A Tour of the Office PowerPoint 2007 Window
Office PowerPoint 2007 shares the new features of the 2007 Microsoft® Office system look and feel—from the user interface to command sets to contextual command tabs, the Office PowerPoint 2007 window offers the tools you need as they relate to the task you’re trying to accomplish. As you see in Figure 6-1, the command tabs in the user interface correspond to the usual sequence of steps in the presentation-creation process:
The Home tab contains commands you are likely to use when you are creating and working with slides; for example, you’ll find commands for adding and deleting slides, choosing slide layouts, making font and paragraph selections, adding WordArt, and searching for text on a particular slide.
The Insert tab enables you to add a number of items to your slides—tables, pictures, diagrams, charts, Office shapes, links, text objects, and media clips.
The Design tab is all about the look of your presentation. Use the commands in this tab to set the page orientation, choose a presentation theme, design the slide background, and arrange objects on the slide.
The Animations tab gives you what you need to choose animations and add sound, transitions, and timing selections.
The Slide Show tab contains the commands for setting up, rehearsing, and displaying a slide show. This tab also includes the commands for recording narration, setting up dual monitors, and changing display resolution.
The Review tab offers the spelling checker and thesaurus, and provides translation and research tools; additionally you’ll find commands for adding, reviewing, and working with comments in the document.
The View tab provides a number of different options for the way in which you view your presentation. Choose among the traditional PowerPoint views, add gridlines and the ruler, make color and grayscale changes, and work with presentation windows.
Tip
| The Zoom slider in the bottom-right corner of the window is a helpful tool when you want to zoom in or out on a specific item in your presentation. In Normal view, use the Fit Slide To Current Window tool, to the right of the Zoom slider, to maximize the current slide within the size of the display window. |
Starting a New Presentation
Now when you begin a new presentation in Office PowerPoint 2007, a number of resources appear automatically (see Figure 6-2). Instead of requiring you to click around in the New Presentation task pane (as you did with Office PowerPoint 2003), the New Presentation window offers you several choices:
- Display a collection of templates in the center panel by clicking a template category on the left
- Create a new presentation from scratch by clicking Blank Presentation
- Choose one of your own customized templates by clicking My Templates
- Build a new presentation based on one you already have by clicking New From Existing
- Get tips, ideas, and additional presentation templates from Microsoft Office Online
Tip
| Because Office PowerPoint 2007 uses the Microsoft Office Open XML file format, the file you create will not be readable in previous versions of PowerPoint. This is true for Microsoft® Office Word 2007 and Microsoft® Office Excel® 2007 as well. To share Office PowerPoint 2007 files with users working with PowerPoint 2003, for example, you can save your presentation in the PowerPoint 97–2003 format. Additionally, users of the older versions of Office Word, Office Excel, and Office PowerPoint can download a free file converter that enables them to open files created in the 2007 release versions of those applications. |