PowerPoint 2007
The Main Screen
The Ribbons
Home Ribbon
Contains some of the most commonly used commands.
Note: To the right of the words ‘Clipboard’, ‘Font’, ‘Paragraph’ and ‘Drawing’ there is this symbol . This is the dialog box launcher and will open a dialog box to display more options than are showing in the group of the ribbon.
Clipboard: Contains the cut, copy, paste commands. Paste Special, Paste as Hyperlink and Duplicate are found in the drop down under the Paste Command. The Format Painter allows you to copy the format from a set of text to another set of text. The dialog box launcher opens a side bar that lists all of your past copy and cuts so you can choose what you want to paste.
Slides: All the commands for creating new slides. The drop down for New Slide allows you choose which layout you would like for your new slide. The drop down for the Layout command allows you to change the layout of a current slide. Reset allows you to reset the position, size, and formatting of the slide placeholders to their default settings.
Font: The most commonly used commands are placed out here in the group but if you click the dialog box launcher button then you will see the old font dialog box that we know and love.
Paragraph: Complete paragraph formats: vertical alignments, horizontal alignments, change the text direction, bullets, numbering, indenting, spacing before and after, create columns. The dialog box here is simple it contains the ability to create tabs and do some indenting and spacing. Double spacing text is located here.
Drawing: Allows you to add shapes to your slides. Then you can customize and make them pretty. The dialog box here is the Format Shape dialog box.
Editing: Clicking either Find or Replace opens the old Find and Replace dialog box. The select command here has an option to open a Selection Pane. This is for selecting objects but here you can also make objects invisible too.
The Insert Ribbon
Contains commands used to add content to your slides.
Tables: Allows you to design and insert tables into your slides.
Illustrations: Inserting pictures, Clip Art, creating a slide show Photo Album, insert “AutoShapes, SmartArt and Charts.
Links: With text or an object on your slide selected you can turn it into a Hyperlink or an Action Link. During your slide show you can then hyperlink to the web, another file, an email address, or a different slide. With Action Links you can choose between using a mouse click or carry out the action just my moving your mouse over the link. Here you can link to another slide, you can run a new program, you can run a macro, you can play sounds and the highlight click choice makes the object that you are clicking on move a bit.
Text: The text group adds different types of text objects to your slides. Header and footers are located here because in essence you are adding text to a slide when you insert a header or footer into your slide. The object command here allows you to insert an Excel Spreadsheet for example. You can insert a new blank worksheet or insert a worksheet that is already complete.
Media Clips: Insert a movie from a file or from the Microsoft Clip Organizer. Insert a Sound from a file, from the MS Clip Organizer, from a CD Audio Track or you can also record your own sounds if you have the hardware (a microphone).
The Design Ribbon
Used to enhance the look of your slides and make them pleasant to look at.
Page Setup: Allows you to set slide sizes and change orientation. Clicking the Page Setup command here will display this dialog box. You can also change the orientation by using the command displayed on the ribbon.
Themes: In PowerPoint 2003 these were called Designs. Now they call them Themes. Each sample slide shows the font that will be used and the color pallete that will be displayed on the slides. You can also manually change the colors, fonts and effects using this group. A nice new feature of Office 2007 is “live preview”. You can now see how your slide will look just by letting your mouse rest on these different themes. You don’t have to click it to apply it to see if you like it anymore and then have to go and change it back.
Background: You can apply different gradiant background styles or you can click the check box to Hide Background Graphics.
The Animation Ribbon
Add slide transitions and text animations here.
Preview: Allows you to preview the animations and transitions that you’ve applied a particular slide without having to run the entire slide show.
Animations: Applies animations to the text and objects on a particular slide. The animate command allows you to choose which type of text to animate and the Custom Animation tab allows you to apply different animations to different text. For example, if you wanted to animate a bulleted list you would do this through the Custom Animation command.
Transitions: Customizes how you move from slide to slide within your presentation.
The Slide Show Ribbon
Used to rehearse and set up your slide show for a presentation.
Start Slide Show: Allows you to start the slide show from the beginning or from a currently active slide. The custom slide show button enables you to pick and choose slides for a presentation if you do not want to use all of your slides.
Set Up: This command opens a dialog box that allows you to customize the way that your presentation will be carried out. The Hide Slide is a toggle button that will hide whichever slide is currently active in the window. To unhide the slide click this button again. Rehearse Timings will open a timer and start your slide show. You can rehearse what you want to say and then advance through the slide show. The timer will keep track of the amount of time you spent on each slide. Then underneath the Rehearse Timings command is a check box so you can choose to use those rehearsed times or not when giving your presentation.
Monitors: Here you can chose different resolutions for your presentations depending on what hardware you are using. The check box for Use Presenter View allows you to use two different monitors. By using two monitors, you can view your notes, or run other programs that your audience will not see, and you can do this by using Presenter view. Presenter view offers the following tools to make it easier for you to present information:
- You can use thumbnails to select slides out of sequence and create a customized presentation for your audience.
- Preview text shows you what your next click will add to the screen, such as a new slide or the next bullet in a list.
- Speaker's notes are shown in large, clear type so that you can use them as a script for your presentation.
- You can darken or lighten the screen during your presentation and then resume where you left off. For example, you might not want to display the slide content during a break or a question and answer (Q and A)
The Review Ribbon
Proofing: The good ol’ spell check, Thesaurus and grammar tools that you know and love are located here. Also you can now research your text if you like. If you select text and choose the Research button a side bar will open and you can choose to research that text by using the reference books listed in this screen shot. Notice that the choice of Translation is found here also.
Comments: Place comments where ever you click on the screen. A small icon will appear to let you know that a comment is placed on the slide. Comments do not show during the presentation they are just for your personal use.
Protect Presentation: Allows you to sign up to use a free trial of Microsoft’s Information Rights Management Service.
The View Ribbon
Presentation Views: The first four buttons in this group allow you to change the PowerPoint screen to different views. Normal View is the view you use to customize and build each slide, Slide Sorter View allows you to change the order of your slides, Notes Page view shows the notes that you’ve created for each slide and Slide Show will run your presentation.
Note: Normal, Slide Sorter and Slide Show views can also be changed by using buttons which are found down on the status bar.
Slide Master, Handout Master and Notes Master allow you to create your own personalized master slides, handouts and notes pages. Clicking each of these will take you into that view and also display a ribbon used to create each of these.
Show/Hide: Allows you to turn the ruler, gridlines, and Message Bar on and off.
Color/Grayscale: You can view your slides in Grayscale or Black and White if you would like. Clicking on the grayscale or pure black and white option also opens a new ribbon so you can adjust the grayscale if you would like to
Window: The New Window button will actually open the current document in a new window. You will then have the same presentation open twice. If you make changes to one and save them they will automatically be applied to the other open presentation. With this Window Group you can also Arrange all of the windows (files) that you have open so that you can fully see each of them. Cascading the windows will make each files’ title bar visible so that you can click on it to activate it. Move Split allows you to change the size of the panes in Normal view by using the keyboard rather than dragging with your mouse. Switch Windows supplies a list of open windows/files so that you can activate a different one. Then the last button on this ribbon is Macro which opens a dialog box that allows you to see the different macros that are in this file.
The Developer Ribbon
Code: This group enables you to create Macros. The Macro recorder is no longer in PowerPoint 2007. If you want to create a Macro you have to use Visual Basic for Applications. The first button in this group will open the VBA editor. The second button will display a list of macros that are contained in the file and allow you to run, edit, step into, create, delete and cancel macros. You can set your preferred level of macro security with the third button. Here you can disable or enable Macros.
Controls: The Control group contains all the tools from the old toolbox to add drop down lists, radio buttons, check boxes, etc.. to your slides. The Properties button will open a side window with the VBA object’s properties displayed and the View Code button will open the VBA Editor for that object.
Modify: The Document Panel button displays a Document Information Panel dialog box.
The Add-Ins Ribbon