PowerPoint Ninja/Chapter 6

From KMWiki

Contents 1 The ten core technical knowledge items 2 Core Knowledge 1:Mandatory keyboard shortcuts to know and use 3 Core Knowledge 2: The Joy of the Right Click 4 Core Knowledge 3: How to efficiently move around a document 5 Core Knowledge 4: How to use the guidelines for layout control 6 Core Knowledge 5: How to use the format painter 7 Core Knowledge 6: How to copy an object from one slide to another and maintaining position 8 Core Knowledge 7: How to turn off snap to grid 9 How to turn off auto-formatting

The ten core technical knowledge items

There are ten things that comprise core technical knowledge for users of PowerPoint as a piece of software:

1. mandatory keyboard shortcuts to know and use
2. the joy of the right click
3. how to efficiently move around a document
4. how to use the guidelines for layout control
5. how to use the format painter
6. how to copy an object from one slide to another and maintain position
7. how to turn off snap to grid
8. how to turn off auto formatting
9. how to turn off auto fit to placeholder
   1. how to create a helper toolbar

Core Knowledge 1:Mandatory keyboard shortcuts to know and use

In many instances in PowerPoint doing things using your keyboard is much more efficient than using your mouse. To efficiently use PowerPoint, you need to know a series of key combinations that are common in all Windows programs, and a couple that are PowerPoint specific.

Before outlining the key combinations you must know, a word about your hands and their placement in relation to your keyboard. These comments are principally for those, like me, that whilst they type quickly, they are by no means touch typists in the traditional sense.

We all know that there are some special keys on the keyboard (like Control and Alt) which when pressed in combination with other keys make special things happen. You need to use these keys, and it follows that you need to have a considered strategy in relation to how you press these keys on you r keyboard, and how you press the other keys you need to commonly press in combination,

For example, my personal keyboard habits, are as follows:

• Left shift
• Ctrl
• Alt Pressed by left thumb, tucked under my left hand, the nail on the top of my thumb making contact with the shift key.
• Esc (which is located at the top left of my keyboard) Pressed with index finger on left hand.
• Delete
• Tab Ring finger on left hand (beside my little finger)
• Home, End, Page Up, Page Down, Pressed with index finger on my right hand
• Arrows Three middle fingers on my right hand, with the index finger pressing the up and down arrows, with the other fingers of the three resting on the left and right arrows.
• Common Ctrl-key combinations When pressing common 2-key keyboard combinations, I solely use my left hand. For example, to select (ctrl)-C for copy, I use my thumb to press and hold the Ctrl key, and the finger beside my thumb to press C.

This is the same for many of the other common windows key combinations that lurk helpfully at the bottom left hand corner of a typical keyboard. For example, that would include Ctrl-C for copy, Ctrl-Z for undo, Ctrl-S for save and Ctrl-X for cut. When selecting paste. Ctrl-V, I use my right hand to press V whilst holding the Ctrl key with my left hand thumb.

The point of the foregoing is that working with a keyboard and modern software is not just about knowing where the alphabetic keys are located – you need to work out your best technique for accessing the commonly used multi key combinations.

You must learn all of common multi key combinations. This is not the complete list of all of the keyboard short cuts that are available in PowerPoint - it is the subset that you must know. you should invest the time to consider your keyboard technique, and to learn these shortcuts. Begin to think of your keyboard more as more of a piano, rather than a computer – at the end of the day what you are doing in PowerPoint is essentially a creative exercise, so do be afraid of a light touch and the occasional flourish at the keyboard like the master pianist you are.

Function Key combination (keyboard shortcut) Remember by Copying things

• Copy selected text or object Ctrl-C C is for copy
• Delete (cut) selected text Ctrl-X X looks like the blade of open scissors
• Paste Ctrl-V V looks like the head of a down arrow. Pressing Ctrl-V drops the text at the point where the cursor is
• Undo Ctrl-Z Sadly, I cannot think of a mnemonic for this one – it just is Ctrl-Z.
• Redo Ctrl-Y Y is the letter before Z which is used for Undo
• Selecting text Shift-Ctrl-Arrows Hold down shift and Ctrl whilst using the arrow keys to highlight text by words, or click with the mouse on the end of the text to be selected. For example, Shift-End highlights to the end of the current line.

Formatting

• Bold (toggle on and off) Ctrl-B B for bold. Note that you do not have to highlight a word to make it bold. When you press Ctrl-B whatever word your cursor is currently in will become bold.
• Italic (toggle on and off) Ctrl-I I for italic. Note that you do not have to highlight a word to make it italic. When you press *Ctrl-I whatever word your cursor is currently in will become italic.
• Underline (toggle on and off) Ctrl-U U is for underline. Note that you do not have to highlight a word to make it underlined. When you press Ctrl-U whatever word your cursor is currently in will become underlined.

Select everything on a slide Ctrl-A A is for all

Turn the guidelines on or off Ctrl-G G is for guidelines

Moving around

• First slide Ctrl-Home Home is home!
• Last slide Ctrl-End End is for End
• Next Wrd Ctrl-Right Arrow
• Previous Word Ctrl-Left Arrow
• Finding text Ctrl-F F is for Find

Saving and printing

• Save current file Ctrl-S S is for Save
• Print current file Ctrl-P P is for Print

Core Knowledge 2: The Joy of the Right Click

When working with objects in PowerPoint you can often get access to the most useful commands that relate to what you are currently doing by selecting the object by right clicking on it. When you do this, a menu of commands which are contextually related to what you are doing are presented. In other words, when you right click on different types of objects you are presented with a different menu of options. density

For example, if you right click on a line, you are presented with a menu including options to edit the points of the line, to arrange the layers, or to group. If you right click on a text box, you get a menu with fonts, and bullet and numbering etc. If you right click on a graphic object, you are rpesented with a menu of options relevants for graphics, including a button to show the picture toolbar, arranging the layers, or grouping.

Experiment with right clicking on the different types of objects that you work with and become familiar with the context sensitive commands and buttons which are presented to help you.

Slide 6.1: There are a handful of keys you have to know, which are divided into four groups of functions.

Core Knowledge 3: How to efficiently move around a document

When editing a presentation on screen you will often be working from a print out of the document on which you have markings and edits. When working like this, the easiest and fastest way to move from the current slide, to the slide that you want to edit, is to use Ctrl-F (find) and look for a phrase of two or three words that appear on the slide you want to edit. For example, if the message text for the page you want to work on contains the words “Importantly, we need” then use that text as the text to find and the page will be located very quickly

This method is always more effective than page numbers because you never know how many slides have been added, deleted, or moved between the time that the presentation was last printed (that you are working from), and the version you are presently working with on screen. This technique works equally well in Word and other Office applications as well. When working with particularly long presentations, a technique I often use is to place a text box with easily searchable text (like AAA) at places to which I want to soon return.

For example, if I am working on a slide, and I know that I need to go and copy some information from another slide, or that there are edits I need to make to another slide that are appropriate to make before I continue, I create a small text box and type AAA into it on the current slide. I then go and make the edits on the other slides as necessary, and then when I want to return to where I was working, I use Ctr-F and look for AAA and then I am straight back to where I was. I then delete the text box, and move on with my work.

I regularly use this technique in Word, in particular, when working with long documents. In Word, you can accomplish the same thing with bookmarks, but for one or two it is much easier to type a unique piece of text than take the additional steps of creating and managing bookmarks.

Core Knowledge 4: How to use the guidelines for layout control

A key element of outstanding documents is that objects on the page, that is, lines, text, graphs etc, are properly aligned – they line up. There is nothing worse than being presented with a page where the objects almost line up, but are obviously slightly off. For many, this naturally occurs because they do not know that there is a quick and easy way to setup guides in PowerPoint to assist with your content page structure and alignment.

Pressing Ctrl-G turns the guides on, or off. When first pressed, you see the grid as a set of dotted crosshairs on your page, as in the picture below:

When you move an object near the guide, it snaps precisely in position. In this way, you can easily align objects. You can drag a guide to a new location simply by clicking on the guide and dragging to a new location. However, the real magic comes when you add additional guides to the page so that the structure of your page is evident. You add additional guidelines by Ctrl-clicking and dragging on an existing guide. When you do this, an additional guide is created that you may then freely move around and position.

You should always establish a series of guides for every presentation you create. The guides, at a minimum, should indicate your left and right margins, the top of the area for your message text, and a lower marker for content on the page.

Slide 6.2: Guidelines are a powerful way to assist in creating and obeying a page layout design for your document.

You can turn the guides off by pressing Ctrl-G. When you press Ctrl-G again, they are reinstated with the last settings. In this way, you can establish the guides, use them, and turn them off temporarily of they are interfering with your view of your work. You would then turn them back on when needed to ensure that the structure of your pages retains a consistent layout.

Core Knowledge 5: How to use the format painter

One of the most extremely useful, and least known, buttons on the PowerPoint (and Word) toolbars is the format painter – the paintbrush icon.

We all know that objects, like text, lines, boxes or shapes have attributes, or characteristics that we set using the menus and other options in the software. For text, those attributes would include font, size, color, bolding and italic among others. For a box, those attributes would include border line color, style and weight, box fill color and style, and all of the attributes of any text that is contained within the box.

What the format painter button does is enable you to make all of the attributes for one object (like text) the same as the existing attributes for a different piece of text. For example, imagine you had five text boxes on a page, and you had modified the attributes of one of them to be as you want them all. You had modified the font. You had modified the line spacing, and the spacing at the end of the paragraph. You had modified the justification, the font size, the color, and the bolding. To then easily transfer all of those settings to your other four text boxes you first select the object with the attributes that you want (by shift-clicking on it), then double click the format painter button, and then merrily click in turn each of the other objects.

Since you double clicked the format painter button in the toolbar, the cursor became a paintbrush, and will continue to be a format painter, applying all of the text attributes from the first text box to any text box that you cllick, until you press the escape key to turn off the format painting.

If you did not double click the format painter button, but clicked once, the format painter would only have one application, and then the cursor would return to the normal cursor.

Core Knowledge 6: How to copy an object from one slide to another and maintaining position

Sometimes you want to copy an object from one slide, and place it on another slide in an identical position. When you copy an object from one slide to another, it automatically inherits the same placement, and you do not need to worry about making sure it is in the right place.

Core Knowledge 7: How to turn off snap to grid

When you install PowerPoint there is a default range of settings you inherit covering a whole series of features and issues. Some of these defaults are very helpful. Some of them, however, frankly get in the way – and you should turn them off as you are establishing your working environment.

The first things you need to turn off is snap to grid. Snap to Grid does not provide the fine control that you will need as a PowerPoint ninja, and prohibits precise placement and control of your objects.

If you have ever wondered why you have not been able to move an object to a particular location, and it always seemed to jump a little too far, or stop a little too soon, that is because the default setting for snap to grid is on. Essentially, hidden to the user is a grid for every slide, and this setting ensures that you can only place objects on this hidden grid.

For novice users, this helps people line objects up using the grid. More advanced users, however, who are effectively using the guides, generally find this “helper” feature a pain. It can simply be turned off by selecting Draw, Snap to Grid. This button is a toggle, so that it will first appear as depressed in the button menu. When you click the Snap to Grid button it will turn the feature off.

Slide 6.3: Actual PowerPoint slide: make sure these two nasty helpers are turned off in your PowerPoint environment.

How to turn off auto-formatting

Auto-formatting is another ‘helper’ feature that needlessly gets in the way of advanced users.

For example; if you type a person’s name who uses a first initial like: B. Ann Smith, then press return to type the next line, most likely the letter C. shows up, and suddenly the alignment of the text has changed. This is because PowerPoint was watching what you typed and concluded that you were typing a list using letters as the ordering system. To “help” it decided to add indents for your text, change the B to an auto numbering system, and present you with a ‘C’ for your next entry your list

Similarly, when auto-formatting is on, if you start a line with an asterisk, it will become a bullet when you press return at the end of the line. Now, this may be what you want once in a while, maybe, but definitely not all the time. Clear advice: turn it off.

You can turn auto-formatting off by using Tools, Options, and then deselect “Auto-Format as you type” as in slide 6.2.

How to turn off auto-fit text to placeholder

The final “helper” feature to turn off is Auto-fit text to placeholder.

Again, this is a feature that is useful to novices but extremely annoying for ninjas. One of the fundamentals of structured presentations is consistent use of font in the same circumstances. For example, the body text for a presentation should always, always be the same font and size throughout the document.

Now, what this feature does is plain contrary to that fundamental principle.

What this feature does is that if you type more text than fits in the size of the current text box then PowerPoint automatically, and without asking first, reduces the point size of the text to ensure that the text fits inside the current text box. It makes the text fit within the text box by shrinking the size of the text!

This is both distracting, as the text becomes re-layed out in the text box, and annoying because you then have to reinstate the right font size for the text – removing the help!

It is easier for ninjas to understand that text does not wrap from text box to text box and then manage the size of the textbox, and the text within it, as is appropriate for the particular context and page. You can turn off this setting by using Tools Options and then deselect “Auto-fit text to placeholder” as in slide 6.2.

How to create a helper toolbar

The next thing that you need to do in relation to your PowerPoint environment is to create a custom toolbar to provide easy access to the strategic buttons that are otherwise hidden deep within menus and other toolbars.

The custom toolbar that you need to create looks as shown in slide 6.4. The buttons in the toolbar are in four groups, which are separated in the toolbar by vertical lines.

Group 1: Managing design

The design group has four buttons.

• Guidelines: The first button toggles the guidelines on and off (the same as Ctrl-G).
• Autoshapes: The second button is the autoshape button, which reveals a selection of the various shapes and drawing objects that are available within PowerPoint.
• Pick fill color: The third button is the pick fill color button, which uses an eye dropper icon. This button enables you to indicate a color on screen (perhaps in a picture or other imported object) and pick the color of the point of the screen that you click on as the current fill color for shading. This is useful when you want to create color schemes that use colors in corporate logos and the like.
• View Master Slide: The final button in the design group is the view master slide button, which displays the master slide and permits editing of that important slide. Remember, changes to font and layout here are inherited by the relevant text boxes throughout your presentation, and static objects, text, and drawings that you insert here are inherited by every slide unless you turn background objects off for that particular slide.

Group 2: Grouping objects

The Grouping Objects group has three buttons:

• Group: clicking this button will group the objects that have been selected together, so that you can move them as one entity, and preserve the spacing and arrangement between them.
• Ungroup: clicking this button breaks apart a group of objects into the objects themselves, so that you can move and change the objects, and modify the attributes. You are unable to move an object of a group relate to other objects in the group unless you first ungroup the group. Similarly, you are unable to change the size of an object in the group unless you first ungroup the group.
• Regroup: if you have had to ungroup a group of objects in order to modify one of the objects in the group, you can regroup the group by clicking one of the objects and pressing regroup.

Group 3: Managing objects in layers

The group of buttons for managing objects in layers has four buttons:

• Bring to front: clicking this button brings the selected object to the top layer. The object will then be fully visible, and may obscure objects below it which are placed underneath it.
• Send to back: clicking this button will send the selected object to the last layer. If there are any other objects placed in the same location as the selected object, then they will obscure the selected object where they cover it.
• Bring forward: clicking this button will bring the selected object forward one layer only. In this way, you can move an object from the back layer sequentially forward and then stop moving it forward when it is displayed or obscured as you want for your design.
• Send backward: clicking this button will send the selected object back one layer only. In this way, you can move an object from the front layer sequentially backward and then stop moving it backward when it is displayed or obscured as you want for your design.

Group Four: Managing alignment and distribution

The final group of buttons on the custom toolbar is for managing alignment and distribution of objects, and there are eight buttons. These are tremendously useful in creating effective charts, frameworks, and pages in your document.

• Align left: selecting several objects and then clicking this button will align the left edges of all of the objects that have been selected.
• Align middle: selecting several objects and then clicking this button will align the middles of all of the objects that have been selected.
• Align right: selecting several objects and then clicking this button will align the right edges of all of the objects that have been selected.
• Align top: selecting several objects and then clicking this button will align the top edges of all of the objects that have been selected.
• Align centers: selecting several objects and then clicking this button will align the centers of all of the objects that have been selected.
• Align bottoms: selecting several objects and then clicking this button will align the bottom edges of all of the objects that have been selected.
• Distribute vertically: an extremely valuable button - selecting several objects and then clicking this button will evenly distribute those objects vertically – making the vertical space between the objects exactly the same.
• Distribute horizontally: an extremely valuable button - selecting several objects and then clicking this button will evenly distribute those objects horizontally– making the horizontal space between the objects exactly the same.

To create your custom toolbar

1. right click on any grey space on an existing toolbar in PowerPoint.
2. from the menu, select “Customise… ”.
3. press the New button, provide the name for your new toolbar, and your new toolbar is created. At the moment it is blank, it has not buttons.
4. select the Commands tab and then click and drag the appropriate commands to your new toolbar. When you click and drag the button and the icon will be placed on your new toolbar. You navigate through all the commands by using the listing on the left hand side which reveals all of the commands in the right hand box for you to click and drag to your new toolbar.

Slide 6.4: Actual PowerPoint Slide: The custom toolbar brings easy access to the most valuable design and layout tools which can otherwise be buried and unused in the menus.

I suggest that you create vertical bars on your toolbar to separate the groups to make it easier to use. You create the vertical bars by right clicking on a button on your new toolbar where you want to create a group where that button is the first in the group. Select Begin a new group, and the vertical line will be inserted in your toolbar.

When you are finished, press OK to close the customise dialog box and complete the process. whilst we are speaking of toolbars, you should also ensure that the Drawing toolbar is always displayed. To display the drawing toolbar, se View->Toolbars, and make sure it is selected. You also the same menu (View->Toolbars) to reinstate your custom toolbar should you ever inadvertently turn it off. The name of your custom toolbar will be diplayed in the list of available toolbars.