CHOOSING YOUR SLIDE FORMAT:

Once you have researched your topic and are ready to compose your slide show, think about which type of slides you will need, e.g. text only, text and images, spreadsheets, etc. When you are ready to create, guide your arrow across the toolbar slowly and watch as speech balloons pop up telling you what each icon does. This is an excellent way to learn Power Point's capabilities. For example, slide your arrow across the toolbar until you find the NEW SLIDE icon. It is on the right half of the toolbar, and the slide icon has a sparkle on it. You can also add a slide by pulling down the INSERT menu to click on NEW SLIDE. You must choose the format of your new slide. Choosing the appropriate format can make your job extremely easy, but it is possible to insert text or images in an autoformat that does not already provide for it. You can begin creating.

COMPOSING YOUR PRESENTATION:

If you think best in outline terms, choose OUTLINE from the VIEW pulldown menu. This format does not display your images or graphs and allows you to focus on the text as you organize and compose. For some people, this will be most useful once your slides are created, and you need to organize them.

.If you would rather see the entire slide displayed, look for the small tool bar in the bottom left corner of your screen that displays 5 icons. Choose the icon with 4 small squares (3rd from the left) to see all of your slides reduced and displayed simultaneously. You can easily move slides around in this format by dragging and dropping or cutting and pasting.