Setting PowerPoint Options

PowerPoint enables you to change many basic options, such as how screens are viewed and how you edit, save, or print your presentations.

To access the Options dialog box, choose Tools, Options (see Figure 20.27).

Setting View Options

Click the View tab to display options that affect what you see as you create and edit a slideshow, as well as what you see when you play the slideshow (refer to Figure 20.27). Show options include:

• Startup dialog If, when you start PowerPoint, you want to bypass the opening dialog box that prompts you for a template or an existing file, deselect this option.

• New slide dialog If you deselect this option, PowerPoint automatically begins a new slideshow with a title slide without asking you first.

• Status Bar Although the status bar does take up a bit of territory at the bottom of the screen, it shows you which slide you're editing (when in tri-pane or Slide view), as well as the design you're using. Also, the spelling icon appears with a red "x" if anything on the current slide is misspelled.

  Tip

  If you double-click the design name on the status bar, PowerPoint opens the Apply Design Template dialog box, enabling you to quickly change the background template. Double-clicking the spelling icon begins the spelling feature.

  
  

• Vertical Ruler If you choose to display rulers (View, Ruler), this option displays a vertical ruler along with the horizontal ruler.

Slide Show options include:

• Popup Menu on Right Mouse Click When presenting a slideshow, you need an easy way to access navigation and other options. With this option, you can right-click on the slide to display a menu of options.

• Show Popup Menu Button By default, when you play a PowerPoint slideshow, PowerPoint displays a small icon at the lower left corner of the slide. Clicking this icon gives you the same menu as the one you get when you right-click the slide. If you don't want this icon on the screen, deselect this option.

• End with Black Slide If you deselect this option, PowerPoint returns to the PowerPoint editing screen when you conclude your slideshow. Leaving this option active makes for a cleaner ending.

Setting General Options

Click the General tab to change information about yourself and other items not easily grouped into a specific category (see Figure 20.28). General options include:

• Provide Feedback with Sound to Screen Elements To add sound effects for menus, buttons, and other screen elements, select this option.

  Note

  Changing this option in PowerPoint changes it for all Office 2000 applications. However, you may have to restart Windows for this option to take effect. Also, you may find that other sound schemes take precedence over these sound effects.

  
  

  Figure 20.28. The General tab of the Options dialog box offers miscellaneous PowerPoint settings.

  

• Recently Used File List: nn Number of Entries By default, PowerPoint displays the four most recently opened files at the bottom of the File menu. You can increase this number up to nine or reduce it to none.

• Link Sounds with File Size Greater than nn Kb PowerPoint normally saves sound files as part of the PowerPoint presentation itself. However, large sound files can make a presentation unwieldy. Selecting this option means that files larger than the size specified are not included with the slide show, but instead are linked from their current file location.

• Name Whenever you use options that require your name, such as in the Properties Summary (File, Properties), PowerPoint automatically uses the name found here.

• Initials Whenever user initials are required—for example, during a NetMeeting—PowerPoint automatically uses the initials found here.

• Web Options For details on various Web output options, including formatting, graphic formats, and the like, see Chapter 15, "Using PowerPoint's Web Features."

Setting Edit Options

Click the Edit tab to change options for editing text and charts (see Figure 20.29). These options include:

• Replace Straight Quotes with Smart Quotes (" ") Typographically correct quotes (" ") generally look better, but you can use standard, vertically straight quote marks (" ") by deselecting this option.

• When Selecting, Automatically Select Entire Word If you want to select only portions of words when using a mouse, deselect this option.

• Use Smart Cut and Paste The spacing around added or deleted text adjusts to add a space between words or to remove a space before a period, unless you deselect this option.

• Drag-and-Drop Text Editing Clicking selected text and dragging it to a new location is the same as cutting and pasting. If you find this happens accidentally with too much frequency, you may need to deselect this option.

• Auto-fit Text to Text Placeholder Like the option says, checking this will make PowerPoint try to automatically fit text within any text placeholder box on a slide.

• AutoFormat as You Type See Chapter 3, "Working with Text," for more information on the AutoFormat feature.

• New Charts Take on PowerPoint Font If you clear this option, charts will use a generic default font (for example, Arial) instead of the font and style being used in the current slide.

  Tip

  Although it may seem like a good idea to use the default PowerPoint fonts when creating a new chart, more generic fonts may actually look better. You may want to create test charts using both font methods before actually developing the data or making other modifications.

  
  

• Maximum Number of Undos: nn By default, you can undo the last 20 actions. You can decrease the number of undos to as few as 3 or increase it to as many as 150.

Changing Print Options

To change general printing defaults or to change settings for the current document only, click the Print tab (see Figure 20.30).

General printing options include:

• Background Printing This option enables you to continue editing your slide presentation while PowerPoint prints slides in the background.

• Print TrueType Fonts as Graphics If your printer has trouble printing the fonts used in your presentation, it could be that your printer cannot recognize them or you are using too many fonts for your printer to keep track of. Choosing this option sends text to the printer as graphics, thus bypassing the downloading of fonts to your printer. However, this option generally makes printing much slower.

• Print Inserted Objects at Printer Resolution This helps match graphic resolutions to the printer that's printing them. For example, your graphic image might have been created at only 72 dots-per-inch (dpi), but your printer can print at a much crisper 600 dpi. Selecting this option may slow printing.

When you print your current document using the Printer icon on the toolbar or via the Binder, by default you use the most recently used PowerPoint print settings. You can also choose to Use the Following Default Print Settings:

• Print What By default, PowerPoint prints slides without animations. However, you can change the default to:

  • Slides (with or without animations) If you print without animations, the entire slide is printed on one page. Printing with animations means that you get several pages, each with successive additions of animated text objects (for example, adding one bullet at a time).

  • Handouts You can print two, three, or six slides per page.

  • Notes Pages This prints a small version of the slide, along with any speaker notes you may have created.

  • Outline View This printout appears exactly as it does in PowerPoint's Outline view.

• PrintHidden Slides If you have hidden slides in your PowerPoint presentation, you can choose to include them in the printed version.

• Grayscale PowerPoint can automatically convert some of the background colors to various shades of gray, preserving some of the effect of the background design. This option also enables you to print text, especially white text, that is in an Autoshape.

  Note

  To preview how your printout will look in grayscale, choose View, Black and White. Choose this option again to return to a color view.

  
  

• Pure Black and White If this option prints any background at all, it does so only in black and white, without shades of gray. All text and graphic elements are printed in black and white.

• Scale to Fit Paper If you're using other than standard-sized paper, this option enables PowerPoint to scale the slides to fit that size paper.

• Frame Slides This option places a single, thin-line border around the entire printed slide.

Setting Save Options

Click the Save tab to view and change Save options (see Figure 20.31).

These include:

• Allow Fast Saves By default, PowerPoint saves only the changes made to a presentation since the last time it was saved, which obviously takes less time than saving the full presentation. However, this also requires more disk space, so if your computer is already fast enough, you may want to consider deselecting this option. Turning this option off also avoids reported problems with file corruption when using Fast Save.

• Prompt for File Properties The Summary, found in File, Properties, helps document the authorship and revision history of your slide presentation. If this is important to you, select this option which automatically brings up the Properties screen the first time the document is saved, or whenever it is saved with a different name.

• Save AutoRecover Info Every nn Minutes This is the automatic backup provision that saves a temporary copy of your presentation (typically in the Windows Temp folder) as frequently as you specify with this option. If you exit your document properly, the automatic backup file is erased. If you don't exit properly (for example, due to a power failure), PowerPoint automatically opens this file the next time you use PowerPoint so that you can determine whether it contains data you didn't save.

• Convert Charts When Saving as Previous Version When saving the presentation to an earlier version of PowerPoint, use this option to convert charts to a format also understood by earlier versions of PowerPoint.

• Save PowerPoint Files As By default, PowerPoint saves its files in a PowerPoint 2000 format, which is the same as the PowerPoint 97 format. This format cannot be opened in earlier versions of PowerPoint, such as Office 95.

  However, PowerPoint 2000 can open presentations created in earlier versions. If you work in an environment where not everyone is using PowerPoint 2000, you may need to agree upon a common format to be used by everyone. Then change this option to one of the following formats:

  • PowerPoint presentation, which can be opened and edited in PowerPoint 2000 or PowerPoint 97.

  • PowerPoint 97-2000 & 95 Presentation

  • PowerPoint 4.0 Presentation

  • Web Page

    Caution

    Be aware that saving a PowerPoint 2000 presentation in an earlier format may result in the loss of certain features available only in PowerPoint 2000.

    
    

• Default File Location PowerPoint saves your presentations in the folder you specify. Initially this is usually C: My Documents, but that may vary depending on how PowerPoint was installed.

Setting Spelling and Style Options

Click the Spelling and Style tab to change default spelling and style options (see Figure 20.32). These options include:

• Check Spelling as You Type The red hash marks under words indicate that they are misspelled, enabling you to make corrections as you go.

  Tip

  If you right-click a misspelled word, PowerPoint displays a menu with suggested correct spellings. Simply select the correct spelling to change the word.

  
  

• Hide Spelling Errors in This Document This option overrides Check Spelling as You Type and hides the red hash marks that indicate misspelled words.

• Always Suggest Corrections Suggested spellings are displayed when you perform a spelling check.

• Ignore Words in UPPERCASE Spelling errors found in uppercase words are ignored. For example, you might use this option if you use a lot of proper names that aren't usually found in the dictionary.

• Ignore Words with Numbers Words with numbers are often correct, but not found in the dictionary.

• Check Style This option enables or disables style checking of such things as case, end punctuation, and visual clarity. For information on Style Options, see Chapter 3, "Working with Text."