PowerPoint 2007: The Missing Manual

Chapter 9. Putting Images and Documents on Slides

PowerPoint would have disappeared long ago if all you could do with it was slap bullet points on a screen. Drawings, photographs, and other pictures add meaning, sophistication, and polish to your slideshow. They also serve as powerful visual cues to help your audience understand a point, or recall something you’ve previously said. They can also tie a slideshow together (when you use similar design elements on each slide), and even help with branding (think logo in the corner of every single slide).

It’s not surprising, then, that PowerPoint lets you add all manner of visual elements to your slides. You can use everything from simple graphics you draw right on a slide, to photographs and images created in another program, to the free clip art that came with PowerPoint. Once you’ve got the graphic on your slide, you can move it around and even modify its appearance.

And if still pictures aren’t enough, you can put charts, spreadsheets, animated clips, and documents created in another program—such as Excel or Word—right on your slide and edit them live in PowerPoint.

Drawing on Slides

The Internet’s filled with photos and art you can use in presentations but sometimes you need a picture that’s so specific you need to sketch it yourself. Imagine you’re a defense attorney building a PowerPoint slideshow to present at trial, and you want to describe the route your client took from his desk to the bank vault. You can ...