Introduction

By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

• Create a presentation
• Choose and add slides to a presentation
• Save and close a presentation
• Exit PowerPoint

Creating a presentation

To begin your presentation, open Microsoft PowerPoint from the Start menu.

Once you open it, PowerPoint presents three options for creating a new presentation: AutoContent Wizard, Design Template, and Blank presentation.

The blank presentation option is one of the more commonly used methods.

To create a presentation using the Blank Presentation option:

• Choose Blank presentation in the PowerPoint dialog box (Ctrl+N).
• Click OK.

Choosing slides

The New Slide dialog box appears, showing several AutoLayouts. AutoLayouts give you several layout options for slides, including title slide, text and clip art, and bulleted list.

To choose an AutoLayout for the first slide of your presentation:

• Choose the Title Slide layout. You can identify the slide name by the preview window in the lower-right corner of the dialog box.
• Click OK.
• A title slide appears.

Now you have access to the main PowerPoint window, where you can begin creating your slide presentation.

Adding slides to a presentation

It's easy to add slides to your presentation once you've created a title slide. You can add bulleted list slides, chart slides, slides that have spaces for text and clip art, and various combinations.

To add a slide:

• Choose InsertNew Slide (Ctrl+M).
• Choose an AutoLayout from the New Slide dialog box.
• Click OK.

OR

• Click the New Slide button on the Standard toolbar.
• Choose an Autolayout from the New Slide dialog box.
• Click OK.

Saving, closing, and exiting

You can save and close presentations and exit PowerPoint similar to the way you would complete these steps in other Microsoft applications.

To save a presentation:

• Click FileSave As (Ctrl+S).
• Choose the folder where you want to save it, type a file name, and click Save.

To close a presentation:

• Click the X in the PowerPoint presentation window (Ctrl+W). The PowerPoint application remains open and you can start a new presentation.

To exit PowerPoint:

• Choose FileExit (Alt+F4).

Note: Before you exit PowerPoint, make sure to save any work you want to keep.

Once you have the main PowerPoint window open, you can easily start a new presentation. Choose FileNew. Click the General tab.

Challenge!

• Open PowerPoint.
• Choose Blank presentation.
• Choose Title Slide.
• Add a bulleted list slide using one of the methods described above.
• Save this presentation to your My Documents folder and call it My First Presentation. Don't add text to your slides now. You'll learn about adding text and clip art in future lessons.
• Close the presentation.
• Exit PowerPoint.