Office X for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

578 office x for macintosh: the missing manual

To do so, launch PowerPoint and choose File→Open to bring up the Open dialog

box. Select All Outlines in the Show pop-up menu, and then select the Word docu-

ment that you want to import.

After you click Open, the Office Assistant asks you if you want to open the outline in

Word or in PowerPoint; choose PowerPoint. PowerPoint now converts your outline

into the basis for a slide show; each top-level heading becomes the title of a new

slide, and subheadings become bullet points on each slide.

Tip: You can perform this trick from inside Word, too. With the outline open in Word X, choose File→Send

To→Microsoft PowerPoint. PowerPoint opens (if it’s not already open) and converts the outline into a

presentation automatically, saving you several steps.

Step 3: Building the Show

It’s much better to show blank white slides containing an effective message than

fancy graphics that don’t say anything. That’s why it’s an excellent idea to begin your

presentation planning with the Outline pane.

Once the outline’s in good shape, it’s time to start thinking about the cosmetics;

how your slides look. PowerPoint’s tools make it easy to adapt your design (or

Microsoft’s design) for all the slides simultaneously.

Caution: Choose File→Page Setup and set the Size options before you design your slides. A radical

change to these options later in the game may result in cutoff graphics or unintended distortions, as

though your slides were being projected through a fun-house mirror.

Using Masters

A master item is a background element that appears on every slide—a logo or a

background, for example. When you add, delete, move, or replace a master item,

you see the change reflected in all of your slides that use that master item. For ex-

ample, if you want to change the background color of all of your slides, just change

the background on their slide master; PowerPoint updates all the slides instantly.

In fact, PowerPoint offers four different categories of master items: slides, titles, hand-

outs, and notes. Here’s how they work.

Slide master

The slide master—or, as most people would call it, the master slide—is a special

slide whose background, font size and style, bullet style, and footer (whatever ap-

pears at the bottom of every slide) determine the look of these elements on every

slide it controls.

Step 2:

Writing the Outline

chapter 15: basic powerpoint 579

Editing the slide master

To look at and change the slide master, choose View→Master→Slide Master. Now

you’re face-to-face with the slide master itself (see Figure 15-6), which comes with

these master items:

• Title Area. This usually contains some dummy text, a placeholder for the real text

that will appear in your slides. The title area is surrounded by a dashed line.

• Object Area. The settings you make in this area determine how the body of your

slides—text, charts, pictures, and media clips—will look and where they will sit.

• Date Area, Footer Area, and Number Area. These boxes at the bottom of the

slide master show where the date and time, slide number, and miscellaneous footer

text will appear on each slide. (These same boxes appear in the preview in

File→Page Setup→Header/Footer→Slide tab.)

Note: In View→Master→Slide Master mode, the placeholder text (such as “Click to edit Master title

style”) is irrelevant. Don’t bother editing it; doing so has no effect on your actual slides.

By changing the font size, style, color, and placement of these items, you can change

where PowerPoint puts those elements on your slides. For example, if you want all

of your slides’ titles to be in 24-point Gill Sans Ultra Bold, just click once inside the

placeholder text to select the box; then use the Formatting Palette to change the font

to 24-point Gill Sans Ultra Bold. Now, any existing slides that have titles (and any

new slides you make) will display the title in 24-point Gill Sans Ultra Bold.

Figure 15-6:

The slide master generates

certain elements that will be

reflected in every slide in the

presentation—except for title

slides, which have their own

title master. Slide Master view

also has a small toolbar of its

own with two buttons: Slide

Miniature (produces a

miniature image of an actual

slide in the presentation,

which lets you see how your

changes to the master slide

affect it) and Close (takes

you back to whatever slide

you were viewing).

Step 3:

Building the Show