Present with Power

Do you know how to make your presentation run on a PC that doesn’t have PowerPoint? PowerPoint has this and many other lesser-known features that will make life easier for you . Find out how to.

First the settings



A good presentation should have a consistent look–slide titles should have the same font, size and color, company logos should be of the same size and appear at the same place on each slide, footers should be at the same place on each slide. Instead of making these changes individually on each slide, the Slide Master feature lets you define settings globally across all slides. For this, go to View>Master>Slide Master and add the effects or settings you want.

Link and move



You can link a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet to your slide, move from one slide to another, or go to your home page by using Hyperlinks and Action buttons. Hyperlinked words are usually underlined, while Action buttons contain shapes, like left and right arrow keys, which are linked to different objects, applications or sounds.

To insert a hyperlink, go to Insert>Hyperlink and select the application to be hyperlinked– existing file, Web page, or an e-mail address–and type its name in the appropriate fields.

To insert an action button, go to Slide Show>Action buttons. There is a list of pre-defined action buttons here. You can either use these or select the ‘blank button’ from the list to create a customized button. Drag ‘n’ drop the button you want on to your slide and in the Action settings, select the object or the application

you wish to link the action button to.

For your eyes only



Instead of taking speaker notes on paper, you can add notes to every slide using the Notes Pages. Go to View>Notes Page and add your notes in the blank page below your slide. To view these at the time of Slide show, click on the small rectangular icon and select Speaker notes from the context menu. You’ll see a small display box with the necessary notes. These can be seen only by the speaker.

Speak out



To add voice narration, go to Slide Show>Record Narration. A dialog box will tell you the amount of free disk space and the number of minutes you can record. Set the microphone’s level and click OK to start recording.

Pack and go 



To run your presentation on another PC without losing its formatting or on a PC which doesn’t have PowerPoint, use the Pack and Go wizard. It packs all the files and fonts in your presentation and stores them either on a floppy or a network drive. It also imports the linked files in your presentation. To use this, select Pack and Go from the File menu. The wizard will ask you for a few details before packing your presentation. To use your presentation on a PC that doesn’t have PowerPoint installed, select the option to pack your presentation with the PowerPoint Viewer.