Microsoft® Office 2008 for Mac® Bible

Chapter 20. Building Presentations

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Presentation planning tips

• Building a presentation based on an outline

• Adding all kinds of content to your slides

• Adding and deleting slides

• Working with slide masters

What goes into a typical presentation, you might wonder? Blood, sweat, and tears might be the common answer, but with a little help from PowerPoint, the quantities of each are more than manageable. You might even be able to build PowerPoint presentations without breaking a sweat at all. The process is quite painless and, I daresay, can even be easy and enjoyable. Of course, good advance planning can really help speed your work along.

The goal of any presentation is to get your point across, whether you're speaking to one person or thousands. PowerPoint can help you make your point through the use of text, graphics, movies, and sound. Your presentation may require just a few slides, or many slides, but no matter what elements you place in a slide, it still has to communicate your message effectively. The starting point of any presentation is deciding upon the message. After you've figured out what you're trying to convey, you can start building your presentation.

A typical slide's content is controlled by its layout, whether you use a preset layout or design your own. You control what information each slide contains and what format the information takes, such as text, a video clip, a sound clip, or a picture. In this chapter, you learn how to add content, assign layouts and ...