PowerPoint 2016 For Dummies (2016)

Part I

Getting Started with PowerPoint 2016

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In this part …

Get a bird’s-eye view of PowerPoint 2016 and what you can do with it.

Find out how to edit the content on PowerPoint slides, from the text itself to text objects to other types of objects, such as clip art pictures or drawn shapes.

Understand how to work in Outline View so you can focus on your presentation’s main points and subpoints without worrying about appearance.

Learn to proof your presentation with PowerPoint and avoid embarrassing mistakes.

Discover how to create speaker notes to help you get through your presentation.

Know how to finish the final preparations by printing copies of your slides, notes, and handouts, as well as how to set up a projector and actually deliver your presentation.

Chapter 5

Don’t Forget Your Notes!

In This Chapter

Creating speaker notes to get you through your presentation

Adjusting the notes page to make long notes fit

Adding a new slide from Notes Page View

Printing your notes pages

Ever had the fear — or maybe the actual experience — of showing a beautiful slide, complete with snappy text and perhaps an exquisite chart, and suddenly forgetting why you included the slide in the first place? You stumble for words. “Well, as you can see, this is a beautiful chart, and, uh, this slide makes the irrefutable point that, uh, well, I’m not sure — are there any questions?”

Fear not! One of the slickest features in PowerPoint 2016 is its capability to create speaker notes to help you get through your presentation. You can make these notes as complete or as sketchy as you want or need. You can write a complete script for your presentation or just jot down a few key points to refresh your memory.

The best part about speaker notes is that you’re the only one who sees them. They don’t actually show up on your slides for all the world to see. Instead, notes pages are displayed separately on your computer’s monitor but not displayed by the projector. And, you can print your notes pages so that you can have them available as a handy reference during your presentation.

Don’t you think that it’s about time for a short chapter? Although notes pages are one of the slickest features in PowerPoint, creating notes pages isn’t all that complicated — hence the brevity of this chapter.

Understanding Notes

Notes are like an adjunct attachment to your slides. They don’t appear on the slides themselves but are displayed separately. Each slide in your presentation has its own page of notes.

Notes are usually hidden at the bottom of the screen in a tiny Notes pane that’s just large enough to display a line or two of text. You can recognize the Notes pane because it initially contains the words “Click to add notes.” To work with notes, you should first enlarge the Notes pane to give yourself some room to work. For more information, see the section “Adding Notes to a Slide,” later in this chapter.

PowerPoint also has a separate view designed for working with notes pages, called (you guessed it) Notes Page View. To call up Notes Page View, choose the View tab on the Ribbon and then click the Notes Page button found in the Presentation Views group (this button is shown in the margin). Each Notes Page consists of a reduced version of the slide and an area for notes, as shown in Figure 5-1.

Figure 5-1: Notes Page View lets you see your notes.

Depending on the size of your monitor, these notes are too small to see or work with in Notes Page View unless you increase the zoom setting. But on smaller monitors, you can zoom in to see your work.

Unfortunately, no keyboard shortcut is available to switch directly to Notes Page View. Earlier versions of PowerPoint included a button for this alongside the other view buttons in the lower-right corner of the screen. But for some mysterious reason, Microsoft decided to omit this button in recent versions of PowerPoint. So the only way to get to Notes Page View now is to use the Ribbon’s Notes Page button.

Adding Notes to a Slide

To add notes to a slide, as shown in Figure 5-2, follow this procedure:

Figure 5-2: A slide with notes.

1. In Normal View, move to the slide to which you want to add notes.

2. Click and drag the Notes pane border, if necessary, to bring the notes text into view.

3. Click the notes text object, where it reads Click to add notes.

4. Type away.

The text that you type appears in the notes area. As you create your notes, you can use any of the PowerPoint standard word-processing features, such as Cut, Copy, and Paste. Press Enter to create new paragraphs.

Note that there is also a Notes button in the status bar at the bottom of the PowerPoint screen. You can click this button to hide or reveal notes.

Adding an Extra Notes Page for a Slide

PowerPoint doesn’t provide a way to add more than one page of notes for each slide. However, these steps show you a trick that accomplishes essentially the same thing:

1. Create a duplicate slide immediately following the slide that requires two pages of notes.

To duplicate the slide, move to the slide that you want to duplicate in Normal View and press Ctrl+D to duplicate the slide.

2. Click the Notes Page button in the Presentation Views group of the View tab.

The Notes Page for the new duplicate slide appears.

3. Delete the slide object at the top of the duplicate notes page.

To do so, click the slide object at the top of the page and press Delete.

4. Extend the notes area up so that it fills the page.

To extend the notes area, just drag the top-center love handle of the notes area up.

5. Type the additional notes for the preceding slide on this new notes page.

Add a heading, such as “Continued from slide 23,” at the top of the text to help you remember that this portion is a continuation of notes from the preceding slide.

6. Return to Normal View.

Click the Normal button in the Presentation Views group of the View tab.

7. Open the Slide Show tab on the Ribbon and then click the Hide Slide button in the Set Up group.

The Hide Slide button hides the slide, which means that it isn’t included in an onscreen slide show.

The result of this trick is that you now have two pages of notes for a single slide, and the second notes page doesn’t have an image of the slide on it and is not included in your slide show.

If you’re printing overhead transparencies, you might want to deselect the Print Hidden Slides check box in the Print dialog box. This way, the hidden slide isn’t printed. Be sure to select the check box when you print the notes pages, though. Otherwise, the notes page for the hidden slide isn’t printed either — and the reason you created the hidden slide in the first place was to print a notes page for it!

Think twice before creating a second page of notes for a slide. Do you really have that much to say about a single slide? Maybe the slide contains too much to begin with and should be split into two slides.

Adding a New Slide from Notes Page View

If you’re working in Notes Page View and realize that you want to create a new slide, you don’t have to return to Normal View. Just click the Add Slide button in the Slides group on the Home tab to add the new slide. Or press Ctrl+M.

If you want to work on the slide’s appearance or contents, however, you must switch back to Normal View. You can’t modify a slide’s appearance or contents from Notes Page View.

Printing Notes Pages

If you don’t have a computer that can show your slides on a projector and your notes on a separate monitor, you can always print your notes on paper and then use the printed notes while you give your presentation. These steps show you how to print your notes:

1. Choose the Print command from the File tab.

The Print page appears in Backstage view.

2. In the second selection box under Settings, choose Notes Pages.

3. Make sure that the Print Hidden Slides check box is selected if you want to print notes pages for hidden slides.

The Print Hidden Slides check box is located on the first selection box under Settings. This check box is dimmed if the presentation doesn’t have any hidden slides.

4. Click OK or press Enter.

You can find more information about printing in Chapter 6.

Displaying Notes on a Separate Monitor

As you discover in the next chapter, PowerPoint can display your presentation in a special mode called Presenter View, which displays the slides on a projector and helpful information that includes your notes on your computer’s main monitor. As shown in Figure 5-3, Presenter View shows the main slide on the left and a thumbnail of the next slide on the right, with your notes immediately below the next slide preview. To activate this view, simply select the Use Presenter View option in the Monitors group on the Slide Show tab.

Figure 5-3: Speaker View shows you your notes during a slide show.