Office 2011 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

Chapter 21. Putting On the Show

Building the outline and creating individual slides in PowerPoint are obviously necessary to produce a great presentation. But PowerPoint’s real talent lies in its ability to pull those images together into a running slideshow. Although good taste sometimes suffers as a result, PowerPoint gives you the tools to enrich your slide presentations with transitions, builds, video, music, sound effects, and voice narration. You can then rehearse your PowerPoint shows to work out the split-second timing. You can even turn your masterpieces into printouts or a website for the benefit of those who missed the presentation, or save your slideshows as QuickTime movies, then edit them again later (back in PowerPoint).

This chapter shows you how to harness these potent PowerPoint features.

Adding Movement

After you’ve created all your slides and put them in the proper order, the content part of your creation is done. Now it’s time to add slide transitions to supply sophisticated smoothness—or gee-whiz glitz—as you move from slide to slide. You can also add object builds—animations within a slide. Besides adding some visual excitement to your slideshow, transitions and builds can help you present your information more clearly, add drama, signal changes in topic, and—if you use them wisely—give your slideshow a much more professional, polished appearance.

Transitions

If you don’t add a transition, PowerPoint changes slides instantly—or cuts—from one slide to another. Besides ...