Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Office 2003 in 24 Hours

By Greg Perry

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • We Want to Hear from You!
  • Introduction
  • Who Should Read This Book?
  • What This Book Does for You
  • Can This Book Really Teach Office 2003 in 24 Hours?
  • Conventions Used in This Book
  • Part I. Working with Office 2003
  • Hour 1. Getting Acquainted with Office 2003
  • Part II. Processing with Word 2003
  • Hour 2. Welcome to Word 2003
  • Hour 3. Formatting with Word 2003
  • Hour 4. Managing Documents and Customizing Word 2003
  • Hour 5. Advanced Word 2003
  • Part III. Computing with Excel 2003
  • Hour 6. Understanding Excel 2003 Workbooks
  • Hour 7. Restructuring and Editing Excel 2003 Worksheets
  • Hour 8. Using Excel 2003
  • Hour 9. Formatting Worksheets to Look Great
  • Hour 10. Charting with Excel 2003
  • Part IV. Presenting with Flair
  • Hour 11. PowerPoint 2003 Presentations
  • Hour 12. Editing and Arranging Your Presentations
  • Hour 13. PowerPoint 2003 Advanced Features
  • Hour 14. Animating Your Presentations
    • Using PowerPoint's Slide Show
    • Voice Narration
    • To Do: Use Action Buttons
    • Introducing Animation Schemes
    • Summary
    • Q&A
  • Part V. Organizing with Outlook 2003
  • Hour 15. Communicating with Outlook 2003
  • Hour 16. Planning and Scheduling with Outlook 2003
  • Part VI. Tracking with Access 2003
  • Hour 17. Access 2003 Basics
  • Hour 18. Entering and Displaying Access 2003 Data
  • Hour 19. Retrieving Your Data
  • Hour 20. Reporting with Access 2003
  • Part VII. Combining Office 2003 and the Internet
  • Hour 21. Office 2003 and the Internet
  • Hour 22. Creating Web Content with Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint
  • Part VIII. Publishing Eye-Catching Documents
  • Hour 23. Publishing with Flair Using Publisher 2003
  • Hour 24. Adding Art to Your Publications
  • Part IX. Appendixes
  • Appendix B. Business Contact Manager and Office Extras
  • Part X. Bonus Hours
  • Hour 25. Using FrontPage 2003 for Web Page Design and Creation
  • Hour 26. Managing Your Web with FrontPage

Using PowerPoint's Slide Show

One of the best ways to see the overall effect of your presentation is to run a simple slide show; that is, walk through your presentation displaying your slides in sequence, moving from one slide to another, transitioning (changing) from one slide to the next without any special effects, but automating the moving at a preset timing that you can control.

An automated slide show is useful for creating self-running demonstrations, product presentations, and conference information distribution. PowerPoint screens use the term kiosk to describe the idea of a self-running presentation. Although you can control each and every detail of a self-running slide show, start with the basics and then expand your skills: add a timer to the presentation to control the amount of time each slide is displayed.

To Do: Time Transitions

The Slide Transition task pane is the easiest place to specify slide transition details such as the timing required before the next slide in a presentation appears. Select Slide Show, Slide Transition to display the Slide Transition task pane. Figure 14.1 shows the Slide Transition task pane that appears.

Figure 14.1 Select the transition effect and timing.

Follow these steps to automate the presentation:

1. Towards the bottom of the task pane, you will find an Advance Slide section. Uncheck the option labeled On Mouse Click. Doing so ensures that the presentation speed will not be affected by mouse clicks; the presentation will be fully automated to change slides at a preset time interval.
2. Check the option labeled Automatically After (if it is not already checked).
3. Adjust the value of the minutes and seconds box to 3 seconds (displayed as 00:03).
4. Click the Apply to All Slides button so PowerPoint does not apply the timed transition just to the current slide. Leave all other values in the task pane alone for now. You have just informed PowerPoint that you want your slide show to run in a kiosk-style with each slide transitioning to the next every 3 seconds.
5. Start the slide show by clicking the Slide Transition task pane's Slide Show button or by pressing F5. The presentation begins. Each slide displays for 3 seconds before the next slide appears. When the final slide displays, PowerPoint displays a blank screen that you can click to exit and return to PowerPoint. During the presentation, click the mouse button and notice that the click has no effect on the presentation's speed. Ordinarily, a mouse click sends the presentation to the next slide.
6. Press Esc to stop the presentation and redisplay your presentation.

Just as Hollywood sometimes fades from one scene to the next, PowerPoint provides some interesting transitional effects that can make your slide transitions more interesting, as you'll learn next.

Transition Effects

If you want more control over the transition, display the first slide in the presentation and select Slide Show, Slide Transition to display the Slide Transition task pane (if it is not still showing from the previous section). The top portion of the task pane determines how your slides can transition from one to the next.

You can control the way an individual slide transitions or the way all slides in your presentation transition. For example, to make the first slide transition to the second by dissolving from the first to the second, click the Dissolve option under the task pane's section labeled Apply to Selected Slides. PowerPoint shows you what the dissolve will look like by dissolving the current slide (as long as the box labeled AutoPreview is checked at the bottom of the task pane). Figure 14.2 shows the dissolve in progress.

Figure 14.2 You can dissolve from one slide to the next.

For an even more interesting effect, select a sound as well as a transition. PowerPoint will play the sound, such as applause, when that slide transitions. Some sounds are shorter than the dissolve effect. To repeat the sound until the next sound begins (so that the sound plays during the entire slide's appearance), click the option labeled Loop Until Next Sound.

For both sounds as well as transitions, if you don't click the Apply to All Slides button at the bottom of the task pane, PowerPoint applies the transition and sound only to the current slide.

If you want to use a uniform transition for all slides, click the Apply to All Slides button.

Setting Up Shows

PowerPoint provides a Set Up Show dialog box, shown in Figure 14.3, that you display from the Slide Show, Set Up Show menu option. The Set Up Show dialog box lets you control several features of your presentation and is useful whether or not you want to present an automated slide show.

Figure 14.3 The Set Up Show dialog box helps you manage your slide show.

Table 14.1 explains the various options of the Set Up Show dialog box.

Table 14.1. Set Up Show Dialog Box Options

Rehearsing Your Slide Show

If you want your slides to transition at various speeds, you can manually adjust the speed one slide at a time. Some slides might require more time to read than others, and you'll want such slides to remain on the screen longer than others. One of the easiest ways to adjust the timing between slides is to select Slide Show, Rehearse Timings.

As soon as you select the Rehearse Timings option, PowerPoint begins the slide show. As each slide appears (with whatever transition you've applied to that slide's appearance), keep the slide on the screen as long as you think it should remain and then click Next to move to the next slide. Keep clicking through the presentation at the speed you want PowerPoint to move. As you click, PowerPoint records the timing of each slide. At the end of the presentation rehearsal, PowerPoint displays a message box with the total amount of time that the presentation requires. You can save the timings or re-run the rehearsal to specify different timings.

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