Computer Information Systems Department
Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, CUNY
It is assumed that users of this tutorial are proficient in working with Microsoft Windows '95, Windows '98 or Windows NT and with MS Excel. This includes the use of the keyboard and mouse. The tutorial is based on Microsoft PowerPoint which is part of the Microsoft Office Professional suite that also includes MS Excel, MS Word and MS Access.
In its original version, this tutorial focused on the MS PowerPoint '97 version that is contained in the MS Office '97 suite of applications. MS PowerPoint 2000 that is now part of MS Office 2000 uses a slightly different interface for creating presentations. However, the vast majority of materials presented below are applicable to both the '97 and 2000 versions of PowerPoint.
The student should have a new, formatted floppy disk placed in the A: drive of the PC. This tutorial assumes the floppy disk used is the A: drive. If the student wishes to use another drive (such B: or C:) then simply substitute the desired drive letter accordingly.
Presentations are a necessary part of most every professional's job. The ability to express one's ideas in a clear, concise and convincing manner is a critical skill that has tremendous benefits. PowerPoint is a tool that can assist in the preparation of a presentation, however, it will not "fix" a poor presentation. Before proceeding to create a presentation, the topics to be covered must be well understood.
PowerPoint divides a presentation into several slides. Each slide is a screen that typically contains bullet points that are related to a single main idea. Bullet points are not complete sentences. They should convey a basic thought that is expanded upon by the presenter.
There are several ways to use PowerPoint to assist in a presentation. One typical way is to prepare the slides using PowerPoint and then print them onto transparency film. Another popular method is prepare the slides in PowerPoint and then use the PowerPoint slide show feature to display the presentation on a large monitor or a projector. The following table summarizes the different methods with their advantages and disadvantages.
| Presentation Method | Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|---|
| Print or photocopy slides onto transparency film. | Only need an overhead projector so this is a reliable option. | Transparency film is expensive. Also, last minute changes are difficult. |
| Present directly from PowerPoint using a laptop or PC and a projector or LCD panel. | Lowest cost per presentation. Good for incorporating last minute changes. | Requires an LCD panel or projector, an appropriate PC and PowerPoint software. Many LCD panels do not project well. Good projectors are expensive. |
| Print PowerPoint slides onto 35mm slides. | Excellent quality. | Expensive and cumbersome. Last minute changes are very difficult. Requires a 35mm slide projector which are becoming rare. |
A business presentation typically has the following rough outline:
PowerPoint provides a number of different styles for slides. These include a title slide which is typically the first slide in the presentation, basic bullet point slides and a variety of combinations of bullet points and charts or images. For this tutorial, the basic bullet point slides will be used.
For this tutorial, we will use an example presentation for a hypothetical software company. Such a presentation might be given at a technology briefing for other members of the company. This presentation will need to convey several main ideas:
Each of these points will be elaborated on as the presentation is being created.
As with most Windows '95 software programs, PowerPoint can be executed by navigating the Start menu in the lower left-hand corner of the Windows Desktop. A view of the Windows Desktop is given here:
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Depending on the computer you are using, the Windows desktop may look somewhat different (e.g., different icons for other software that has been installed).
To start PowerPoint, click on the Start button, then the Programs menu, then move to the MS Office menu and finally click on the Microsoft PowerPoint menu item. The MS Office Professional menu is shown below.
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Note that this arrangement of menus may vary depending on how MS Office was installed on the PC you are using.
Once PowerPoint is running, an initial screen will be displayed:
From this initial screen, the user can create a new presentation (either blank or with some slides created with the content wizard), or open up an existing presentation.
In general, the first time one begins a project, a new, blank presentation should be created. After that point, use the Open existing presentation option to re-open the presentation created previously.
Warning - If you have previously created a presentation, and then create it again using the same name, you will overwrite any work you have done.
For the purposes of this tutorial, if you are going through these steps for the first time, choose the option to create a new, blank presentation as shown in the above figure.
By selecting Blank Presentation and clicking on the OK button, a new presentation will be created and the New Slide dialog box will appear to create the first new slide of the presentation.
In most cases, the first slide of the presentation will be a title slide which has already been highlighted. Click on the OK button to create the new title slide. The new title slide will appear as follows:
From this point, text can be added to the slide and additional slides can be added to the presentation. In the next section, adding and working with text on slides and adding slides are demonstrated.
To start MS PowerPoint:
Each slide will have one or more areas in which titles or bullet points can be added. In the case of the title slide there are two regions: One toward the top for the title of the slide and one towards the bottom for the name of the presenter, affiliation and date.
In general, to add text or a bullet point to a slide, simply click with the mouse in the appropriate region on the slide and begin typing. For the title slide now on the screen, click in the region marked Click here to add title and then type the title of the presentation: BillCollector 2000 Product Overview.
Next, click in the sub-title region and type your name followed by: Collection Software, Inc. and then today's date. To move to the next line, press the Enter key.
At this point, the title slide shoulD look something like:
In either case, the new slide screen will appear. The new slide types include:
| Title slide - Almost always used as the first slide of a presentation | 
| Title on top with a single bulleted list - This is the slide type most often used in the presentation |
| Title on top with two bulleted lists in columns - Useful for comparing the features of two things (Pros/Cons, Advantages/Disadvantages, Product X vs. Product Y and so on). | 
| Title on top with an MS Word table - Useful to create tabular entries that line up properly. |
| Title on top with a bulleted list and a chart - Useful to display a chart (pie chart or bar chart) and give bullet points as some explanation or to amplify a point (Sales are up 25%) | 
| Title on top with an organization chart - Great for showing Organization charts. |
| Title on top with a chart - Chart fills the whole bottom - useful if the chart itself is more complex | 
| Title on top with a bulleted list and clipart (picture) - Can add some interesting clip art (pictures) to liven up a presentation |
| Title on top only - Can be used if some other object will be pasted in from another application such as a bitmap image or other drawing | 
| Blank slide - typically used as the last slide of the presentation |
For this tutorial, choose the Bulleted List
and click on the OK
button. A new, blank slide will be added to the presentation:
Fill in the title for the new slide by
clicking in space marked Click to add title.
Use the title: Outline
Then click in the are marked Click to add text and add the following bullet points:
Notice that pressing Enter at the end of a line moves the cursor down to the next line and provides a new bullet point. The font style can be changed using the text button bar. This is virtually identical to the button bar used in Excel and Word and can be used to alter the font, size, style (Bold, Italic, etc.) and centering:
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In addition, bullets can be turned on or off using the
bullet button 
Line spacing
can be changed using the line spacing button
and the indent for a
bullet point can be increased or decreased using the
Promote and Demote buttons 
When finished, the slide should look something like:
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To add a slide to the presentation, click on the New Slide button on the button bar or pull down the Insert menu and choose New Slide. Once the new slide appears, click in the appropriate places to add the slide titles and the bullet points.
To increase the indents of a bullet point
(for example in the Introduction slide,
the Market Leader bullet point), click
on the Promote button
When finished adding the sub points, click on the
demote button to move the indent back to the left.
When going through this exercise, periodically save the presentation. Use the file name a:\bc2000.ppt
As with a Excel and Word, a PowerPoint presentation is stored in a file. Each application in the Microsoft Office stores its files with a specific three letter extension:
| Application | File name extension |
|---|---|
| MS Word | .doc |
| MS Excel | .xls |
| MS PowerPoint | .ppt |
| MS Access | .mdb |
With the exception of MS Access, the MS Office applications have very similar File menu options:
To save a PowerPoint presentation, pull down the File menu and choose the Save menu item. If the current presentation is a new presentation (never been saved before) then the Save As dialog box will appear. For this tutorial, use the file name: a:\bc2000.gif
Click on the Save button to save the file. Note that the new file name is reflected in the title bar of the PowerPoint application.
To save the current presentation under a different name, pull down the File menu and choose the Save As menu item. Fill in the new file name and click on the Save button to save the file. Note that the new file name is reflected in the title bar of the PowerPoint application.
To open a PowerPoint presentation, pull down the File menu and choose the Open menu item. Then navigate to the drive and/or directory where the presentation is located, highlight the file and click on the Open button.
To close a presentation that is currently opened, pull down the File menu and choose the Close menu item.
To print the current presentation, pull down the File menu and choose Print. The print dialog box will appear as follows:
The following chart summarizes the ways in which a presentation can be formatted for printing. The choices appear on the print dialog box next to the Print What label:
The Handouts are useful to give to audience members so they can follow along with the presentation. The Notes pages are useful for the speaker to add additional notes and reminders. The audience does not see these notes.
In addition to the above formats used for printing, whether or not the slides are printed in color can also be controlled. In general, if the printer used has color capabilities, then the slides will be printed in color by default. If, however, the printer to be used only has black and white capabilities (such as most laser printers), then consider printing using the following options:
The Pure Black & White option is especially useful for printing audience handouts since these black and white printouts can be easily photocopied.
The method to view the presentation in this fashion is called the slide show view. In this view, each slide is displayed full screen, one at a time. The presenter can flip to the next slide by pressing the space bar or PageDown key and can flip to the previous slide by pressing the PageUp or Backspace key. This method is the most common choice to accompany a speaker. Alternately, the slide show can be set to automatically advance to the next slide after a predefined time period. This option is often used for stand-alone presentations such as in a display kiosk.
To run the presentation as a slide show, pull down the View menu and choose the Slide Show option. Alternately, pull down the Slide Show menu and choose the View Show menu item. Notice that the first slide will appear covering the entire screen. Use the SpaceBar or PageDown key to advance to the next slide.
To end the presentation at any time, press the Escape key.
At the end of the presentation, after the last slide has been shown, the display will return back to the PowerPoint slide view. Since this can be distracting during a presentation, add a completely blank slide after your last slide in the presentation. This way the presentation will transition to a blank screen.
A number of predefined appearance designs come with PowerPoint. One of these designs can be applied to the entire presentation to give it a consistent appearance. To apply a design to the entire presentation, pull down the Format menu and choose the Apply Design menu item. A dialog box will appear where the pre-defined designs can be previewed and chosen:
Choose the High Voltage.pot design and click on the Apply button. Notice that each of the slides in the presentation have been reformatted with different background color, bullet points and fonts. The following figure shows the title slide in this new design:
The remaining sections of this tutorial use the High Voltage.pot design.
To switch to the slide sorter view, pull down the View menu and choose Slide Sorter. The display will change to show miniature versions of each slide in the presentation. To change the order of a slide, click and drag the slide to its new place in the presentation. Notice a vertical black line appears to indicate where in the presentation the slide will be moved to.
As an exercise, change the order of the The Competition and the Marketing Strategy slides by clicking on the Marketing Strategy slide and dragging it to the left of the The Competition slide.
The results of this switch are shown below:
To return to the slide view, pull down the View menu and choose Slide.
Other views available in PowerPoint include:
| View | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Slide | Main view used to create new slides. |
| Outline | Displays the presentation as an outline. |
| Slide Sorter | Used to change the order of the slides. |
| Notes Page | Displays the slides and a space below them to add speaker's notes. Speaker's notes are not visible to the audience but can be printed for use by the speaker. |
| Slide Show | Display the presentation as a slide show. |
| Check your spelling | Pull down the Tools menu and choose Spelling. |
| Add a header or footer to each slide. | Pull down the View menu and choose Header/Footer. Add the date and time to each slide, include a slide number and put some text in the footer. Check the box for Don't show on title slide, then click the Apply to All button. |
| Make manual changes to the slide layout | Pull down the View menu, highlight the Master item and choose Slide Master from the fly-out menu. Change the properties of any text, bullet points, backgrounds, colors, etc. Changes on the Slide Master will be reflected on all of the slides. |
Students are encouraged to further their PowerPoint knowledge and skills by working through more advanced tutorials and by reading the on-line help and PowerPoint documentation.
All products or company names in this tutorial
are used for identification purposes only,
and may be trademarks of their respective owners.
All names and information used as examples in
this tutorial are fictitious.
