The PowerPoint window

The is the window you see when you start “PowerPoint” 2003 and XP version.

The first thing you notice is that “PowerPoint” has 2 windows, the “Application” window and the “Presentation” window.

The “Presentation” window opens whenever you start “PowerPoint”.

The “Presentation” window is where we start and edit our “Presentation”.

We can close the “Presentation” window without having to close the “Application” window , this allows us to open or close several “Presentations” without restarting the “Application”.

The “Application” window consists of the “Title bar”, “Menu bar”, the “Tasks Panel” (only 2003 and XP) and the “Status bar”.

The window contains the different “Presentation slides” that compose our “Presentation”.

The “Slides” are composed of different objects (“Text”, “Pictures”, “Animations”).

The “Title bar” is the blue bar at the top of our “Application”.

As with any Windows application, here too we find “Minimize”, “Maximize”, “Close” buttons in the upper right corner.

In the upper left corner, we find the “PowerPoint” icon, along with the “Application” title.

We have “Menu bar” under the title, where we find all the commands that we can use in “PowerPoint”. “File” (“File“), “Edit” (“Edit“), “View” (“View“), “Insert” (“Insert“), “Format” (“Format“), “Tools” (“Tools“), “Slide show” (“Slide Show“), “Window” (“Window“) and “Help”.

Clicking on one of these will display a submenu with more commands.

The “Commands” that are displayed in gray are not active at that time.

eg the “Paste” command can not be used without first using the “Copy” command.

“Commands” with a black arrow, also have a submenu themselves which we can see when we move our mouse pointer over the command.

“Commands” within ellipsis (…), open a dialog where we have to make choices or enter information.

The “Toolbars” are accessed the same way in all Windows applications.

Click on “View” in the menu bar and select “Toolbars” (“View” – “Toolbars“).

This gives us an overview of the “Toolbars” that we want to see or hide.

Those which are “ticked” are visible, the others are not:

By clicking on the name of the “Toolbar”, we can make it visible or invisible.

As in any Windows application, we can drag “Toolbars” to any position.

We can remove a “Toolbar” at any time by clicking the X at top right corner of the “Toolbar”.

The “Standard toolbar” in “PowerPoint” has many of the same “Commands” as in any Windows application, We find: ” New”, “Open”, “Save”, “Print”, “Cut”, “Copy”, “Paste”, etc. ..

Some of these buttons have a black downward pointing arrow on the right side. When we click it, it gives us a drop-down menu from which we can make a choice.

What is also useful is, when you hover over a button, the function of the button is displayed after a few seconds.

The “Formatting toolbar” includes “Font”, “Font size” and “Font color”.

In short, it is mainly used for adjusting the layout of our “Slides”.

All “Commands” in the “Menu bar” and “Commands” in the submenus have a letter that is underlined, eg it it the letter “I” in the “Insert” (Insert) function.

When we press the ‘Alt’ and the “I” key the keyboard, this function will be performed, this is called a “Shortcut”.

There are keyboard “Shortcuts” listed next to some commands, for example the “Copy” command can also be done by clicking ‘Ctrl’ + C key.

Clicking these buttons on our keyboards have the same effect as clicking the “Copy” button in the menu bar.

The Tasks Panel (Only 2003 and XP)

On the right side of our “Application” window we see the “Tasks Panel”.

The “Tasks Panel” is used for different functions.

We can open an existing “Presentation” and edit, we can create a new one, we can search for specific text, we can add “Clipart” etc. ..

Clicking on the arrow to the right in the “Tasks Panel”, gives us a whole lot of features from which we can choose.

The “Status bar” at the bottom of the application window, gives us information about the number of “Slides” that we currently have and which “Slide” we are currently editing.

Presentation View

When we work on a show, you’ll notice that we will switch between the different views in “PowerPoint” many times.

To change the “View” we click the “Display button” on the bottom left of the window.

We can also choose “View” (“View“) from the “Menu bar” where we find all the options.

In the next lesson we will discuss these views in more detail.

When we start a new “Presentation”, it will open in “Normal” view for 2003, XP and 2000.

For the ’97 version this will show the “Slides”.

In the XP and 2003 versions we find a panel on the left of the “Presentation” window that gives us the option to “View” the “Presentation” overview as “Slides” (“Slides“) and “Outline”(“Outline“).

In the 2000 version, it was just “Outline” (“Outline“).

In 2000, 2003 and XP versions, we also have “Notes Page” (“Notes Page“) picture on the “Presentation” window.

But again, we will see all these options in a later lesson.

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