Launching PowerPoint and Choosing a Theme

Quick reference

• 00:04 You're sitting at your office having a chat with the manager when suddenly she
• 00:07 has a brain wave.
• 00:08 I think this project's going really well.
• 00:10 Why don't we present about it to the CO this afternoon at the executive meeting?
• 00:14 Where do they get these clever ideas from?
• 00:17 There you are sitting with a copy of PowerPoint and
• 00:19 you have got hours to build a presentation and have it on her desk for review.
• 00:23 What do you do?
• 00:24 Well, fortunately this video is about not only where to start, but
• 00:28 the series of videos will help you understand very clearly
• 00:31 how to build presentations, make them effective, and achieve your outcomes.
• 00:36 So, in PowerPoint, when you first open it, you may see slides and the ribbon, or
• 00:41 indeed a thumb dial of a slide.
• 00:44 If we click File, New, you may even see this, which is called a backstage,
• 00:49 and there's a range of presentations already preloaded here.
• 00:53 You can click on a thumbnail, scroll across and see images of the slides,
• 00:58 change particular variants, or you can even search for
• 01:02 a particular presentation such as Business Strategy in the search bar.
• 01:06 Now I'm going to select this one and have a look at it.
• 01:09 Scroll across, it seems okay.
• 01:12 Click Create, and then PowerPoint has downloaded that template ready for
• 01:16 me to work on.
• 01:18 I notice in the status bar that this slide is one of seven slides and
• 01:22 each slide contains recommended content that we could use.
• 01:26 And so we could go away and build that presentation and get the work done.
• 01:31 Next thing that we have to do is actually save that and so we go,
• 01:34 File and when I click Save in this version, PowerPoint automatically jumps
• 01:38 across to the Save As tab because this is a new presentation and hasn't been saved.
• 01:44 And if you just close this down at this point, you'll lose everything.
• 01:48 So, I'm off at various locations such as Microsoft's online storage
• 01:53 system, I go to the computer and browse.
• 01:57 I'm going to go to the GoSkills library in the folder within that library and
• 02:03 there's already a presentation there.
• 02:05 If I click on that and save it, it will likely override it and
• 02:08 I don't want to do that, so I paste the text in that I used before to clipboard.
• 02:13 I want to save as a PowerPoint pptx presentation,
• 02:18 although there is a range of other things that I could save as such as a show and
• 02:22 some of these other formats, some of which I've never used.
• 02:27 So I clicked save, PowerPoint goes away, and does that, and
• 02:30 then my file is called business strategy pptx, and
• 02:34 we can see it is also located within that folder in windows explorer.
• 02:38 Now, here is the most important part.
• 02:41 We need to work on this presentation from a proper story board.
• 02:45 We need to add or delete slides, move them around,
• 02:48 build charts or tables or whatever is needed to get the story across.
• 02:53 After you've looked at enough presentations you get to recognize various
• 02:56 templates.
• 02:57 You see the same smart art graphics and effects so
• 03:00 please be different, stand out from the crowd.
• 03:03 Be unique, don't just be a clone of everyone else.
• 03:06 And as you go through the various modules and
• 03:08 videos, you will continue to learn how to build quickly, how to be clear and
• 03:11 have confidence, so that you know that you can try different things.
• 03:16 And so, presuming that you've done all of that,
• 03:18 let's now look at getting this presentation out to people.
• 03:21 If I go to the File tab again, we can print,
• 03:24 we can share it, I can send it by email to various people as an attachment or
• 03:29 as a PDF, I can publish the slides, or I can export it.
• 03:35 I can package for CD, create a video or a PDF.
• 03:40 So, let's create a PDF.
• 03:41 So, I click the button.
• 03:43 The Publish as PDF dialog box pops up.
• 03:47 It's already called it Business Strategy.pdf.
• 03:50 I wanna open the file after publishing to look at it and as a standard size.
• 03:56 So, I click on Publish and PowerPoint goes away in the background and publishes that.
• 04:01 And how long that takes depends on the size and
• 04:03 complexity of your presentation, as well as the resources of your computer.
• 04:08 Now, notice that at this stage there's only a very small size and
• 04:12 that's great in terms of sharing information from people, but
• 04:15 this particular file doesn't have the content that you really need and so
• 04:19 your presentation should be bigger than this.
• 04:22 So just remember that if you're in a hurry, there are a bunch of resources in
• 04:26 the background of PowerPoint as a place to start.
• 04:29 Have a look at some of those templates and themes that are available, and
• 04:32 use them as the basis of starting to design your presentation and
• 04:36 you'll get your work done faster.
• 04:38 But be different and use the resources as a place to start your presentation and
• 04:43 not the end of your work.

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