Power Point 2007 Tips

I recently put together a Power Point presentation for a client. I used the MS Office 2007 version which took some time to get used to (mostly because I had a hard time finding anything on those ribbons).

So, I thought I might save someone out there a little aggravation and post a few basic tips on creating presentations using Power Point 2007. Please keep in mind these tips assume you have some understanding of Power Point already – if you’re a beginner, go here or here.

Choosing a preset design

1. From the menu, click Design.
2. Click .  This will show you all the themes available within Power Point
3. Click More themes available on Microsoft Office Online… for even more themes.

All of these themes can be modified to suit your needs, or you can simply create your own and make the Power Point slides look anyway you want them to. Here are some helpful places on the Design menu you might want to play around with if you want to get creative:

1. Design > Colors – Allows you to use built in colour themes or create your own.
2. Design > Fonts – Use a built in theme font, or create a new one.
3. Design > Effects – If you use Quick Styles to format the shapes in your presentation, choosing from the Effects menu will reformat those shapes for you using the new effect.
4. Design > Background Styles – Change the background colour using built in colour schemes, or get creative and create your own.

Creating effects is where I ran into trouble – getting things like graphics and text to enter and exit the way I wanted and when I wanted.

Effects: entering and exiting

1. Click Animations > Custom Animation.
2. A Custom Animation panel should appear on the right of the screen.
3. Click on the text or graphic you want to apply an effect to.
4. Click the Add Effect button.
5. Choose an effect from the drop down list.

Let’s assume for a moment you’ve chosen Entrance > Fade for your graphic or text. This means that your graphic will fade into view. To have the same graphic or text fade out, follow the steps 2 -5 above and choose Exit > Fade.

The Custom Animation panel on the right now looks something like this:

Figure 1. Custom Animation Panel

Click the green star in the Custom Animation panel to change the entrance or click the orange star to change the exit using the drop-down menus above to change how the effect starts and the speed at which the effect moves.

This is the point at which timing becomes important. The preset speeds you chose may be too fast – even on Very Slow – and pausing the graphic or text before it exits might be necessary.

Pausing an effect

In this case, I want to pause the graphic before it fades out so the viewer can look at it without feeling rushed.

1. Click the orange star.
2. From the drop-down menu, choose Timing…
3. Use the up arrow in the Delay field to add a 4 second pause to the graphic.
   
   Figure 2. Adding delayed timing.
4. Click OK.

Linking slides

If you want the presentation to play without needing to click something after every slide, you’ll need to link them together so they each slide will advance automatically. For the first slide:

1. On the Animations menu, uncheck the On Mouse Click option.
2. Check the Automatically After option and use the up arrow to put a 2 second (or so) pause between slides.

For subsequent slides:

1. Ensure that On Mouse Click option is unchecked.
2. Ensure that Automatically After option is checked.
3. Ensure the first effect in the next slide (and subsequent slides!) is checked to start After Previous. This will force the effect in the new slide to start after the previous slide is done playing.

These are a few of the basic tips I found useful in Power Point once I figured them out. Happy creating!