CD PowerPoint slide show
For those of you who have a computer with a recordable CD-ROM drive, this feature is an ideal way to carry a slide show to a remote location.  CDs are more reliable than floppy disks and most computers now come equipped with a CD-ROM drive.  You should use CD-R recordable discs rather than CD-RW rewritable discs because many CD-ROM drives will not read rewritable discs.  To be on the safe side, it’s always a good idea to take backups of your presentation on floppy disks.

Customize PowerPoint 97/2000
There are numerous options for inserting, playing, and customizing movies in your PowerPoint 97/2000 presentations. A variety of movie file formats are supported, including .mpeg and .mpg, plus animated GIFs.  To insert a clip, first select the host slide and click on Insert.  Next, select "Movies and Sounds," click on "Movie from File" (or "Movie from Gallery"), and find and choose the source file.  Click Yes to play it automatically when the slide appears or No if you want the movie to play only if you explicitly click on it when your slide show is running.

Draw over a photo
If you have a need to use a photograph in one of your slides and want to draw circles to highlight certain points in this photo during the presentation, choose Slide Show, Set Up Show. When the Set Up Show dialog box opens, select the check box labeled Presented By A Speaker (Full Screen), then click OK to close the dialog box and record your selections.  Choose Slide Show, View Show to open your slide in full-screen view.  Click the button in the lower-left corner of the screen and choose Pen.  Now you can use the mouse to draw on your photograph.  The default pen color is black.  If this doesn't work well with your photo, you can change the color.  Just click the button again, choose Pointer Options, Pen Color, and select a new color from the Color submenu.  You can now draw using the new color. 

Spacing objects
To make sure numerous objects are evenly spaced on a slide, open your slide and choose View, Ruler.  If you want all your objects one inch apart, grab the first one and move it so the top edge of the vertical ruler cursor is at 1 and the left edge of the horizontal ruler cursor is at 1.  Now grab the second object and move it so the top vertical cursor is still at 1; but, the left horizontal cursor is one inch beyond the first one.  Now repeat this procedure for all of your objects. 

Text effects for slides
There are times when you want to have all the text appear in the same way throughout a slide show.  For example, you may opt to use the typewriter animation effect for your presentation.  An easy way to program the same action setting for text in all of your slides is to set them all at once in Slide Sorter view.  Choose View, Slide Sorter.  When Slide Sorter opens, right-click any slide and choose Preset Text Animation.  Now select the type of animation you want to use and run the slide show to view the effect.  You can animate only subtitles, bullets, etc.   You can not animate text in a text box. 

Transparent objects
If you have a ClipArt picture on a PowerPoint slide and want to draw a circle over it and still have the picture show through, open a blank slide and choose Insert, Picture, ClipArt.   Now insert the picture and then close the Insert ClipArt dialog box.  Next click the Oval tool in the Drawing toolbar and draw your circle.  Move the circle over the drawing to obtain the desired size.  Right-click the circle and choose Format AutoShape.   When the Format AutoShape dialog box opens, click the Colors and Lines tab.  Under "Fill," click the arrow at the right side of the "Color" list box and select a color.  Next select the check box labeled ""Semitransparent” and click OK.  Your ClipArt picture will now show through the circle.

Time Clue
If you find yourself running over time on your PowerPoint presentations and need a method to keep you on schedule, open your slide show and navigate to the first briefing slide.  Click the Oval button in the Drawing toolbar and draw a small circle.  Color and size and then move the circle to the lower-right corner of the slide.  Right-click the new circle and choose Custom Animation.  When the Custom Animation dialog box opens, click the Effects tab.  Now, under Entry Animation And Sound, click the arrow at the right side of the first list box and select Flash Once, Fast from the list.  Click the Timing tab, select the radio buttons labeled Animate and Automatically.  Enter the time interval you want (30 seconds) and then click OK to close the dialog box and save your settings.  Henceforth the circle will flash when the 30 seconds has elapsed. 

Intermission slide
If you would like some kind of animated slide show before the presentation begins and again at intermission, run PowerPoint and open a blank slide.  Choose Insert, Picture, ClipArt and select a cartoon picture.  For this example, it will be of a woman.  At this point, insert a camera image from one of your ClipArt discs.  Next locate a cartoon of the sun in the Microsoft Office ClipArt Gallery and place it in front of the camera's flash unit.  The animation plan is to have the camera flash, along with the sound of a camera clicking, and then  the flash appears to illuminate the cartoon person. To do this, make a copy of the ClipArt person and have the figure flash lighter when the camera takes a picture.  Now right-click the picture and choose Copy.  Press Ctrl-V to paste the copy onto the slide.  When you select the copy, the floating Picture toolbar will appear.  In the toolbar, click the Image Control button (the second button from the left side) and choose Watermark. This makes the picture appear washed out, so move the copy over the original picture.  Click the new picture, then press Shift and click the flash (the sun cartoon). Choose Draw, Group to group the two.  Right-click the new group and choose Custom Animation.  When the dialog box opens, click the Effects tab and select Flash Once, Medium from the Entry Animation list box.  >From the Sound list box, select Camera.  Click the Timing tab, and select the Animate and Automatically radio buttons.  Click OK to close the dialog box and save your settings.  Choose Slide Show, Slide Transition. When the Slide Transition dialog box opens, select the Automatically After check box and enter 2 or 3 seconds.  Click Apply to apply your selection and close the dialog box.  Finally, choose Slide Show, Set Up Show and select the radio buttons labeled Browsed At A Kiosk (Full Screen) and Using Timings, If Present.  Click OK to close the dialog box and save your settings.  Now you can choose Slide Show, View Show to start the show. The animation will repeat over and over again until you press Esc to stop it.

Countdown slide
If you have trouble getting your audience back to their seats after an intermission, use a countdown slide show to get their attention.  Create a new presentation consisting of whatever number of slides you need to count the minutes of a break.  On each slide, put the number of minutes left in the break and count the minutes down from 10, 15, or whatever number.  On the last slide, put the following text “This break is over.”  Then choose Slide Show, Rehearse Timing to make each slide last one minute.  For a ten-minute break, run PowerPoint and create 11 blank slides.  On the first slide, enter  “The presentation will resume in” and then type 10  minutes.  Center all the text and press Ctrl-A to select all.  Now press Ctrl-C to copy the selection.  Move to the next slide and press Ctrl-V.  Click the text that displays 10 and change it to 9.  Continue this procedure until you reach 1.  On the last slide, place a note telling your audience that the break is over.  To set the timing, choose Slide Show, Slide Transition.  When the Slide Transition dialog box opens, select the Automatically After check box and enter 60 seconds.  Click Apply To All to exit the dialog box and apply your settings to all the slides in the show.

Final screen
Setting the last screen to black, or another color, in a PowerPoint slide show is a good way to signal the end of your presentation.  To set the last slide to black, open your slide show and choose Tools, Options.  When the Options dialog box opens, click the View tab.  Now select the check box labeled End With Black Slide and click OK to close the dialog box and save your selection.  If you want to end with some other color, simply create a blank slide at the end of your slide show and set its background color to your choice.  Next choose Format, Background.  When the Background dialog box opens, click the arrow at the right side of the list box and select More Colors.  Choose your color from the Colors dialog box and click OK to close the box.  Back in Background, click Apply to apply your selection to the current slide Only.  When you reach your last slide, you can just leave it onscreen until your audience has departed the presentation area. 

Move and Hide
If you want to have an object appear at the left side of a PowerPoint slide and then move slowly to the right side, run PowerPoint and open a blank slide.  Choose Insert, Picture, ClipArt and double-click a picture to insert it onto the slide.  Move the picture to its final destination on the right side of the slide.  Next, right-click the picture and choose Custom Animation.  When the Custom Animation dialog box opens, click the Effects tab and then click the under arrow at the right side of the first list box Entry Animation And Sound. From the list, choose Crawl From Left.  Now click the arrow at the right side of the After Animation list box and choose Hide After Animation.  Click the Timing tab and select the radio buttons labeled Animate and Automatically.  Leave the time at 0 and click OK to apply your animation settings and close the dialog box.  To see how the animation works out, choose Slide Show, View Show. 

Summary
PowerPoint is a multi-faceted tool that can be viewed in a variety of ways.  It can be used in the Normal view, Slide Sorter view, Outline, and Notes Page.  The method of presentation depends upon the user’s needs.  The Notes Page view, for example, would be used to develop talking notes.  Because of its versatility PowerPoint has gained great popularity among many computer speakers.