” since the Slide Master makes universal changes to the presentation. It is not necessary to set the background in the Slide Master view, however. Selecting <Format. . .Background> in the normal view will do the same thing, but you have the choice to apply the background to the current slide only, or all slides. The background setting for an individual slide, set in normal view, overrides the Slide Master setting. The <Format. . .Background> dialog box also offers you the opportunity to omit any background graphics specified in the Slide Master from the currently edited slide. 2.b Backgrounds An attractive background is an essential element of a visually pleasing presentation. The background ordinarily is constant throughout the presentation, and provides continuity from one slide to the next. A well-chosen background gives some interest to the slide,

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contrasts the text color to make it easily readable, and does not contain busy or complex elements that distract the observer’s attention from the slide’s content. Remember, the purpose of the background is to enhance the content, not to divert attention from it. Background color is largely a matter of preference. Solid white backgrounds are completely acceptable, and represent a minimalist approach to slide design in the extreme. Black text on a white background certainly is high contrast, but looks no different than overhead projections, and presentation software offers so many other options that improve the aesthetic appeal of your presentation. Similarly, white text on a black background is easy to read, but also is harsh in appearance. Some suggestions on choosing a background:

1. Use either light colored text on a dark background, or dark text on a light colored background. Although drop shadows can set off text against a same-colored background, the effect is mostly artistic and often makes text difficult to read.

2. A graded transition from light to dark produces a nice background effect, as if the

slides were lighted from above or below.

3. Avoid using photographs or complex graphics as backgrounds. These detract attention from the objects on the slide, and can make text difficult to read. It is okay for the background to be interesting, but you don’t want it to become the focal point of your presentation. Many graphics editing programs, such as Adobe PhotoShop, can apply a “haze” to a photograph that might make it suitable as background, with barely recognizable features.

4. Some backgrounds include border or corner graphic elements, and you should be

careful that these do not take up too much room on the slide. When adding graphics and charts, you will want to have as much room as possible on individual slides, and you should not overlap borders with content.

5. Some backgrounds contain animated elements, which can be distracting. You

don’t want your audience thinking about a cute little animation while you are trying to make an important point in your lecture.

To create a simple background with light-to-dark grading, select “Background” from the Format menu, and click the Background drop down menu in the dialog box. Select “Fill effects” and click on the “Gradient” tab. For a graded blue background, select the two-color mode and set the two colors to blue and black. Select a shading style and apply the changes by clicking “OK.” The background format dialog box presents the same options as the “Fill Color,” which is discussed in the next chapter. You also can apply textures to solid backgrounds, but use caution because a highly textured background can make text difficult to read. Many professionally-designed backgrounds are available from web sites offering PowerPoint resources. Some of these are listed in the Additional Resources at the end of this booklet.

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Create More Powerful Presentations AACC 2003 2.c Color Schemes Default colors for background and text can be specified in the Slide Master, and these will be applied to all slides in the presentation, but settings for individual slides can be changed. In the normal view, enter <Format. . .Slide Color Scheme> to open the color scheme dialog box, which allows you to set the colors for such things as lines, shadows, and object fills. Color schemes applied to individual slides override the default settings specified in the Slide Master view. However, if you select the “Apply to All” option after selecting a new color scheme, the Slide Master will be updated with the new settings, as well. Also, the background color specified in the color scheme does not override a background specified in the <Format. . .Background> dialog box. There is a confusing relationship between the background color specified in the color scheme dialog box and the background dialog box. If you open a blank presentation, and specify a background color using the color scheme options, then your choice will be applied to the slide (or slides, if you choose the “Apply to All” option). However, if you set the background color with the background dialog box, you cannot specify a new color for the background in the new color dialog box. Furthermore, you cannot “unselect” the background color set using the <Format. . .Background> option, so specifying a background in that manner essentially makes the background color option in the color scheme dialog box meaningless. Color schemes are most useful for saving color combinations you like. The color schemes dialog box offers you the opportunity to select a standard color scheme or customize the colors any way you wish. If you create a customized color scheme, you then have the choice to save it as one of the standard color schemes. 2.d Design Templates Creating a well-coordinated combination of colors, fonts, and background for your presentation can be a time-consuming task, and requires some measure of artistic aptitude. Certain color combinations, for example, should be avoided. Red against a green background or vice versa produces an uncomfortable visual effect. Green text against a blue background is almost unreadable. White text against a black background is fatiguing to the eye. If you have a natural talent for artistic design, and can choose a combination of colors that gives a coordinated, satisfying appearance to your presentation, then you may enjoy spending some time creating a color scheme to your liking. An advantage to this approach is that your presentation is truly unique, and reflects your specific tastes. For the not so artistically inclined, other options exist for creating color-coordinated presentations. PowerPoint includes several “Design Templates,” which contain formatting information for the entire presentation, including fonts, default fill colors, bullets, and a background. Design templates are, fundamentally, a set of pre-designed Slide and Title Masters. If you

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choose a design template (<Format. . .Design Template>) it will affect nearly all of the default settings in your presentation. That is not necessarily bad—the PowerPoint design templates are professionally created. You should just be aware that the template changes more than just the background. After you apply a design template, however, you can change the formatting of any element you want in either the Slide Master or normal view. There are other sources of design templates for PowerPoint presentations, as well. Some of these are listed in the Appendix. Design templates are stored as files with a .POT extension, and can be viewed by selecting <Format. . .Design Template>. You can make changes in colors, background, fills, etc. after applying a design template to your presentation, as described above. If you apply a design template to your presentation, and then make changes that you want to use in future presentations, you can save these as a new design template. To save a new design template, select <File. . .Save As> and choose “Design Template” from the “Save as File Type. . .” drop down menu. Remember to give the new design template a name you will recognize. The new template will be saved in the default directory (varies, depending on the PowerPoint version), unless you specify otherwise. When saving a presentation as a template, remember that the entire presentation will be saved as a template. This means that if you apply the same template to a new presentation then the whole presentation upon which the template is based will be loaded. In some cases, you may want that to happen. Suppose, for example, you want to use the same 4 or 5 slide introduction for multiple presentations—you could save the introduction as a template. Most times, though, you just want to apply the same default settings to multiple presentations, and in that case, you should delete all the slides in a presentation before saving it as a template. That way, only the Slide and Title Masters are saved, which contain all the formatting information in an otherwise blank presentation. Clicking (or, on most computers, double-clicking) on a presentation template file opens PowerPoint with the settings for that template loaded. This is a convenient way to reset the default values for colors, AutoLayout, editing window, slide size, and the like: Create a new presentation and make all the default settings to what you prefer, and save the file as a template. You can then create a shortcut on your desktop to that template, and clicking on the shortcut will start PowerPoint with all of your favorite settings. The Additional Resources at the end of this booklet lists several online resources for presentation templates.

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Notes

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3 Adding Graphics “One picture is worth a thousand words [of printers’ ink].” Attributed to Fred R. Barnard, author of Printers’ Ink, who admitted that he called it a Chinese proverb so people would take it seriously. Humans are highly visual creatures, and well-placed, thoughtfully constructed illustrations can vastly improve the impact of your presentation. PowerPoint includes a variety of drawing tools that can be used to create graphical elements. In this chapter we will consider three types of graphical elements that can be added to your presentation: Clip Art, pictures, and shapes. Charts, which display data in a graphical format, will be discussed in the next chapter. Computers store graphical images in one of two basic formats: Vector and bitmapped. It is important to understand the differences between these two formats, because they will ultimately determine the extent to which a graphic element can be manipulated in PowerPoint. Vector graphics are stored in digital format as a series of equations that describe the lines, curves, and angles that create the graphical image. A vector graphics representation of a red box, for example, merely describes the dimensions of the box and the color (red) and character (such as shading) of the fill. A vector graphics file instructs the computer how to draw the image it represents. Drawings created in PowerPoint are always vector graphics, and PowerPoint can import vector graphic elements from several other programs, as well. A Windows-based standard exists for vector graphics format, called “Windows Metafile.” Windows Metafile graphics have filenames with the extension .WMF, and most Windows-compatible programs recognize these files. Vector graphics files are compact, and the images are highly editable. In the above example, you can resize or recolor the red box easily in PowerPoint. Vector graphics are the format of choice for simple illustrations because of their simplicity, flexibility, and small file size. Bitmapped (sometimes called rasterized) images are stored as an array of pixels, and the file defines the exact color of each pixel. There are several formats for bitmapped graphics, including .TIFF (tagged information file format), .GIF (graphical interchange format), and .JPEG (joint photographic experts group). Bitmapped graphics files are large because every pixel requires some information stored in the file. For example, an 800X600 image (SVGA resolution) comprises 480,000 pixels, each of which may require a byte of data to describe, so the file size is approximately 480K. Greater color depth requires more bits of data per pixel, so the total file size increases accordingly. Because the file instructs the computer how to paint a graphic, bitmapped images can have any degree of complexity and color depth. Photographs are ordinarily stored digitally as bitmapped images. PowerPoint does not have the capability to edit bitmapped images (other than to resize them and make simple changes in brightness and contrast). Editing

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Create More Powerful Presentations AACC 2003 bitmapped images requires a program such as Adobe Photoshop or JASC Paintshop. PowerPoint can capture and display bitmapped graphics in a presentation, but can only make rudimentary changes to them. PowerPoint does not clearly distinguish between bitmapped and vector images, referring to both as “Pictures” on the Insert menu. When you select <Insert. . .Picture. . .From File>, you can point to either a bitmapped or a vector image. The format will affect the editing options you have in PowerPoint, but bitmapped and vector images are both inserted into presentations in the same way. 3.a Clip Art The term “Clip Art” refers to vector graphics created in a proprietary format that can be added to your presentation. PowerPoint includes a large library of clip art that can be accessed by selecting <Insert. . .Picture. . .Clip Art>. In addition to the clip art included with the PowerPoint software, other resources exist for locating these graphical images, including a large library of clip art published on the Microsoft web site (select “Clips Online” from the dialog box). The link to additional clip art at the Microsoft Design Gallery Live site is available only in PowerPoint versions 2000 and later, but this online clip art gallery can be accessed from any web browser pointed to http://dgl.microsoft.com. Several large collections of clip art are available for purchase at most computer software stores or online. Clip art is useful for adding illustrations to your presentation that would be too complex to create using the drawing tools available in PowerPoint. Clip art images are professionally drawn, and the variety of clip art images available to you is limited only by your patience and persistence in trying to locate them. Many of the clip art images are cartoonish, though, and some may impart a juvenile appearance to your presentation. You should exercise careful judgment when adding clip art images to your presentation. Remember that graphics are only beneficial if they enhance, rather than detract from, your presentation. Because clip art images are in vector graphic format, they are highly editable. Highlight a clip art image and select <Format. . .Picture> and you will open a dialog box that offers several options for changing the attributes of the clip art image. The “Size” and “Position” tabs allow you to specify the dimensions and location of the image, but you can drag and size it in the normal slide view, as well. Selecting the “Picture” tab allows you to crop the image, convert it to black and white or grayscale, or substitute colors of your choice for the ones included in the image (click “Recolor”). Unless you reformat the clip art image as a Microsoft drawing object by selecting <Draw. . .Ungroup>, you cannot change shapes within the image, except by stretching the image in the vertical or horizontal directions. Ungrouping the image allows you to independently edit all of its individual vector components, which may be numerous.

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You can rotate or flip an image by highlighting it and selecting the corresponding function on the Draw menu. Some of the drawing functions are not available for clip art in earlier versions of PowerPoint (97 and 2000), and recoloring rotated or flipped clip art in these versions requires a cumbersome workaround. Most draw functions can be applied to clip art in PowerPoint 2002, though. 3.b Pictures The <Insert. . .Picture> menu offers several options, but the most important are “Clip Art,” discussed above, and “From File.” The latter choice opens a navigation box where you can point to a file you would like to be inserted into the current slide. Depending on your version of Windows and PowerPoint, the navigation box may display a preview of images that you highlight in the directory display. Images, either bitmapped or vector, are not automatically resized to fit your presentation, so you often have to resize the graphic after it is inserted. PowerPoint does offer limited options for editing bitmapped images. The picture toolbar allows you to adjust the contrast and brightness of images. In some versions of PowerPoint, the picture toolbar appears automatically when you highlight a bitmapped image in your presentation, but you can also open the toolbar by selecting <View. . .Toolbars. . .Picture>. For bitmapped images, some of the options on the picture toolbar are not available, such as the re-coloring or changing the transparency. You can change the width of the picture border, set the color of the border, or add a drop shadow to the picture (using the shadow option on the drawing toolbar). The toolbar also contains an option to crop the picture. This function changes the shape of the cursor to crossed double arrows, and the cursor changes to the cropping icon when you hover over a border of the picture. Unlike the sizing function, cropping eliminates any area of the picture outside of the cropping border. 3.c Creating Your Own Graphics Graphical elements can be added to PowerPoint presentations to serve in the same manner that a lecturer uses simple drawings on a chalk- or white-board: to help demonstrate a reaction mechanism, physical design, or interrelationships between components of a system. PowerPoint includes some elementary drawing tools that can be used to create illustrations. You may be surprised at the variety of graphical elements that you can create using these tools. The AutoShapes menu (on the drawing toolbar) contains several pre-drawn shapes that you can add to a slide. These shapes are vector images, so they can be extensively edited to suit your own needs. AutoShapes include block arrows, geometric shapes, brackets, flowchart components, arcs, and a few other assorted graphics. Any of these graphics can be resized, re-colored, rotated, and stretched in any direction, with some limitations. For

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Create More Powerful Presentations AACC 2003 example, you cannot stretch a block arrow without also making it wider or fatter, which sometimes limits the usefulness of these shapes. Note that you could create any of the AutoShape images yourself—PowerPoint has simply anticipated some useful shapes and provided pre-drawn graphics for you. If you find an AutoShape that is similar to the exact image you want, it may be easier to edit the AutoShape rather than create a new graphic from scratch. Lines and shapes can be added as graphical elements to PowerPoint presentations. Editable characteristics of lines include length, width, color, and curvature. The size, aspect ratio, color, shading, and border of shapes can be edited. When you add a graphical image to a PowerPoint slide, it becomes an independently selectable element of the slide. Clicking on a graphic element will select it and make it responsive to editing commands; this is usually indicated by small boxes that appear on its borders. The small boxes are touch points that can be “grabbed” by clicking and holding the mouse button. Touch points can be dragged to resize or reshape an image. Clicking inside the image and dragging it to a new location will move an entire image intact. A highlighted image will also move in response to the arrow keys on the keyboard, or by selecting <Draw. . .Nudge>, which is useful for fine adjustments. Highlighting an image and selecting <Edit. . .Copy> adds the image to the clipboard, and it can be pasted elsewhere in the presentation (or in another presentation, Word document, web page, etc.). Right-clicking on the image and selecting “Copy” accomplishes the same thing, and an image can also be deleted using the right-click menu. Cut and paste functions are useful for moving an image among slides within or between presentations. You should keep in mind that cutting a graphic element adds it to the Windows clipboard; deleting it does not. Useful hints for using the clipboard, which is common to all Microsoft Office applications as well as many other Windows applications, can be found in the Help files. 3.c (1) Drawing Lines and Shapes The AutoShape menu offers several options for lines: Straight line, straight line with one or two arrowheads, curve, freeform, or scribble. Straight line and arrow are also options on the Draw menu. The line and arrowhead functions are similar, except that the latter adds arrowheads at one or both ends of the line. Arrowheads can be added to any line, so the “Arrow” choice is merely a shortcut. To draw a line, click the Line button (the cursor changes to a “+”), then left-click and hold while dragging the cursor from the origin to the terminus of the desired line. When the left mouse button is released, the line function is automatically cancelled. The line can be moved, reoriented, or extended by grabbing the center or terminus. The color and width of a selected line can be changed using the corresponding functions on the Draw menu, as long as the line is the currently selected object in the editing window. The Draw menu also contains dialog boxes for changing the arrowhead size and shape, and converting a solid line (default) to any one of several options for dotted or dashed lines.

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To create a straight line or arrow, go to <AutoShapes. . .Lines> and select the line or arrow tool. Right-click on your slide where you want the line to start, and while holding down the mouse button, drag the cursor to the point where you want the line to end. Don’t worry about the exact locations of the origin and termination of the line, because you can always move or resize the line later. The line tool creates a straight line between the two points you specify. The “Freeform” tool creates straight lines that connect sequential points you create with left-clicks—a double-click terminates the function. Curved lines can be created in two ways. The “Scribble” tool transforms the cursor into a marker that you can drag across your slide while holding down the left mouse button, and draw a line as though you were drawing it on the paper. The “Curve” tool produces a smooth curve between sequential points you create with left mouse button clicks. The curve tool takes some practice to master, but once you discover its potential, you will find that you can create just about any shape you want. The scribble tool may be more flexible than the curve tool, but it works a little differently. To create a curve, go to <AutoShapes. . .Lines> and select the curve tool (hovering over a selection will reveal its function). On the slide view, click where you want to start the curve, and then PowerPoint will draw a smooth curve based on individual points you create thereafter. A double-click terminates the curve function. Remember that the curve is a vector graphic, so each segment of the curve between the points you specify will be determined by an equation (nth order) that describes a curve. The points in a curve are critical, since they ultimately determine its shape. A point is created every time you mouse-click while the curve tool is activated. The points in a curve can be edited. To change the shape of a curve you have already drawn, highlight the curve and select <Draw. . .Edit Points> or right-click on the curve and select the Edit Points function. The individual points composing the curve will be revealed, and you can relocate any of the points by dragging it to a new location. As an exercise, create an arc by selecting the curve tool and clicking three or four points in a semicircle. Go to the Edit Points function, and drag one of the points to a different location. You will see how PowerPoint redraws the curve based on the new coordinates. You can also add or delete points in your curve by right-clicking on a point and selecting the corresponding function. Adding points can help refine the curvature, and deleting points can make the curve smoother. Creating a curve that looks exactly the way you want it takes practice, but is not difficult. As long as you keep in mind that PowerPoint draws a smooth curve between any three sequential points, you should be able to create any shape you want. In the Scribble function, PowerPoint automatically creates a point anywhere the direction or concavity of your hand-drawn line changes. You can edit these as described above, but scribbled lines usually contain many more points than curves created with the Curve function. The choice of whether to use the curve or scribble tool largely depends on your preference and the complexity of the curved line you want to draw. Complex curves might be drawn more precisely with the scribble tool, while such shapes as Gaussian or sigmoid curves ordinarily are easier to create with the curve tool, using fewer points.

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Create More Powerful Presentations AACC 2003 The Add and Delete Point functions also apply to straight lines and freeform objects. Adding a point to a straight line does not create a curve, though. Adding and relocating a new point within a straight line creates an angle. Several drawing tools are available in PowerPoint to help you produce the type of illustration you desire, but first you need to understand something about the way PowerPoint regards the various components of a drawing. Points, which are discussed in some detail above, are locations within a particular object that allow you to adjust its dimensions or change its shape. Each shape or line you create in PowerPoint is an individually selectable object, and the Tab key can be used to scroll through all of the objects on a particular slide. In some cases, objects may overlap, and it usually is important which object is on top. With the function <Draw. . .Order> you can change the placement of a highlighted object relative to other objects it overlaps. When you create a component of your illustration that is composed of several objects, you may want to combine those objects into a single object so you can move, copy, or resize them all at once. Recall that you can select multiple objects by holding down the <Ctrl> key while clicking on individual objects, and once you have selected all of the objects you want to combine, you can select <Draw. . .Group> to convert them to a single object. The <Draw. . .Ungroup> function reverses the process. The grouping of objects in a drawing will be important in the next chapter, when we consider the ways that different components of a slide can be animated. The <Draw. . .Rotate or Flip> allows you to rotate a selected object 90° either clockwise (right) or counterclockwise (left), or to produce a mirror image of the object either in the horizontal or vertical plane. You also can rotate the object through any angle you desire by selecting the Free Rotate option. In the Free Rotate option, circles (instead of boxes) appear on one corners of the selected object, and grabbing one of these circles and dragging it to a new location around the central axis of the object rotates the object. An outline of the object’s new position appears as it is rotated. Clicking anywhere outside of the object cancels the Free Rotate function. The Rotate or Flip function, in conjunction with copy, is very useful for creating symmetrical drawings. If you draw half of the figure, make a copy of it, flip the copy either in the horizontal or vertical plane, and then merge the two objects, you have created an image with a horizontal or vertical plane of symmetry. For example, to draw a heart (the Valentine’s type, not the anatomically correct type), using the draw curve to create the right (or left) half, make a copy, flip the copy in the horizontal plane, and match up the two halves. The <Draw. . .Align or Distribute> tool positions selected objects relative to each other. The Align tool can be used to move selected objects so that their centers, tops, or bottoms are aligned in the horizontal plane, or that their centers or left or right edges are aligned in the vertical plane. The Distribute tool spaces selected objects evenly between the left- and right-most objects if horizontal alignment is selected, or the top and bottom objects if vertical alignment is selected.

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In situations where you want to manually align several objects, <View. . .Guides> adds horizontal and vertical gridline to serve as a guide. The lines can be moved, and are not part of the slide—they are for editing purposes only. The guides are toggled off by the same menu selection used to activate them. 3.c (2) Coloring and Shading In PowerPoint, the color option generally refers to the color of a line (or text, discussed in the next section), and fill refers to the color inside a shape such as square, circle, oval, or other element you create or select from the AutoShapes menu. Shapes by default have a border that is editable independently from the fill color and character, but the border can be eliminated, if desired. Objects created in PowerPoint adopt the default color settings established in the color scheme for line color and fill, but these can be changed. The Format Object dialog box is a context-sensitive function that can be accessed from the Format menu or by right-clicking an object, and it contains line and fill color options. These options also appear on the drawing toolbar in some versions of PowerPoint. The Colors and Lines tab in the Format Object dialog box offers options for specifying the width and pattern (dotted, dashed, etc.) of a selected line or the border of a selected shape. Line thickness (“Style” in the dialog box) choices range from ¼ to 6 point, but you can specify a larger size if desired. Point size is a typographical convention that relates to the distance from top to bottom of a typewritten character—12-point text corresponds to the older standard “pica” size on mechanical typewriters, and is the size of text in this document. Although you can make a line as wide as you like, the choices for coloring lines are limited and the rectangle drawing tool or block arrow may be preferable if a very wide line or arrow is required. The simplest way to change the color of a line (including curves, freeform and scribbled lines, and arrows) is by using the Line Color tool on the drawing toolbar. Selecting “Automatic” in the line color dialog box sets the color to the default specified in the color scheme. PowerPoint displays the last few custom colors selected, so you can match the line color to other objects to which custom colors have been applied. To choose a new color, select the “More Line Colors” option; the “Standard” tab offers a 256 (8-bit) color palate, and the “Custom” tab reveals a 16 million (24 bit) color palate. You should keep in mind that the displayed color will depend on the display properties set in Windows, and may be restricted by the capability of a digital projector. A wider variety of options exist for coloring shapes with the fill function. Shading or color gradients can be applied with the “Fill Effects” function. The Fill Effects dialog box allows you to select gradients, textures, or patterns for fill colors. In addition, you can choose to fill a shape with a picture by specifying the location of a bitmapped image in the picture dialog box. To apply a pattern to the fill, you need to specify foreground and background colors. Texture options are bitmapped images included with PowerPoint, but you can add images to the texture options by selecting “Other Texture.”

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Create More Powerful Presentations AACC 2003 The color gradient options are useful for creating a three dimensional appearance of geometric objects. The “Shading Style” options include various choices for the topographical orientation of the gradient—vertical, horizontal, diagonal, center, etc. One-color gradients vary the density of a single color, whereas two color gradients fade from one color to another, specified as Color 1 and Color 2. PowerPoint offers several preset options for gradients that can be viewed in the drop down menu after selecting “Preset.” A little practice with the drawing tools available in PowerPoint will pay large dividends in the form of more realistic and visually impressive illustrations to enhance your presentation. 3.c (3) 3-D Effects PowerPoint 2000 and 2002 have a richer selection of 3-D effects among their drawing tools than previous versions. For text, the 3-D effects are limited to drop shadows, and there is little flexibility other than the direction of the shadow. However, for AutoShapes there are a variety of 3-D drawing tools to adjust the depth of the 3-D effect, change the apparent lighting source, rotate or tilt the image, alter the perspective, and apply different textures to the 3-D surfaces. To access the 3-D drawing menu, highlight the AutoShape you want to edit and select “3-D” from the drawing toolbar. There are several styles to choose from, and once a style is selected, additional modifications may be made by selecting “3-D settings.” The 3-D drawing tools can be used to give depth to a complex graphic in much the same way that color gradients are used, as described in the previous section. The chief limitation of the 3-D drawing tools in PowerPoint is that they apply only to AutoShapes and, to some extent, text. The other element to which you might want to apply such effects is pictures, but these drawing tools are unavailable for manipulating images pasted to PowerPoint slides. Recall that PowerPoint has very limited bitmap editing capabilities. One way you can manipulate an image with the 3-D tools is to “paint” an AutoShape with the picture. Select <Format AutoShape. . .Color. . .Fill Effects> and choose the “Picture” tab. You can browse to the image file you want to fill the AutoShape. When you apply the 3-D effects to the painted AutoShape, the image itself will not rotate, but its diminsions will change appropriately. 3.c (4) Word Art The WordArt dialog box can be activated from the drawing toolbar or by selecting <Insert. . .Picture. . .WordArt>. WordArt inserts text as a series of shapes corresponding to the text entered in the WordArt dialog box, and editing options are mostly the same as those available in the <Format. . .Object> dialog box. You can stretch or rotate WordArt graphics using the normal functions, and all of the coloring options—gradients, textures, patterns, and pictures—are available as well. WordArt tools

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can be used to create flashy titles, but they should be used with caution in presentations. The principal function of text elements in a presentation is to convey information, and WordArt embellishments can be distracting if used indiscriminately. PowerPoint includes such tools, presumably, to assist in creating a stylish appearance for eye catching web pages or advertisements. Addition of drop shadows to text may enhance its readability against a similarly colored background and can produce a pleasing three-dimensional effect, as though the text is hovering above the slide. The Shadow function is available on the drawing toolbar or in the <Format. . .Font> dialog box. Preset shadow options are displayed when the Shadow function is activated, and the default shadow color is determined by the slide color scheme. Choosing the Shadow Settings option allows you to specify the color and orientation of the shadow. With the exception of transparency, no other attributes of the drop shadow can be adjusted in PowerPoint. Bitmap editing programs usually include a more extensive array of options for drop shadows, such as blurring the margins and adjusting the intensity of the shadow. Avoid the use of drop shadows with small text or long passages of text, though, as this effect can reduce readability by making the text appear blurry. If you use drop shadows, you should also make sure that the orientation is consistent within and between slides. 3.d Equations PowerPoint includes a companion program, Microsoft Equation 3.0, which can be used to create mathematical equations for inclusion in your presentation. The same program is available to insert equations in Word documents. Equation Editor does not solve equations, it is only a set of tools for creating equations, which are difficult to produce with standard text and graphic tools. The equation editor is opened when you select <Insert. . .Object> and choose the equation editor from the objects menu. Although it would seem logical for equations to be regarded as text elements, in fact PowerPoint treats equations as pictures (or, perhaps more precisely, as clip art). The Font Color tool, for example, is not available when an equation is highlighted. To change the color of an equation, you have to open the Format Object dialog box, select the “Picture” tab, and specify the font color you want using the recolor option. The equation editor always creates equations in a black font, so adding equations to a presentation with a dark background ordinarily requires recoloring the equation to make it clearly visible. Be aware that, when printing black-and-white handouts, backgrounds are converted to white, all text elements are converted to black, and vector graphics are usually converted to a shade of gray, but pictures are not altered (except that they are converted to grayscale). Hence, if you recolor an equation to white, it will not appear against the white background in a handout. This problem exists in all versions of PowerPoint. To save the trouble of recoloring equations, it is a good idea to use the default black color for equations, and set them against a light-colored box, if necessary, to highlight them on a dark slide background. Specifying a white or other light fill color in the format objects dialog box accomplishes the same thing.

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Create More Powerful Presentations AACC 2003 Despite the unfortunate limitation with regard to recoloring equations, the equation editor is a very useful tool, particularly for creating complex equations. The equation editor has a toolbar that includes a wide array of symbols used in equations, including Greek letters and templates (which can be nested) for equation designs. An equation created in the editor window is inserted into the current slide when you select either <File. . .Exit> or <File. . .Update>. Double-clicking an equation in the normal slide view automatically opens the Equation Editor application with the selected equation in its window. Equations in a presentation can be resized in the same manner pictures are resized. The equation editor can be upgraded to Math Type by Design Science, Inc., from whom Microsoft apparently purchased the stripped down version for its bundled equation editor application. Instructions for upgrading appear in the help file.

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Notes

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4 Adding Tables and Charts “How dangerous it is to reason from insufficient data.” Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The most important part of any scientific presentation is its content, and data presented in tabular or graphical form is almost essential for a clear and concise summary of experimental results. PowerPoint refers to graphical elements generated from data tables as Charts, a term that probably was chosen to avoid confusion with graphical elements that compose illustrations. Tables can be inserted into PowerPoint slides in much the same way they are added to Word documents, and the table properties and editing functions are similar, as well. 4.a Tables In Word documents—and web pages—tables are a valuable tool for segmenting a page into areas that can be formatted individually. Tables perform a similar function in PowerPoint slides, providing a convenient way for you to display tabular data. To create and insert a table into a slide, select <Insert. . .Table> and specify the dimensions of the table. You can add or delete rows or columns at a later time, if necessary. The easiest way to make changes to a table is using the Tables and Borders toolbar, which can be activated from the <View. . .Toolbars> menu. In the PowerPoint 2000 and 2002 versions, the right-click function offers the option to add a row but not a column, contrary to the instructions in the help file. The Table button on the toolbar contains options to add or delete both rows and columns. New rows are added below the selected cell, and new columns are added to the right of the selected cell. The table toolbar contains a variety of options for changing the borders of a table. You can change the width and color of borders, or you can eliminate the borders altogether. Sometimes, within a table you may want to include some borders and eliminate others. The borders drop down menu has several options that specify which borders are displayed—some of these options apply to single cells while others apply to multiple cells. Getting the borders to look just the way you want may require some trial and error, since the top border of one cell is usually the bottom border of another, and it is not always obvious which cell’s settings take precedent. In other words, if you have the bottom border of one cell turned off, and the top border of its lower adjacent cell turned on, whether or not a border appears may depend on which cell was formatted last. Text within a table can be formatted the same way as other text in a presentation, but it is not affected by settings in the Slide Master or color scheme. For black-and-white handouts, though, the text is converted to black (unlike equations).

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Create More Powerful Presentations AACC 2003 4.b Charts Adding a chart to a presentation can be a moderately complex task, primarily because of the numerous formatting options available for charts in PowerPoint. The chart function in PowerPoint essentially is a sub-application, sporting its own menus and formatting tools. Most of the functions in the chart application are similar to functions in the normal slide view, but there are exceptions, as well as some formatting options that have no corresponding function in the slide editor. Creating a chart that has the appearance you desire can be a frustrating experience at first, but tips provided in this section should help you avoid many of the pitfalls. Creating a chart consists of three steps: First, you choose the chart type; second, you provide the data to be displayed by the chart; finally, you format the various elements of the chart to achieve an appearance that blends well with the rest of your presentation. Each of these tasks will be discussed in detail in the following sections. The first two steps can be performed in reverse order, depending on your preference and the type of data you want to chart, but formatting the chart should ordinarily be left until last. To insert a chart into a slide, select <Insert. . .Chart> or click the chart button on the toolbar. Alternatively, you can select a slide layout that includes a chart—several of them do—and double-click where prompted to add a chart. The chart editor opens a datasheet and chart containing dummy data. This can be confusing at first, but you should take a moment to inspect the relationship between the data and the displayed chart. This will help when you update the datasheet with your own data. PowerPoint also has drawing templates for creating organizational charts. The organizational chart menu can be accessed by selecting “Diagram” on the drawing toolbar, or by selecting the AutoLayout that includes an organizational chart and double-clicking prompt. The tools for creating organizational charts are, for the most part, self-explanatory. A final note: PowerPoint was designed primarily for business, not scientific, presentations. As a consequence, the charting options are somewhat limited. For example, adding error bars to individual data points is almost impossible. Other software packages are better suited to scientific graphics—SigmaPlot is a good example—and many of these produce graphics that are Windows-compatible. 4.b (1) Selecting a Chart Type It is not necessary to specify a chart type before you enter your data into the datasheet, but it usually makes sense to do it first. If you are familiar with the data you want to display, then you should have some idea which chart type—pie, histogram, x-y plot, etc.—you need to display it most clearly. Within any chart type, there are sub-options for three-dimensional effects, exploded views, and the like, with which you can experiment

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after your data is entered. However, it is usually advisable to select the general chart type first, so you can make sure that your data is being entered in the correct format as it updates the displayed chart. As you click around the default chart displaying the dummy data, you will notice that there are many selectable elements in the chart, and formatting options differ depending on which element is selected. For example, there is text formatting available when an axis label or chart title is selected, but clicking on the chart walls opens line formatting options. In PowerPoint 2000 and later versions, hovering over any element activates an information box that specifies what it is. This feature is very helpful. To change the chart type, select <Chart. . .Chart Type> or right-click anywhere in the chart area to reveal a menu that includes the available chart types. Several choices for the chart type are offered, and each is shown displaying the dummy data in the default datasheet. All charts have default colors, as well, but these can (and often should) be changed to match the color scheme of your presentation. As a general rule, you should select the simplest chart type that adequately displays your data. Complex charts, such as radar, bubble, and surface plots, can be difficult to understand or explain, and you would rather have your audience focusing on the importance of your data rather than puzzling over how it is displayed. That is not to suggest that these chart types should never be used; some data, particularly involving multiple variables, are most appropriately displayed with these chart types. The point is that you should not choose an unnecessarily complex chart type. Simplicity is a virtue that will be appreciated by your audience. The Chart Type dialog box contains Standard and Custom tabs, and the latter option provides several built-in preformatted chart designs. The custom option also allows you to save a chart that you have formatted, so you can apply the same formatting to another chart. This feature is helpful if your presentation includes several charts displaying similar data, and you would like all the charts to have the same color scheme. There also is a relationship between chart colors and the defaults set in the slide color scheme, and this will be discussed below under “Editing Chart Appearance.” 4.b (2) Adding Data When you insert a chart into a PowerPoint presentation, the chart applet is activated and it opens two windows: A chart editing window and a datasheet. If the datasheet does not open automatically, it can be toggled on by selecting <View. . .Datasheet> or clicking on the datasheet button on the toolbar. The available options on the toolbar also change to the chart editing functions, and these remain active as long as the chart editor is open. Clicking outside the chart on the current slide closes the chart editor. The datasheet contains dummy data, but you can see how the rows and columns correspond to the default chart. Row and column headings become axis and legend labels, respectively. The datasheet appears similar to a spreadsheet you might create in Microsoft Excel, but the keystroke and shortcut functions are not all the same. Some of the datasheet editing

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Create More Powerful Presentations AACC 2003 properties can be modified by selecting <Tools. . .Options> and the datasheet tab in the dialog box. For small data sets, you can simply enter your data in place of the dummy data (either clear the datasheet by clicking on the upper left cell to highlight the entire datasheet and press <Delete>, or you can type over the data in the sheet). Data you enter will automatically be displayed in the chart window. For larger sets of data that already have been entered into an Excel spreadsheet, select <Edit. . .Import File> and navigate to the Excel file you want to import. If the Excel file contains multiple spreadsheets, you will be prompted to select the data you want to import. Completing the import operation adds the selected spreadsheet’s data to the datasheet in PowerPoint’s chart editor. You can edit any of the data, including column and row headers, in the datasheet if desired. Since both Excel and PowerPoint are applications written for Windows, both support the cut and paste functions, so another way you can add a chart to a presentation is to cut it from Excel (which has its own chart editor) and paste it into your presentation. However, if you double-click on a chart pasted into PowerPoint, the application in which the chart was created will open, which may have vastly different editing functions. Moreover, the colors in pasted charts do not respond to defaults set in the slide color scheme. There are good reasons to cut and paste from other applications, however, and these are addressed below under “Linking Charts and Tables.” 4.b (3) Editing Chart Appearance Charts are complex composites of many elements, including borders, axes, data, labels, gridlines, legends, and titles, and each of these elements can be independently formatted in the chart editor. Titles, labels, and legends are treated as text and have text formatting options; axes, borders, and gridlines have line formatting options; and most data elements are shapes that include both line (border) and fill formatting options. The Chart Options menu provides choices that affect the overall appearance of the chart, such as whether it includes a title, gridlines, data labels, or a legend (including positioning). For individual chart elements, right-clicking the element and selecting the format option opens a context-sensitive formatting dialog box relevant to the type of element selected. The options include all of the same formatting choices that are used with the PowerPoint drawing tools. Alternatively, you can highlight the element you wish to edit and select the Format option from the menu bar—the appropriate format function will be displayed as an option. Charts adopt some of the color settings specified in the slide color scheme. The fills, accent, accent and hyperlink, and accent and followed hyperlink colors are used, in that order, to determine default settings for data elements in graphs. For example, in a bar graph with two grouped data elements, the first bar will be the fills color, and the second bar will be the accent color, specified in the slide color scheme. You can change the default colors by selecting another color scheme in the <Format. . .Slide Color Scheme> dialog box, but remember that the default colors of other slide elements, such as titles and bulleted text, will change as well. Choosing colors for all the elements in a

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chart is probably one of the most tedious tasks in PowerPoint, because there are so many different elements, and selecting colors that accentuate various components of the chart while being compatible with each other is a challenge. Several of the chart types include three-dimensional effects. These effects give your presentation visual depth, but can create an undesirable visual clutter in charts that display large data sets. The character of the 3-D effect in certain chart types can be adjusted by selecting <Chart. . .3-D View> or by using the right-click menu. The 3-D dialog box contains options for adjusting both the perspective and depth of the 3-D effect. 4.b (4) Linking Charts and Tables It was mentioned earlier that you can cut and paste tables or charts from Word and Excel files into PowerPoint. Doing this with the “Cut” or “Copy” function, followed by “Paste” breaks any connection with the original file, so that if you update the data in your Excel spreadsheet, for example, the chart that was copied to a PowerPoint presentation does not get automatically updated with the new data. In some cases, this is the desired result. You may not want your presentation to change every time you revise the Excel data. However, there are many cases where you will want the chart in PowerPoint to reflect current data in your Excel spreadsheet, and that is possible with Object Linking and Embedding (OLE), which is supported by all Microsoft Office applications, and many other Windows-based programs, as well. With OLE, a “link” is created between the object in the presentation and its source data, so that updating the source data automatically updates the object embedded in a PowerPoint slide. To embed an object that will remain linked to its source data, go to the source document (or spreadsheet, presentation, etc.) and highlight the object you would like to appear in your presentation. From the Edit (or right-click) menu, select either Cut or Copy. Switch to the PowerPoint presentation and navigate to the slide where you want the object to appear, and select “Paste Special” from the Edit menu. A dialog box will appear that offers you the opportunity to link the object to its source data (the lower radio button). A note of caution about embedded links: When PowerPoint opens a presentation that contains links, a dialog box will appear offering you the opportunity to update the linked information. If you select “Cancel,” the presentation will open with whatever data it was last updated. But if you choose to update the links, you must be certain that the linked data is available, which will not be case for presentations burned to CDs and run on other systems. The data is linked to a source file, but the source file does not become part of the presentation and is not saved with it. There are more sophisticated ways to update linked information when the source file name changes, but some Visual Basic programming is required.

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Notes

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5 Animations, Sound, and Video “If you can dream it, you can do it.” Walter Elias “Walt” Disney. You can animate virtually any component of a PowerPoint presentation, and add sound and video clips as well. Animations tend to be addictive, and can easily be overused to the point where they are more distracting than helpful. Animating various elements of a presentation, however, can be effective strategy for sequentially introducing elements of an illustration in order to make their relationships apparent or to emphasize their differences. As an example, chart data can be introduced in groups to reveal changes that result from an experimental variable. With bulleted text, individual bullets can be revealed sequentially to coincide with the speaker’s comments. PowerPoint supports sound and video clips inserted as objects in presentations, but the usefullness of these components is more limited, for two reasons: First, connecting the audio output of the computer running your presentation—often your own notebook computer—to an adequate sound system in the facility where the presentation is being made requires some technical resources that are not commonly available. Fully integrated sound is possible, but this requires much more than the simple setup of a computer and digital projector. Second, sound and video files are large and very resource intensive. While most recent vintage processors available in notebook computers can adequately handle high fidelity audio, video requires considerable processor speed and graphics card capacity, particularly if the video is displayed large enough to be appreciated by observers at some distance from the projection screen. In addition, many video formats include audio, so the technical limitations described above still apply. In short, audio and video enhancements may be useful for presentations to small groups, but ordinarily are not practical for presentations to large audiences. Of course, in PowerPoint presentations intended for publication on a web site or as tutorials, the use of audio and video can be very effective. Animation effects can be applied to any object within a slide, and graphical or text elements on a slide can be grouped into a single object to produce the desired animation results. Certain elements, such as bulleted text, allow additional animation options, discussed below. Animation involves both order, which specifies the sequence in which the animated objects appear, and effect, which determines the way in which each animated object is presented. To animate an object, select <Slide Show. . .Custom Animation> to open a dialog box for animating objects on the current slide. A menu appears listing the objects on the slide—clicking on an object highlights it in the preview window. Double-clicking the object (or single-clicking on the check box) fills in its check box and adds it to the Animation Order window. If you select several objects to animate, you can change their order by highlighting an object in the Animation Order window and clicking either the

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Create More Powerful Presentations AACC 2003 Move up or Move down arrow. The animation window has tabs corresponding to the Order and Timing, Effects, Chart Effects, and Multimedia Settings options. All of the animation effects are nested within these menu choices; the Chart Effects dialog box is active only when a chart object is selected, and the Multimedia Settings option applies only to audio and video objects. 5.a Slide Transitions Selecting <Slide Show. . .Slide Transition> opens a dialog box that offers options for animating the way a new slide is introduced. Slide transitions are for aesthetic effect, principally, but can create an appealing flow to the presentation. Many options are available, and these can be previewed in the dialog box. A slide transition effect can be applied to a single slide or to the entire presentation by selecting “Apply” or “Apply to all,” respectively. A “Random Transition” choice is available, which chooses one of the transition effects randomly as you proceed through the presentation. This selection is more distracting, since your audience may be distracted by the uncertainty of the next slide transition. The “Fade,” “Uncover,” and “Wipe” options are least distracting, and using a consistent transition effect throughout is preferable. The Slide Transition dialog box also includes three options for the speed of the transition, and this should be set to your personal preference. Resist the option to add sound effects to slide transitions; these add little other than distractions, and are subject to the limitations described above to audio files. Options are presented in this dialog box for timing slide transitions in presentations set up to run automatically. 5.b Animating Text There are logical reasons for animating text elements in your presentation: 1) When speaking, points are made in order rather than all at once, 2) When a speaker uses a chalk- or white-board, text is added in sequence, and 3) We read sequentially, one sentence at a time. While it is helpful to include written descriptions, often as bulleted text, of important points in your presentation, you may not want to reveal all components of your argument at once, opting rather to develop your line of reasoning. Moreover, you may want your audience to focus specifically on one point at a time. Text animations are useful for controlling the flow of your presentation and providing emphasis at the desired moments. Although animation effects can be applied to text entered anywhere in a slide, animation options for bulleted text are most flexible. In general, PowerPoint applies animation effects to an entire object at once, but bulleted text is an exception. Bulleted text is

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entered as a single object into a PowerPoint slide, but the individual bullets can be animated separately. In the Custom Animation dialog box, select a bulleted text object and the Order & Timing options include whether to begin the animation on a mouse click or automatically, beginning a specified time after the previous event (mouse click or preset animation). Click the Effects tab and several options are available. The animation effect can be selected from a drop down menu that includes effects similar to the slide transition choices described above. Wipe down and wipe right are the subtlest animations for introducing text, because they imitate most closely the way text is written or read. The “Dissolve” option is a discreet way to introduce text, also. The other available options, such as fly in, spiral, blinds, stretch, and swivel are more distracting, and better avoided with text. Decline the sound option, for reasons already described. The text animation choices also include what should be done with the animated object after it appears. Dimming the previously introduced text is a matter of preference: It helps emphasize the current text, but may create more distraction as new text is revealed. You can specify the color to which the text should change with the next event. Hiding after animation is more useful for graphical elements, and can be done immediately or after the next event. Bulleted text sometimes includes subordinate bullets, and you have a choice of how you would like these animated elements introduced. On the “Effects” submenu, you can specify whether you want bulleted text introduced in groups by primary bullets (highest, or first, level) or secondary bullets, which will introduce the subordinate paragraphs individually. Rarely, a slide may contain a third level of bulleted text, and these can be introduced individually, as well. There also is an option to introduce text in reverse order, but it is difficult to imagine a circumstance when doing so would enhance the presentation. Bulleted text is the only object in PowerPoint for which the option exists to animate elements individually; for all other objects, the animation applies to the entire object. 5.c Animating Shapes and Drawings Before we explore some of the ways to animate components of illustrations created in PowerPoint, you should bear in mind the following: 1) Only one object at a time can be animated. 2) The animation effect applies to the entire object at once (except, as described above,

bulleted text). 3) Manually advanced animated illustrations composed of multiple objects can be

cumbersome without a remote control.

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Create More Powerful Presentations AACC 2003 4) Handout materials printed from PowerPoint cannot, of course, be animated, and so

animated slides with multiple overlapping objects might appear nonsensical in the static handout representation. The same restriction applies to presentations that are converted to transparencies or Kodachrome slides.

The most important thing to remember about animating graphics is that it should not be done without good reason. As noted earlier, there are logical reasons for introducing text in a sequential fashion, but the same logic does not necessarily apply to illustrations, which are typically viewed in their complete form. Animating the various elements of an illustration without some thought to the logical sequence and progression of the idea you are trying to develop creates busyness in your presentation that is unnecessary, distracting, and potentially annoying. Use animations very cautiously with graphical elements in your presentation. For certain illustrations, animation of specific elements is a very effective way to enhance the meaning and understandability; examples are reaction mechanisms or experiments that proceed in stepwise fashion, illustrating the transformation of one component into another, and demonstrating the influence of a variable on the direction of a metabolic pathway. Since PowerPoint animates an entire object at once, components of an illustration that need to be animated together must be grouped (highlight the components to be grouped together and select <Draw. . .Group>). Animations should be the last thing added to a slide, only after the illustration has been completed, because any changes made to grouping or individual components of the illustration can affect the animation, and sometimes will remove the animation completely. As an example, grouped components (with the exception of text) cannot be edited individually, so to change a component of grouped object usually requires ungrouping first. Ungrouping an object removes any animation that has been applied to that object—animations are not inherited by components of an animated group when the object is ungrouped. Also, including an animated object into a group does not convey the animation to the grouped object. A variety of choices are available for animation effects, but in practice, only a few are very useful. Most animation effects include a number of options for modifying the effect, such as specifying the direction from which an element enters the slide. The animation effects Appear, Stretch, Strips, Wipe, Zoom, and Peek are various ways to reveal an object in place. Random bars, Split, Checkerboard, and Blinds also reveal an object in place, with slightly more complex effects. For most of these effects, you can specify either the plane of symmetry about which the effect will progress, the speed with which it develops, or the direction (up, down, left, or right) of movement. The animation effects Fly and Crawl direct objects to enter the slide from a specified direction, and stop at the location where the object was created. Fly moves the object quickly; Crawl moves it slowly. Swivel appears to rotate the object on a horizontal axis through its midpoint three times through 180°. The rotation is an illusion, though; the swiveled objects never appear backwards (you can verify this by applying the effect to a text object).

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PowerPoint also includes options for animating charts. These options are accessed from the Custom Animation dialog box, by selecting “Chart Effects.” Individual chart elements can be animated, but there are some limitations. For example, the same animation effect (wipe, appear, fly in, etc.) are applied to all chart elements, and the grid and legend cannot be animated separately. Most of the timing options available for animating other objects apply to charts. 5.d Adding Sound and Video In circumstances where broadcast equipment is sufficient, or when a PowerPoint presentation is intended for viewing at a single workstation, sounds and video (collectively referred to as “media clips”) may be used to enhance selected components of a presentation. Media clips can be added to PowerPoint slides in two different ways: Clips can be selected from the gallery (just as clipart is selected), or media files can be added from the <Insert. . .Object> menu. Media clips selected from the gallery are played by a built-in media player included with PowerPoint. Media clips inserted as objects may be played by other media players, such as QuickTime or RealAudio, but the options for synchronizing the audio (or video) clip with your presentation are more limited. Inserted as objects, PowerPoint supports several audio formats, including WAV, MP3, and MIDI files. A word of caution: If you insert a media clip that requires QuickTime (.MOV) or RealAudio (.RAM), then the corresponding application must be installed on the computer running the presentation. If you plan to use another computer to run your presentation, it would be wise to check in advance whether the necessary applications are loaded on the system you will be using. To insert an audio or video clip from the gallery, select <Insert. . .Movies and Sounds> and specify the file you want to add. A selection of media clips is available on Microsoft’s online media collection, accessed by selecting “Online Clips.” Frequently used media clips can be added to the clipart gallery for convenience. If you choose “Sound (or Movie) from file,” a navigation box will open for you to locate the media file you want to add. Like most Windows navigation boxes, only the type of file specified in the drop down menu are displayed and Windows sometimes inserts an unpredictable default. Changing the “Files of type. . .” selection to “All files” will display all the files in a directory. Sound and video clips can be animated. The icon corresponding to the media clip is subject to the same animation effects as other objects, but additional options are presented in the “Multimedia” tab in the animation dialog box. You can choose the action you want to start the clip, or have the clip start automatically. You also can choose to have the clip play even as the next slide appears, or to have it stop when the slide changes. These choices will depend on the type of media clip and its purpose in your presentation. Background music should play continuously, whereas a recorded quote should interrupt the presentation to focus the audience attention specifically on the audio clip. Video clips ordinarily should interrupt the presentation, and be displayed sufficiently large for the entire audience to see.

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Create More Powerful Presentations AACC 2003 One additional option is available for adding sound to your presentation: If you computer has a microphone (most do), you can record a narration to accompany your presentation. This option is useful for presentations intended to run automatically (discussed in the next section), and presentations that will be published on the Internet. 5.e Controlling Presentations and using Autorun In most presentations, slides are advanced, or animations activated, by some action performed by the lecturer. Several keyboard and mouse actions serve this purpose: The right or down arrow, space bar, left-click button, Page Down key, and “N” key all do exactly the same thing, which is to activate the next function or view. The up and left arrows, Page Up key, and the “P” key all revert to the previous view. Right-clicking a slide in the on-screen view opens a menu with several options, including the choice to advance, go back, or jump to another slide. PowerPoint offers several options for automatically running your presentation. In the Slide Transition dialog box, you can choose to have the presentation advance to the next slide after a specified time. The Custom Animation dialog box also includes the option to have an action event occur after a specified time interval. Finally, the Set up Show dialog box (under the main menu item Slide Show) provides several options based upon how the show is to be presented. Another very useful features in PowerPoint is the <Slide Show. . .Rehearse Timings> utility. Selecting this option opens the presentation as an on-screen show, and includes a small window that functions as a timer. The utility monitors the time spent on the current slide, and the time elapsed since beginning the presentation. The timer can be paused or reset if necessary. A record is created of slide transitions and action events within slides, and when you exit the Rehearse Timings function, you are offered the opportunity to have the timings recorded with the presentation so that the on-screen show will proceed at the same pace, automatically. This may be a helpful approach if the spoken part of the presentation is scripted, but does not easily allow for interruptions that might occur due to questions from the audience or spontaneous commentary by the speaker.

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Notes

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Additional Resources Although PowerPoint includes a wide variety of tools, utilities, and templates for creating presentations, other resources exist for enhancing the capabilities of PowerPoint. Some of these are listed below. No endorsement or recommendation of any of these products is implied or intended. Many resources for helping create and enhance PowerPoint presentations are available on the Microsoft web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/powerpoint/

Bitmap graphics editors Adobe Photoshop A full-featured graphics program that is widely regarded as the best software package available for image editing. Priced around $500. http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/main.html Jasc Software Paint Shop Pro This program has many of the same features as Adobe Photoshop, but is priced at around $100 for the downloadable version. http://www.jasc.com/products/psp/ Microsoft Paint and Picture-It Included with all versions of Microsoft Windows, the Paint application contains simple bitmap editing tools, but is compatible with a limited number of graphics formats. Picture-It is a standalone image-editing program available from Microsoft, and it has some of the same features as Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro. Picture-It is available for around $50. http://www.microsoft.com Macromedia Fireworks Primarily intended for creating web graphics. About $300, but Macromedia offers educator and student discounts on many of their products. http://www.macromedia.com/software/fireworks/ Many other image-editing programs are available; some are shipped free with digital cameras or scanners. PowerPoint Backgrounds and Templates Microsoft Office Template Gallery The best place to start. Thousands of templates for just about every use. http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/templategallery CrystalGraphics Extensive selection of backgrounds, presentation templates, graphics, sounds, video, and animated effects that can be used with PowerPoint. Selected sets of

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Create More Powerful Presentations AACC 2003 backgrounds and templates are available for about $50, and combination sets cost as much as $600. http://www.crystalgraphics.com Aphids Communications Resource site for all types of graphics, including backgrounds, icons, patterns, textures. Mostly free or shareware. http://www.aphids.com/susan/imres/ PowerPointGuides.com Set of 50 professionally designed PowerPoint templates for about $40. http://www.powerpointguides.com/ PowerFinish Single templates for $25; sets for $70 to $220. http://www.powerfinish.com/ 3-D Graphics Compadre Extensive selection of backgrounds, templates, buttons, sounds, video clips, textures, etc. for $50. http://www.threedgraphics.com/ Powerpointbackgrounds.com Large selection of professionally designed backgrounds that can be downloaded in themed sets of 10 or so for $17. Combination sets are available for $69. http://www.powerpointbackgrounds.com/ Graphicsland A selection of free backgrounds that can be downloaded. http://www.graphicsland.com/powerpoint-templates.htm Brainy Betty I can’t comment on the brainy part, but Betty certainly has a talent for creating attractive PowerPoint templates! http://www.brainybetty.com/PPTindex.htm Pictures and Illustrations To the determined Internet sleuth, the supply of images that can be incorporated into PowerPoint presentations is virtually limitless. Professional clip art, and medical illustrations in particular, are not cheap. Following are some useful sources for commercial collections of scientific and biomedical clip art and illustrations. A diligent search of the Internet will likely reveal free sources of specific items. LifeART Very large selection of anatomical and other medically-related illustrations. Priced to over $500 for some bundled sets, but individual sets are available for less than $200. http://www.lifeart.com

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Page 47: Create More Powerful Presentations - Bertholf · Create More Powerful Presentations AACC 2003 1 Introduction to PowerPoint "640K ought to be enough for anybody." Microsoft CEO Bill

Create More Powerful Presentations AACC 2003

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SmartDraw Clip art tools for creating educational illustrations—includes scientific and medical images. $70 - $200, depending on the product. http://www.smartdraw.com/specials/sciencemath.asp Medical-Art.com Large selection of scientific and medical illustration. Requires licensing agreement to download. Pricing variable, but advertised rate is $360 per year for non-professionals. Reduced rate for professional illustrators. http://www.science-art.com