PowerPoint includes all of the features we need to produce professional-looking presentations.

When we create a
PowerPoint presentation, it is made up of a series of slides. The slides contain the information we want to
communicate with our audience. This information can include text, pictures, charts, video, sound, and more.

New presentations

When we open PowerPoint from the Start menu or from an icon on our desktop, a new presentation with one slide
appears by default.

About the slides

Ribbons
Located where taskbars used to be, ribbons graphically display the changing features as we click on the menu bar
tabs. It may take us time to adjust to the new locations of familiar options, but ribbons may also expose us to useful
new tools and commands. The image and table shown below will help familiarize uswith the various options.

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Slides contain placeholders, or areas on a slide that are enclosed by dotted borders. Placeholders can contain many
different items, including text, pictures, and charts. Some placeholders have placeholder text, or text that we can
replace, and thumbnail-sized icons that represent specific commands such as Insert Picture, Insert Chart, and Insert
Clip Art. .

Slide layouts

The placeholders are arranged in different layouts that we can select when we insert a new slide or that can be
applied to existing slides. In the example above, the layout is called Title and Content and includes title and
content placeholders.

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A slide layout arranges our slide content. Layouts contain different types of placeholders we can use, depending
on what information we want to include in our presentation. Each layout has a descriptive name, but the image of
the layout shows you how the placeholders are arranged on the slide.

Changing a Slide Layout

After you have selected a design template for your presentation, you can use slide layouts to create new slides
which will hold the content for our presentation.
• In the slide pane of the PowerPoint window, display the slide whose layout we would like to change.
• Click on the Home menu bar tab to expose the ribbon.
• From the Slides section, select the Layout button.
• From the drop-down menu that appears, select the layout we desire.

Using Text

We can add text to the following areas of a slide:

1) Text Placeholders
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 2) Text boxes
3) Shapes

1. Inserting Text on a Slide:

Once we have selected a layout for our slide, we can start adding content. Many of the slide layouts provide text
and image boxes to make this process simpler.

• To insert text into an existing text box, click in the box so that a flashing vertical insertion point cursor can be
seen.
• Once we can see the insertion point, we can enter, edit, and delete text within the box is as if it were a Word
document.
• When we have finished composing text, click anywhere outside the text box to deselect it.

2. To insert text into a placeholder:

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  Click inside the placeholder. The placeholder text will disappear, and the insertion point will appear.
 Type our text once the insertion point is visible.
 Click outside the placeholder when we have entered all of our text into the placeholder.

3. Selecting Text in a Text Box

Before we can format the text inside a text box, we must select the box and its contents.
• Click on any of the text within our text box.
• The box’s grey dashed border and circular/square handles will become visible around the text.
• To select text in the box, drag the cursor to highlight the text we wish to format.

To select all of the text in the text box, click on the box’s grey dashed border. The dashed border will become a
solid grey border, and the handles will turn light blue, indicating that we have successfully selected the entire
contents of the text

4. Formatting Text in a Text Box

Once we have selected the text that we wish to format:
• In the Home ribbon, the Font section allows we to use one or more of the following buttons.

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5. Changing the Text Color
• Select the text we wish to format.
• Locate the Font section of the Home ribbon.

• Click on the down-facing arrow to the right of the Font Color button.
• From the window of font colors that appears, select the color we want to apply.

6. Aligning text in a text box

Once we have selected the text that we wish to align:
• In the Home ribbon, the Paragraph section allows we to use one or more of the buttons below. Only the text
inside the selected text box will be affected by using one of the following buttons.

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7. Creating a New Text Box
Adding a new text box to a slide allows we to place text on the slide that may not fit into an existing text box or
that may look best in a special position on the slide. To create a new text box:
• From the Insert ribbon, select the Text Box button located in the Text section.
• Move our cursor to the location on our slide where we wish to place the new text box.
• Click the cursor and move horizontally to create a one-line text box of desired width.
• Enter our new text in the box. Notice that the box will expand vertically to fit the text that we type.
• When we have finished entering text into the new box, click anywhere on the slide to deselect the box we just
created.

8. Moving a Text Box to a New Location

• Click on the text box we wish to move.
• Place our cursor over the dashed border of the box so that a fourarrow
cursor appears.
• Drag the box to its new location on our slide.