27. Hidden Slides Hidden slide Normal slides Press H to show slide or right-click Hidden slide
Editor's Notes
Chapter 6 is a study of methods for customizing templates and slide shows in PowerPoint. Admittedly, PowerPoint has a vast array of templates and themes for you to use in producing your own presentations. There is even more opportunity for unique presentations by making your own slide layouts, color schemes, backgrounds, and templates. When you use the methods discussed in this chapter, you will be adding your imagination to the development of your presentations. This chapter ends with methods for making presentations that fit the needs of multiple audiences by creating custom shows and hiding slides.
The objectives of the chapter are: 1. Modify handout and note masters. 2. Create and modify slide masters. 3. Customize a color scheme. 4. Create a custom template. The objectives continue on the next slide.
Other objectives include: 5. Apply a custom animation. 6. Create a custom slide show. 7. Run and navigate a custom slide show. 8. Designate and display hidden slides.
When you create masters you are focusing your efforts on the underlying structure of your presentation and materials. You are making decisions about the fonts, backgrounds, and placeholders. The handout master modifications apply to the handouts that you print for your audience. As you will see, you can modify the look of the headers and footers, use WordArt, and add other elements. The note pages are created for the speaker to use as they practice and deliver the presentation. In some cases, such as when a group of people are working on a presentation together, the handouts may be printed for distribution to that group. The note page master modifications include header and footer alterations and font changes. The slide master controls the default fonts on the slides and the placement of the footers. As you will see, the footers can contain a date, slide number, and text. Side backgrounds are also applied to the slide master. The slide layouts are broken into two groups – a title slide layout and slide layouts. There can be multiple slide layouts available in the presentation. Both layout types can be modified by moving, adding, or subtracting placeholders. Elements such as graphics and WordArt can also be placed on layouts. So why would you create or modify the masters? You do this to add your own individual twist to presentations by making your own custom templates. They can save you time and energy. They can add consistency to your presentations. Plus, it is just plain fun to have this kind of control over PowerPoint!
As with all masters, you access the handout master by clicking the View tab and selecting the master with which to work. When you are in the master view, the name of the master you are working on is displayed on a tab at the left side of the screen. While working on the master, you have full access to the other tabs, such as Home and Insert. When you are finished modifying the master, you must close it using the Close Master View button on the right side of the screen. The handout master has header and footer placeholders. You may delete the placeholders you do not wish to use. You may move any placeholders around the handout master. It is generally best to select the number of slides per page before you begin to manipulate the headers and footers. Just as when you print the slide handouts, you may select to have 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, or 9 slides on a page. The next slide continues the discussion of handout masters.
This handout master has been modified by moving the placeholders and adding WordArt. The date placeholder was moved from the top of the page to the bottom center. Homeplate Productions is a WordArt element.
Click the View tab and then click the Notes Master button to work with the notes master. Again, you will need to click the Close Master View button when you have completed your modifications of the notes master. The notes master is shown on the left with the actual modified notes page shown on the right. As you can see, the heading has been moved and centered. The date placeholder has been removed, along with the footer and page number placeholders. The font size of the notes area has been increased to make the notes easier to read as the presenter speaks.
Slide masters provide the structure for the slides. The slide master is best used to modify the background and fonts on all of the slides in the presentation. This insures consistency between the slides and is much faster than changing the font on every slide as you design it. The title slide layout allows you to move the title, subtitle, and footer placeholders around on the title slide master. You can change the background on this layout, using something that compliments the background on the slide layouts. You can also modify the fonts. There are a number of slide layouts in most templates. The difference between various layouts is in the location of the placeholders and the type of placeholders on each layout. Normally, you won’t use all of the layouts that are in the default templates. You can delete any you do not need. You can also insert layouts and add your own placeholders. Font modifications are also possible on the slide layouts, but it is better to use the same fonts throughout the presentation and not change the fonts on just one layout.
Click the View tab and the Slide Master button. Notice that the Slide Master tab appears at the top left side of the screen. On the left side of the screen, you see the various masters. You select a master or layout by clicking on the thumbnail. In this slide, the slide master thumbnail has been selected and the slide master layout is shown in the work area. To change the default fonts, select the text on the slide master in the work area and use the Home tab or the shortcut menu to choose a different font face, size, or effect. The title and the content can be set to different fonts. Modifications to the bullet styles may also be made at this point. Although it appears as if you can delete or add footers on the slide master, you can only modify the location and format of the footers. So, for instance, you could change the font size and style of the footer. You can move the placeholders, so that if you wanted the date to appear right above the slide number all you would have to do is drag it into position. Use the handles to change the size of the placeholder when it is selected.
In order to add the actual footer to the placeholders, click the Insert tab. Click the Header and Footer button. In the dialog box, check the footers that you wish to have appear on the slide and make any other modifications such as selecting a fixed date. Click Apply or Apply to all when you have completed your changes.
The title slide layout is selected by clicking on the title slide layout on the thumbnail pane. The default placeholders are the title, subtitle, and footers. You can add elements to the title slide. For instance the company logo can be inserted on this layout just as any graphic element can be added to a slide. Click the Insert tab and make the appropriate selections to add clipart, photographs, WordArt, and more to the layout. Notice that as you hover over a layout in the thumbnail pane, you will see the name of the layout and the slides using the layout. PowerPoint opens to a title slide, so you will see the title layout used by at least one slide when you are in this view in a new presentation.
Now we have selected the slide layout thumbnail. Did you notice that there are fewer layouts for slides in this thumbnail pane? The slide layouts were selected and deleted using the Delete button in the Edit Master group. Additional layouts can be added if you click the Insert Layout button in the Edit Master group. Once you have selected the layout thumbnail, you may choose new placeholders, size placeholders, and position the placeholders on the slide. The content placeholder will hold a variety of elements including text, graphics, charts, and multimedia. The text placeholder will only hold text. The picture placeholder is used to open picture files and place them on the slide. Clip Art placeholders will access the clip art files. When you have decided on a placeholder type, click the option and then drag a box on the slide to indicate the position and size of the placeholder. You may re-size the placeholder by dragging the handles when it is selected. You may move the placeholder around the slide by dragging it. You can delete the placeholder if you decide it does not serve your purpose by selecting it and pressing Delete. After you have created all of the layouts you will need, it is a good idea to give each a descriptive name. Click on the Rename button and type a name. As shown on the next slide, this can help you to quickly identify layouts when you use the template in the future. After you have completed your modifications to the slide master, title layout, and slide layouts, click the Close Master View button to return to the normal view of the presentation.
As you begin to use your custom layouts, you will select them by using the New Slide arrow or the Layout button. The custom slide layout joins some of the normal default layouts available in PowerPoint on this slide. Notice the name below the custom slide layout. That is the name specified when the layout was renamed. This layout was added to the possible layouts because for this presentation there were a number of charts to be inserted onto slides. Now the layout is set up and each chart will flow into the layout without additional manipulation of the individual slides.
When you have made changes in the master view, it is worthwhile to save your file as a template. This makes it available for future use. When you specify the type as a PowerPoint Template, the location changes to a folder reserved for templates on the hard drive of the computer. To maintain the portability of your templates, be sure to save them to your flash drive.
Have you ever been frustrated by not being able to find color schemes that match your school colors or corporate-standard colors in PowerPoint? One of the tools used in creating templates is the custom color scheme. With the slide master selected, click Colors in the Edit Theme group. Click Create New Theme Color. The Create New Theme Colors dialog box shows the 12 color elements that you may change. The Samples area shows each of the colors in the theme, one on the dark background and the other on the light. To change a color element, click on the arrow and then click More Colors.
The Colors dialog box allows you to specify your color choices as standard or custom colors as shown by the tabs at the top of the box. When you use the Custom tab, you have access to 16 million colors! Two color models are available in PowerPoint: RGB and HSL. RGB stands for Red, Green, and Blue. This is the color model used by computer monitors. The advantage of using the RGB color model is that if you know the corresponding numbers for each of the three colors, you can accurately match the color in your presentation by typing it into the color selection number boxes. If your school has a light green color in the school color scheme, you can match it. If you don’t know the RGB number for a color, you can move the crosshairs around the color box to select various colors. The shade slider allows you to set lighter or darker shades of the color. As you use the crosshairs and shade slider, the RGB number will change. The second color model is HSL or Hue, Saturation, Luminosity. This color model works in the same way as the RGB model. Click the arrow on the Color model dialog box to select HSL.
In addition to selecting custom colors for your template, you may also apply logos and other graphics to the backgrounds of slide layouts. This allows you to “lock” the graphic elements on the slide. In this case, the large version of the logo for Homeplate Productions was placed on the title layout slide. The smaller version was placed on each of the slide layouts. By doing this, you avoid placing the logo on each slide in the presentation. It was placed on each of the layouts and will automatically appear on every slide.
Movement of elements on slides can improve the attention of your audience. Remember that animation should help you make your point and not be distracting. Custom animation can be added to the template or to the actual slides. If added to a template layout, the element will be animated on every slide that uses the layout in the slide presentation. This slide shows the Progress Report placeholder selected in a normal slide layout. Click the Animations tab, and then click Custom Animations. The Custom Animation pane contains lots of interesting animations. When you click the Add Effect button you are shown four basic animation types. The Entrance animations appear when the element enters the slide. The Emphasis effects occur once the element is in its proper location on the slide. The Exit animations occur as the element leaves the slide. Custom motion paths cause the element to move in the specified manner. Each of the effects open into a larger menu. When you select More Effects, you will see even more options in levels that are basic, subtle, moderate and exciting. It is better to select from this menu because as you click on each effect, you see a live preview on the slide. This makes it much easier to choose exactly the one you want for your presentation. Multiple custom animations can be set on the slide and slide elements can contain more than one animation. You could set entrance, emphasis, and exit effects on the same element and specify different trigger events or mouse clicks to cause each effect to play. The discussion of custom animations continues on the next slide.
Once you chose the animation effect, you have even more decisions to make. As you can see in this slide, an animation has been set and it is selected. The Start arrow offers you the opportunity to start the animation when the mouse button is clicked, with the previous animation, or after the previous animation. These are often referred to as start triggers or event triggers. In this case, the effect is set to take place when a mouse click is made. Some effects will contain properties that you can adjust and the Property arrow will become available. For instance, if you set an animation to glow, you will have the opportunity to set the color for the glowing portion. You have the option to set the speed of the animation as shown here. Select whether to play the effect Very Slow, Slow, Medium, Fast, or Very Fast. As you build animations, you test them by clicking the Play button. If you would rather see how the entire sequence plays out on a full-sized slide, click the Slide Show button.
Creating your own animation movements is a lot of fun. Select the object to animate, the Motion Path option, and then Draw Custom Paths. If you select the squiggle path type, you can draw the path you would like for the selected element to take on the slide . In this case, the star is selected and the path was drawn. The beginning of the path is shown with a green arrowhead. The path is shown as a pencil line. Don’t worry if it isn’t perfect, PowerPoint will move the element in a smooth manner, making up for any little drawing errors. The ending point is shown as a red arrowhead.
After creating animations on the slide, you may wish to extend the length of time an animation occurs or make other adjustments to the timeline. To access the timeline, click the arrow next to the animation. Select Show Advanced Timeline and the Seconds timeline will appear at the bottom of the Custom Animations pane. To see more seconds, click on the Timeline zoom arrow. With the Seconds timeline visible, drag the orange time bar for the animation to increase the length of time the animation plays. You may also decide that you wish to change the order in which the animations play. Select an animation and use the Reorder buttons below the Seconds timeline to move it up or down on the playlist. After you make modifications, play the animations from the top of the playlist or full screen to make sure that they work as you wish.
Sound is another enhancement you may add to your slides. Be careful to use sounds that enhance your presentation and don’t distract your audience. I once attended a presentation where every slide contained a race car sound animation. It was played so loudly that the speaker could not be heard over the sound. He was pretty embarrassed by the time the presentation ended because he “over-did” the effect. I have also attended presentations where applause was added to the ending slide. Usually your audience will show their appreciation without the need for this sound. So, while agreeing to use sound judiciously, let’s look at how you add it to the animation. Using the Custom Animation pane, select the animation that will hold the sound. In this case the 5-Point Star animation has been selected. Click the arrow next to the animation and select Effect Options. The dialog box allows you to set effects, timings, and text animation, but we are focusing on the enhancement of sound. Select the sound you wish to use. Click the speaker icon to hear the sound. If you wish to play a sound that is in a file, the bottom choice on the sound list is to select a file. Once you have selected the sound, click OK, and the sound will be associated with the animation.
The items discussed in this presentation so far have focused on things that can be saved on the template to make it customized. This next series of slides discusses customization in a different way. Custom shows are subsets of larger presentations. You may have a rather large presentation prepared and find out just before the event that you will be given less time than you anticipated to speak. Rather than show all of the slides and breezing by the less important ones, you build a custom show of the most important ones. Another scenario might involve creating slide shows for multiple audiences and pulling slides for each type of audience into a custom show. This gives you quite a bit of flexibility. There are two types of custom shows. The basic custom show is a subset of a larger show. The original show may contain 50 slides with 20 or 25 of them in a custom show. You can have more than one custom show associated with a presentation and the slides can be common between the custom shows. For instance, in the first custom show, you may have slides 1 through 20. In the second custom show, you can designate slides 1 through 5, 15 through 18, and 30 through 40. In a third custom show, you could designate slides 25 to 45. When you show a custom slide show, you select the title from a custom show menu and the slide show begins immediately. The next slide will detail how to select slides for a custom show. The second type of custom show is a hyperlinked show. In this version, you will again build basic custom shows, but rather than only being able to show the slides in a single custom show, you will set hyperlinks on one slide that will allow you to jump to a custom show and return to the slide with the hyperlinks to select another custom show. For instance, you have a large presentation on astronomy. Within that presentation you have information about the NASA Mars Rover project, the Space Shuttle project, and the early moon missions. You create three custom shows on the projects. On one slide, you set up hyperlinks to each of the custom shows. As you give your presentation, you click on the Space Shuttle project hyperlink and display those slides. When you have completed showing those slides, the presentation returns to the hyperlink slide. You can decide whether to click on the hyperlink for the Mars Rover project or the moon missions based on the interest of your audience or your time constraints.
To prepare for a basic custom show, click the Slide Show tab and then the Custom Slide Show button. Click New in the Custom Shows dialog box. The Define Custom Show dialog box requests a name for the custom show. It also shows the slides in the presentation that you can use in the custom presentation. Click on the slide name and click the Add button between the slide lists. If you decide to remove a slide from the custom show, select it and click the Remove button. This will only remove it from the custom show and not the presentation. If you have created a custom presentation and later decide to edit it, select it in the Custom Shows dialog box and click Edit. If you no longer need a custom show, select it in the Custom Shows dialog box and click Remove. You may also copy custom shows.
Remember that hyperlinked shows are based on basic custom shows, so you must create the custom shows prior to setting up the hyperlinks. When you are ready to link between the shows, type a word that will serve as the link and select it. You may also use a graphic as the hyperlink by selecting it. Click the Insert tab and select Hyperlink from the Links group. On the Edit Hyperlink dialog box, click the Place in This Document button. Scroll to the bottom of the slide list and select the Custom Show name that you want to associate with the link. Click OK. Display the show and test the hyperlink to make sure it works as you expect.
Running a basic custom show is a little different than displaying a normal presentation. Since it is a subset of the larger presentation, you will first open the larger presentation and then click the Slide Show tab. Click the Custom Slide Show arrow and the custom shows within the larger presentation will be listed. Select the one you want to display and it will open immediately to the first slide in Slide Show view.
An alternative to building custom shows is to hide slides. Hidden slides can be displayed or not as you reach their position in the slide show. Often hidden slides contain information that might be useful if a question is raised by an audience member. In the example here, the Copyright Assumptions slide has been hidden. After slide 2 has been displayed, press H to display the Copyright Assumptions slide, or continue through the slide show to the Consider the audience slide using your favorite method for advancing the slide. You may also navigate to the hidden slides by right-clicking and selecting the hidden slide from the menu. This method works well if the question does not get asked until you are further along in the presentation. Note that the hidden slide is designated with a square and slash over the slide number on the thumbnail pane and parenthesis around the slide number on the Go to Slide menu.
The skills presented in this chapter give you opportunities to create truly unique presentations. Think outside of the box and produce your own templates. Be sure to ask questions as you proceed through the chapter.
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