Creating PowerPoint Slide Shows

"How to" Guideline series is coordinated by Helen Mongan-Rallis of the Education Department at the University of Minnesota Duluth. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions to improve these guidelines please e-mail hrallis@d.umn.edu.

Creating PowerPoint Slide Shows

Guidelines Developed by Helen Rallis

You can use the animation features within Power Point to create a slide show (like showing old fashioned slides, only you can add all sorts of other special effects and you don't have to carry around a tray of slides!). These guidelines will guide you to perform the following:

Overview of topics:

Set up the slides

Develop the slide show (animations)

Create Custom Slide Shows

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Setting up the slides:

Plan out your entire slide show (what slides to include, sequencing, and if there is to be any text on the slides).

Create a series of blank slides:

Start by creating one blank slide.

Then go into the slide sorter view (this shows you thumbnails of all of your slides. Since you only have one slide -- the blank one you just created -- that's all that will show up).

In the slide sorter view, click once on the slide (it will show you have selected it by showing a dark line around the edge of the slide).

Go up the the Edit menu and select Duplicate (shortcut = apple D on a Mac, control D on a Windows machine). This will add a new blank page. Repeat this to create the desired number of slides that you want in your slide show (you can always add or delete these later if you create the wrong number).

Insert the photographs you want for your slide show onto the Power Point pages you have created. Usually it's best to have one photograph per page (but it's up to you what effect you want to have here). To insert the photographs there are a couple of different ways to do this:

Copy and Paste:

Open the photograph in Photoshop or other image editing software.

Save it as a gif or jpeg at a resolution of 72 ppi.

Select the area of the photograph you want to appear on the slide (this may be the entire photograph or just part of it).

Copy the image (usually Edit--> Copy)

Switch to PowerPoint, and open the page on which you wish to insert the photograph.

Paste the image onto the page (Edit--> Paste)

Insert picture from file:

Have the blank PowerPoint open

From the Insert menu, select Picture > From file. Navigate to where to saved the picture, and click the Insert button.

Adjust picture size to fit the slide. Be sure not to resize it too large so that the quality of the picture is compromised and it is no longer clear. You may find that you need to go back to the original high quality image (the one that you saved the first time you took or scanned the picture). To resize the photo you can:

Resize it Photoshop before inserting it into the slide or

Resize it once you have inserted it by holding the shift key (to maintain the slide proportions) and dragging outwards on one of the corner handlebars or

Resize it once you have inserted it by clicking on the picture so that the picture tool bar appears. Then click on the Format Picture button on the picture tool bar.

This will bring up a the Format Picture dialog box. Select the Size tab and make changes to the image by making choices from the different options available.

Change background color: Once you have created all the slides, experiment with different colored backgrounds or slide designs so that the pictures contrast with the slide background color. You can have different colored backgrounds for each slide if this is not distracting to the viewer. Typically it is better (and easier) to have the background the same.

Rearrange slide order: You can rearrange the order of the slides by going into the slide sorter. To move a slide from one position to another, click on it once, then drag it to the desired position and release the mouse.

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Develop the slide show

Create Slide Transitions. PowerPoint provides a variety of animation effects that you can use when moving from one slide to another.

From the menu --> Select slide transition. This will bring up the slide transition dialog box:

1. Select the desired transition from the pull down menu under the Effect box.
   Select transition speed (slow, medium, or fast).
   Under the Advance box select how the transitions will be applied (automatically after the number of seconds that you type into the box), or on mouse click, or both [Note:It's usually best to select both, so that during the presentation you have the option of advancing the slides quicker than you had originally intended if you want to speed things up].
   Under the Sound box you can select a sound to be played during the slide transition (Tip: only choose this if the sound adds to people's understanding of the slide. Sounds can be very annoying and can distract people from the point that you are trying to make].
   Apply the selected effect: You can choose to do this just to the one slide that you have on the screen now (click the Apply button), or to the entire presentation (click the Apply to all button). If the slides will be looping automatically and are all similar, you can apply the same effects to all slides (much easier this way!).
   Other options for setting the timing of slides
   If you would like to have some slides show for longer periods of time to give the viewers a chance to read text or to examine a complicated diagram, then you will need to set the timing for each slide separately. It is best to do this when you are in the slide sorter view where you can see thumbnails (miniatures) of each slide.
   From slide sorter view.
   To set the timing for one or more selected slides, select the slide (or slides --> hold the shift key so you can select more than one slide at a time) --> then click on the slide transition icon next to where it says no transition or where it says the name of the transition you selected (e.g. box in) above the row of slides --> this causes the Slide Transition dialog box appears and you can enter in the number of seconds you want the slide(s) to appear on the screen (as you did above) or you can use the Rehearse Timings option (see below).
   Rehearse timings. This allows you to set the timings for each individual slide.
   From the Slide Show menu bar --> select Rehearse Timings
   As soon as you select rehearse timings first slide will appear along with a timer counting seconds (in the bottom right corner of the screen). The counter will continue to count until you click the right arrow, space bar, or mouse. Once you click, it moves to the next slide and starts the counter for the next slide.
   When you finish creating the settings for each slide, a box pops up and lets you choose to accept the timings or start again.
   (NOTE: If you want to change the timing for only one or a few slides (and keep all the rest the same), you need not go through the whole rehearsal of timings again. Instead, view the slides the slide sorter. The time you have set for each appears below and to the left of each slide. To change the time, click on the slide transition icon, and in the dialog box manually change the number of seconds).
   Record narration: This allows you to set the timings for each slide and at the same time record any comments you want to make to go along with the slide (be sure to check that you microphone is working and that it is selected in the Control Panel under "sound.").
   Design tips:
   Make the content is the focus of your presentation and not the special effects (e.g. animations, transitions, sounds).
   Use special effects only if needed to emphasize a point (by having the audience focus on it) and to enhance your objectives.
   Pacing is important. Give audience sufficient time to understand (and, if applicable, read) what it on the slide. Rehearse the timings before you give the presentation.

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   Creating Custom Slide Shows
   Custom shows are like a presentation within a presentation. They can be used when you want to depart from the main content of your presentation to:
   illustrate different aspects of the main presentation in more depth if your audience should be interested in these.
   show slightly different versions of an issue (for example: if you are going to give the same basic presentation to two slightly different groups. For the group from Duluth you want to show them examples that come from Duluth; for the Hibbing group your examples come from Hibbing).

To access your custom slide shows you create an agenda slide. An agenda slide allows you to jump to the custom slide show and then return automatically to the agenda slide for you to continue with the rest of your (regular) presentation.

The agenda slide looks and acts very much like a web page. It lists the different parts of you presentation (like an index or home page on the Internet). From this agenda slide you can create hyperlinks that jump to a different section of your presentation and then return you automatically to the agenda slide so you can move on to the next item.

In the example on the right, the agenda slide links to three different custom shows (each consisting of 3 slides). At the end of each of these shows the presentation is set to return back to the agenda slides.

Storyboard showing custom shows

• Click the OK button.
  Repeat this step to create your other custom shows.
  Set the timing for the slides shows: If you want the slides to play automatically without you having to click the mouse to advance each one you need to set the number of seconds each slide will be displayed before advancing to the next. To do this:
  If you want to set the timing to be the same for all the slides in the custom shows: Go to the slide sorter view so that you can see all of the slides laid out in a storyboard type of format. Click on the first slide in the custom show --> hold down the shift key and click one at a time on each of the other slides in the custom show(s) (making sure you keep holding down the shift key). This will select all of these slides at once.
  Release the shift key. Go up to the menu --> select Slide Show --> from the pull down menu select Slide Transition. This will bring up the slide transition dialog box.
  Under the section where it says Advance --> select the box that says automatically after --> then type in the number of seconds for which you would like the slide to display.
  Click on the button that says Apply. In the slide sorter view you will see that the number of seconds appears beneath each slide.
  [DO NOT select the Apply to all button because this will animate all the slides in your whole presentation (including the agenda slide - and it is important that the agenda slide is NOT animated)].
  Create hyperlinks from your agenda slide to the custom shows. To do this:
  Highlight the words that you want to link (from the agenda list) --> from the Slide Show menu --> select Action Settings. This will bring up the Action settings dialog box.
  Under the Action on Click section, select the Hyperlink to button and choose Custom show from the list that appears.
  This will show a list of all of the custom shows that you have created. Select Hyperlink to --> Custom Shows --> from the list that appears (of the custom shows you created), select the show to which you want to link.

If you want to return automatically to the agenda slide after the last slide of the custom show, select the Show and Return check box. [This is very important as this will cause the show to return automatically to the agenda slide after the last slide in your show has finished]

• Click the OK button.
  Repeat each of the above steps for each item on the agenda slide.
  To show your custom shows: In the slide show view, when you show the agenda slide, the list of slide shows will appear as hyperlinks (i.e. they will be underlined). When you click on any of of the shows, it will link to the corresponding custom show and loop through each of the slides within the show, then return to the agenda slide (provided that you remembered to select the "show and return" box!). You can then select the next custom show.
  Design tip for custom slide shows: have all the slides for your custom slide show(s) be at the end of your regular presentation (so the custom slides appear like pages in the appendix of a book, and are accessed only if you choose to link to them

 

Design tip for custom slide shows: have all the slides for your custom slide show(s) be at the end of your regular presentation (so the custom slides appear like pages in the appendix of a book, and are accessed only if you choose to link to them).