Starting a New Presentation

When You First Start the Program

With the exception of PowerPoint 2001, the following dialog box will be displayed when you first start PowerPoint. The choices are explained below.

When You Select FileNew After the Program Has Been Started

PowerPoint 97/98

Whenever you press the <New> button, or select FileNew, the following dialog box will be displayed. The “Blank Presentation” option under the General tab is the same “Blank Presentation” noted in the dialog box above (and explained below). Clicking on the other tabs allows you to access PowerPoint Wizards and templates (again, explained below). Note the preview box. By clicking once on the icons that appear under the various tabs, you will see a preview of that presentation in the Preview box.

PowerPoint 2000

When you press the <New> button, or select FileNew, the New Slide/Choose an AutoLayout dialog box will be displayed. This will be discussed in a later section.

PowerPoint Wizards

The Microsoft “company line”: Wizards are PowerPoint’s way of making it easy to quickly and efficiently create professional-looking presentations. Wizards are a guided approach to creating a presentation. Just answer the questions as they appear on the screen and the “wizard” will help you develop your ideas and design your presentation. In My Humble Opinion: Forget them, don't worry about them, ignore them, they are not necessary.

AutoContent Wizard

This wizard starts with a title slide and then helps you choose from a selection of presentation categories (selling a product, presenting an idea, etc.). Once you have a title and a subject, PowerPoint makes an outline for you to follow based on how you answered the wizard’s prompts. Despite what the “Tip for New Users” says in the Open dialog boxes pictures above, this is NOT the easiest nor the best way to create a new presentation! Once you have answered the questions, you will be required to type your own text over the placeholder text in the presentation created for you. You will then still have to develop you own “look and feel”. By the time you have done all this, you will have exerted more effort than if you had started with a blank presentation and entered your own ideas from the outset. Again, my humble opinion is to not follow the Microsoft “company line”. Do NOT pick this Wizard when you start a new presentation! Basically, I think you are too intelligent to need this kind of help.

The Other Choices in the Dialog Box

Template

This button allows you to select the master template upon which your presentation will be created, another aspect of the “look and feel” of a presentation. Again, following the same logic expounded above, you should ignore the Microsoft “company line” and instead concentrate on the content first, then concern yourself with the “look and feel”. Consequently, you should NOT start with this button. AFTER you have created your content, you will be able to select a template as part of using the “Pick a Look Wizard” (it used to be called this in an earlier version of PowerPoint, it no longer is called this but I still like the name).

Blank Presentation

Guess what, this is where you will start! To summarize the steps to making a good presentation, the recommended order is as follows:

• Start PowerPoint
• select <Blank Presentation>
• use the Outline View/Pane to create the textual content of your presentation
• use the Slide View/Pane to add graphics, charts, etc.
• select FormatApply Design to create the “look and feel” of your presentation
• switch to Slide Show View to see how it looks
• make any necessary changes to refine your presentation
  • use the Outline View to move text around on your slides or to edit it
  • use the Slide Sorter view to rearrange slides and/or to add special effects
  • change templates, backgrounds, etc.
• switch to Slide Show View to see how it looks

We will expand on these ideas as we continue discussing PowerPoint.

Open an Existing Presentation

If you wish to return to continue working on a presentation started previously, select this choice.

PowerPoint 2001

When you first start any Office 2001 program, the first thing you see is the Project Gallery window. The Project Gallery allows you to access any Office document from any Office program. For example, you could open a Word document even though you have started Excel. The [Category] list along the left side of the Gallery displays the documents and templates that you have available to you on the right side of the window (the display area). 

If you do not want the Project Gallery to appear when you start up one of the Office programs, you can turn it off by click the <Do not show at startup> check box at the bottom of the window. You make this selection for each program, so it is possible to have the Gallery show when you start up one program but not another. You can also turn it on or off by choosing EditPreferences.

Even if turned off, the Gallery is always available to you in all Office programs at any time. 
Choose FileProject Gallery (Cmd+Shift+P) to display if and when needed.

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Copyright © 2003
last updated August 13, 2003