Hello and Welcome to PowerPoint!

Quick reference

• 00:04 Hello, everyone, and welcome to PowerPoint for Beginners.
• 00:08 Now, if you've chosen this course,
• 00:10 then I already know that you're a very intelligent human being.
• 00:13 And I'm going to capitalize on that by filling your brain with some
• 00:17 new PowerPoint knowledge and a plethora of new skills.
• 00:21 My name is Deborah Ashby, I'm a Microsoft IT trainer.
• 00:25 And it's basically my job to design, deliver, and
• 00:28 facilitate Microsoft training courses both online and in the classroom.
• 00:33 Now, I've been a trainer for about 15 years and I've been working in the wider
• 00:38 IT industry for about 25 years, which makes me feel extremely old.
• 00:43 So over that time, I've seen PowerPoint change from a very basic presentation
• 00:48 application through to the feature-rich product that we see today.
• 00:54 And with more and more features being added in all the time, and
• 00:57 with the integration with Microsoft 365, what we have is a super awesome tool for
• 01:02 designing some really great looking presentations.
• 01:06 Now, over my time training PowerPoint,
• 01:08 in general what I find is that people use this tool in the wrong way.
• 01:13 Some people almost use it as a support system when they're giving presentations.
• 01:19 And one of the first things that I'm going to teach you in
• 01:22 this course is some of the dos and don'ts when it comes to giving presentations.
• 01:26 Now, this course is broken down across ten different sections.
• 01:31 We're going to start out by exploring modern slide layouts.
• 01:34 And this is where I'm going to run through some best practice guidelines,
• 01:38 dos and don'ts, and general tips for creating and giving presentations.
• 01:43 I'm also going to show you loads of free resources for images,
• 01:47 icons, templates, and videos.
• 01:50 I'm going to show you some of the sites I go to when I'm looking for
• 01:53 a flash of design inspiration.
• 01:56 We're then going to head into the essential skills part of this course.
• 02:00 And this is really covering those basics of PowerPoint.
• 02:04 Now, if you are used to using other Microsoft applications,
• 02:07 then you might be familiar with some of this stuff.
• 02:10 What I always say to people is because these videos are very short, it definitely
• 02:14 doesn't hurt running through them anyway, because there is always some little tip or
• 02:19 some little keyboard shortcut that you're going to pick up.
• 02:23 Once we've been through those essential skills, we're then going to move on to
• 02:27 the exciting part of the training course, and that is the slides workshop.
• 02:31 This is where we're going to create a slide deck from scratch.
• 02:36 And in fact,
• 02:36 we're going to be creating the slide deck that I have on the screen behind me.
• 02:41 So this is our fictitious company that we're going to
• 02:44 be using in this training course, LANDCO, the learning and development company.
• 02:49 And throughout this workshop, we're basically going to
• 02:52 build out all of the slides that you see in this presentation,
• 02:56 utilizing lots of different techniques that you might not be familiar with.
• 03:00 Now, because this is a beginners course,
• 03:02 then we are going to start right from the beginning.
• 03:05 I'm not going to assume that you know anything.
• 03:07 I try wherever possible to make my explanations super clear so
• 03:11 that you're not confused or getting lost as we're going through.
• 03:15 Once we've completed our slides workshop and we have our presentation,
• 03:20 we're then going to focus on some of the more adminy style tasks.
• 03:24 So things like how we prepare a presentation for delivery,
• 03:27 because presentations can be delivered in numerous different ways.
• 03:31 You might be emailing this presentation to someone or sharing a link with somebody
• 03:36 else, or you might be standing up in front of an audience and delivering it.
• 03:41 You might even have your presentation running automatically on a large screen at
• 03:45 an event.
• 03:47 We're going to cover all of these scenarios, and
• 03:49 I'm going to show you how you can set up slideshows in order to do those things.
• 03:53 I'm going to throw in there a short section on touch for
• 03:56 all of those people who absolutely adore their touchscreen devices.
• 04:00 Then as we move towards the end of the course, we're going to talk about things
• 04:05 like exporting, sharing with others, and printing.
• 04:08 There's going to be a ton of keyboard shortcuts, tips and tricks along the way.
• 04:12 So that by the end of this course, you have a really great foundation level
• 04:16 knowledge of PowerPoint from which you can build further skills.
• 04:20 All of the files that I use in this course and
• 04:23 all the files that I create are available for you to download.
• 04:27 So you can follow along with me and also see the completed version.
• 04:31 And all of the videos in this training course are roughly five to eight
• 04:34 minutes long.
• 04:35 So super bite-sized, super quick, and designed for the busy professional.
• 04:40 So without further ado, I think it's time we did some work.
• 04:44 So let's dive straight into our first lesson where I'm going to go through some
• 04:49 golden rules of great PowerPoint design.
• 04:52 I'm going to grab a coffee and then I'm going to head over there.
• 04:54 And I look forward to you joining me.

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