PowerPoint 2010 is the latest version of Microsoft’s powerful presentation program. A presentation is simply a sequence of slides that are delivered either manually or automatically to an audience. Each slide can contain:
- text
- pictures
- charts
- videos
- any combination of the above
When you initially open PowerPoint, there is a title slide there ready for you to add a title to. Simply click in the box and start typing. Then, you can add more slides and insert your own content on them. The New Slides button is found on the Home tab in the Slides group.
Each slide you add can have one of the following layouts:
- title
- title and content
- section header
- two content
- comparison
- title only
- blank
- content with caption
- picture with caption
Formatting Text In PowerPoint
If you are familiar with Microsoft Word, then you have a good chance of being able to understand how the text formatting controls in PowerPoint work. As you’d expect, you can change the font family, size and colour. Additionally, you can bold, italicise and underline text, just like in Word. You can change the formatting of a selection of text using the commands in the Font group on the Home tab.
Using Templates
It’s pretty easy to get up and running quickly with PowerPoint. However, if you want to speed up how long it takes to create a presentation, you can use a PowerPoint template. Templates are pre-made presentations that you can use as blueprints. When you create a new presentation, you can base it on an existing template and amend it to your needs. If you think you might adapt your new presentation to other uses, you can actually save that as a template too.
To create a presentation based on a template, click the File tab > New, and a whole world of templates opens before you. Pick a category, select a template and then click Create to get started.
PowerPoint comes with a large selection of templates you can use, and if you want to look at others, you can download them from Office.com. There are lots of templates there, some for Word and some for Publisher (in fact all the Microsoft Office programs are covered), so make sure you only download templates for PowerPoint.
The above was only the briefest of introductions to Microsoft PowerPoint. Hold tight for more detailed PowerPoint tutorials.
