Background color changer

PowerPoint Isn't Just for the Business World

In recent years, people who purchased PC's often bought the Home and Student version of the Microsoft Office suite as a way to get the powerful Word program. Besides Word, this suite contains Excel, a sophisticated spreadsheet program; OneNote, a fancy organizational program; and PowerPoint, a presentation program. If you find that you have never moved beyond Word, perhaps it's time to explore a program which has many uses for the home user: PowerPoint.

PowerPoint has been around for many years. Originally called Presenter, this program was created for the Apple Macintosh computer by a company called Foresight. In 1987 Microsoft purchased Foresight, added features to Presenter, and renamed it PowerPoint. Traditionally, it was designed to enhance corporate meetings or training sessions. Over the years, special effects and other improvements have been made to PowerPoint. As a home computer user, you will find this program easy to use in a variety of special and everyday situations.

Personal Uses of PowerPoint

 The most common personal use is slide show creation related to an event. Let's say you have a family wedding approaching. PowerPoint can help you put together a slide show of still photos and videos of the bride and groom from babyhood to the present, complete with captions, narration, a musical background, and transition effects like fade-ins. You can copy photos to each slide from anywhere on your computer or the web. Although PowerPoint is not as sophisticated as some expensive presentation software, it can produce a professional-looking slide show.

Other home uses for PowerPoint include a personal résumé or visual memoir, which can list biographical history interspersed with photos of the subject in all aspects of life. Cooks might use PowerPoint to create an electronic cookbook of recipes, including photos of preparation techniques and finished creations. Artists often use PowerPoint to create portfolios of their work as a lure for potential buyers. Members of book discussion groups might create an overview of a book's plot or author's life using a few PowerPoint slides. PowerPoint can also design electronic family photo albums, considered superior by some since they can be stored and shared more readily than the old hard bound albums. Finally, any type of training program can be enhanced by a well-designed presentation.

Creating and Editing a Presentation

One easy way to create a professional-looking presentation is by using a template. PowerPoint has built-in "themes" which give each slide a similar background color, font color and design. As part of its Office website, Microsoft has many free, downloadable PowerPoint templates for occasions, holidays, and other purposes; many more are available at third party websites. For example, wedding templates exist for invitations, programs, thematic backgrounds for slides, borders, and clip art. All you have to do is fill in the information and add the photos. Other template types which might interest a home user include family tree charts, special occasions, seasons, religious, travel, and holidays. Go to www.office.microsoft.com or search the web for 'PowerPoint templates'.

One powerful feature of PowerPoint is that almost anything visual can be put onto a slide. Slides can include text, photos, charts, spreadsheets, tables, and drawings. For example, you can create a short spreadsheet in Excel, display it as a graph or chart, and copy it onto a PowerPoint slide. By using a theme from the PowerPoint gallery or a template, various types of slide content can blend smoothly.

Editing slides is easy. The new versions of PowerPoint use a spell checker much like that in Word, which corrects not only spelling, but grammar and, in the 2007 and 2010 versions, contextual confusions, like "two" and "too." It also provides access to a global dictionary. Slides can be rearranged simply by dragging them to a new location in the list or the slide sorter, which resembles a storyboard. Transitions between slides can be added or removed easily.

Sharing the Presentation

Besides showing the finished presentation on a screen with a projector or on a laptop at a table, PowerPoint 2007 allows you to send the show as an attachment to an email. It can be saved in .pdf or .xps format, which are universal file types. The 2007/10 version compresses the file size for sending. If you prefer, you can upload your presentation to your website and send the link to friends and family. A slide show can also be printed. Besides the slides themselves, PowerPoint allows printing of handouts, which contain slide thumbnails; note pages, which display each slide with room for notes; and a text outline of the presentation.

Tips on Creating a Good Presentation

PowerPoint has developed a bad reputation among some people, not because it's a poor program, but because of the many boring presentations the people were forced to view in their corporate workplaces. When designing any kind of presentation, you must think carefully when selecting the content -- ideas, facts or opinions -- and how you want it to appear. Taking time to develop an outline of your presentation before creating any slides will result in a much stronger final product.

When you actually do begin to create slides, here are some tips for success:

1. Use a theme or style to tie the visuals together, and then add a few surprise visuals or quotes.
2. Minimize the use of clip art, especially that which is built into PowerPoint. Everyone has seen it. Instead, search Google images for something fresh.
3. Consider alternating text slides with photos or video to add interest.
4. Studies have shown that dark text on a light background is easier to read, as is sans serif text and words aligned left, rather than in the center.
5. Too many different types of transitions from one slide to the next look unprofessional and distracting. Select no more than two or three for a moderate length presentation.
6. Put very few words on each slide. Keep it simple.
7. If doing a training presentation, don't read to the audience. Instead, explain more about what's on the screen. But don't bring in other topics which will cause audience confusion.
8. Find a way to engage the audience. For example, put a question on a slide and take a few minutes for the audience to discuss it. 9. Keep the presentation moving. (1 - 3 slides per minute)
10. Make the presentation only as long as it needs to be to get your ideas across.

You paid a lot of money for your Office Home and Student suite. It's time to benefit by learning to use PowerPoint.

Top of Page
Return to TOC