POWERPOINT 2007 BASICS

 
The Main Window

When you open PowerPoint 2007, you will see this window:



The Ribbon

If you have used PowerPoint 2000 or 2003, you will note the very different layout. The first thing that you will notice is that the menus are missing. In their place, there are tabs at the top of a Ribbon. See them? The ones titled, "Home," "Insert," "Design," "Animations," "Slide Show," "Review" and "View"? Here is the Ribbon by itself:

The ribbon is used instead of menus. Think of the Ribbon as a "super toolbar." You will notice that the many toolbars of Office 2003 have disappeared; the Ribbon has replaced them. The designers of Office 2007 wanted to present as many features to users as easily as possible. Before, many features were hidden in dialog boxes and submenus; the Ribbon helps make them more visible and easy to use.

Clicking on the tab for a Ribbon section will show you a new set of buttons under that theme. Later, we will study the Ribbon sections one by one.

If you double-click on any Ribbon tab, the Ribbon will become Minimized--that is, it will only show the tabs, and the buttons will disappear. In this mode, you can see the buttons by clicking on any tab; the buttons will disappear after you finish using them. This lets you have more screen space for the slide design. You can un-minimize the Ribbon by double-clicking on a tab again.

In order to see more detailed controls, you can open dialog boxes. These can be opened by clicking on the dialog box buttons below the Ribbon sections:



The Office Button

You might wonder, "where is the File Menu?" How can I print, for example? Well, the File Menu is still there... it is just different, and hard to see at first. In fact, it is not even called the "File Menu" any more--it's called the "Office Button":

Hover the mouse over any item, and you might see an explanation and a chance to get help:

If you click it, you will see the File Menu choices:

If you hover your mouse over any item with a triangle-arrow after it, then you can see the choices shown on the right:

Using this menu, you can create a new document (slide show), save the slide show you're working on, print a copy of the slides, or close the document. There are other options, but they are mostly for advanced or business users.


The Quick Access Toolbar

PowerPoint 2007 no longer has toolbars like Office 2003 used to have. You used to be able to move toolbars around, change them, and create new ones. You could have dozens of toolbars floating or docked within the window.

In Office 2007, there is only one toolbar: the Quick Access Toolbar. At first, this is located at the top of your window, just to the right of the Office Button.

At first, this toolbar has only buttons for Save, Undo, and Redo. However, by clicking on the little arrow just to the right of the toolbar, you can see options to add more buttons.

By clicking on the gray space to the left of any command, you can add or remove that button to or from the toolbar. If you want a choice of other buttons, just select and click "More Commands." Or, you can add any button from the Ribbon by right-clicking on it and selecting, "Add to the Quick Access Toolbar."

You can also move this toolbar so it is below the Ribbon, which is a more natural place for some people.

Finally, Minimizing the Ribbon will make the Ribbon buttons seem to disappear–but when you click on a Ribbon Tab, the Ribbon will temporarily re-appear to let you choose a button from it.

You can also minimize the ribbon by double-clicking on any of the tabs--and you can un-minimize it in the same way.


Sidebar

Views can be changed in a few different places. First, let's look at the Sidebar.

Normally, the sidebar has slide thumbnails. But if you click Outline, you can see a way to make a presentation very quickly.

When you click Outline, you will see the slides as small icons. Click to the right of one, and you will see a blinking cursor line. Now try typing. You will see that whatever you type appears in the Title area on the slide!

If you want to make a new slide, hit Enter. A new slide title will appear when you type.

If you want to add bullet points to a slide, hit the tab key. If you hit the tab key again, you will move the bullet list to the right--you are "demoting" the point. To "promote" the point, you can use the keyboard shortcut ALT-SHIFT-LEFT ARROW (hold down the ALT and SHIFT keys, and then type the left-arrow key on your keyboard).

By using the ALT-SHIFT-ARROW keys (left arrow, right arrow, up and down arrows), you can change the importance or position of any bullet point.

To continue to the next slide, use CONTROL-ENTER.

When you finish, you will have created a slide show with only basic text from your outline.

This is a very quick way to create a slide show--but it is also very plain and unimaginative. Still, if all you need are notes and if you are in a hurry, this is a good way to get the job done.




Views

There is a Views bar down in the lower-right corner of your PowerPoint window.

Here are the parts:

  1. Normal View
  2. Slide Sorter View
  3. Start Slide Show
  4. Zoom Slider (and buttons)
  5. Fit Slide to Window

Normal View is the view that you started in--the slide and the sidebar.

Slide Sorter View lets you see all the slides at one time, and re-order them easily.