Normal View - working panes: Microsoft PowerPoint comes with different views to help you while you are creating a presentation. The two main views you use in PowerPoint are normal view and slide sorter view. To easily switch between views, you click the buttons at the lower left of the PowerPoint window.

Activity 1 - Normal View - working panes:  

1. Start PowerPoint by clicking on the PowerPoint icon in the Start - Programs menu.

2. PowerPoint opens a presentation in the Normal View.  Explore the three panes in Normal view. When you are through, close the presentation.

Normal view

Normal view contains three panes: the outline pane, the slide pane, and the notes pane. These panes let you work on all aspects of your presentation in one place. You can adjust the size of the different panes by dragging the pane borders.

You will also see the Task Pane on the right side. We will talk more about this later.

Outline pane:   Use the outline pane to organize and develop the content of your presentation. You can type all of the text of your presentation and rearrange bullet points, paragraphs, and slides.

Slide pane:   In the slide pane, you can see how your text looks on each slide. You can add graphics, movies, and sounds, create hyperlinks, and add animations to individual slides.

Notes pane:   The notes pane lets you add your speaker notes or information you want to share with the audience. If you want to have graphics in your notes, you must add the notes in notes page view.

Normal View - working panes

Activity 2 - Normal View - working panes: 

1. Start PowerPoint by clicking on the PowerPoint icon in the Start - Programs menu. PowerPoint opens to a blank slide. 

2. Choose Open a Presentation – More Presentations from the Task pane. If the task pane is not visible, go to the view menu and click Task Pane to show it.  

3. Open the practice file Sample PowerPoint Presentation.ppt (Right click and choose save Target As)

We will use this sample presentation  to demonstrate several PowerPoint navigation techniques, views, menu options, toolbars etc.

In the lower left-hand portion of the Outline pane, you see the following toolbar

This is called the Views toolbar. The first button is applied by default and indicates the Normal view. Moving right, you see Slide Sorter view, and Slideshow. If you click on a button, your working view changes.

Slide Sorter View: In Slide Sorter View, you can see all the slides in your presentation. This view is useful when you are putting the finishing touches on your presentation.

Activity 3 - Slide Sorter View: 

Switch to Slide Sorter view. (You may also do this from the View menu at the top of your page).

In slide sorter view, you see all the slides in your presentation on screen at the same time, displayed in miniature. This makes it easy to add, delete, and move slides, add timings, and select animated transitions for moving from slide to slide.

Activity 4 - Slide Sorter View: 

Rearrange the slides in your presentation by dragging and dropping. Click and hold slide 4 and then drag it to the beginning of the presentation. When you drop (release the mouse button) it becomes slide 1 and all the other slides move to their new positions.

Outline View: Working in Outline view allows you to concentrate on the content of the slide instead of the appearance. Slide View is better when you are concerned with design and visual characteristics.

Activity 5 - Outline View, Slide View: 

Practice toggling between the different working views: Normal , Slide Sorter, Outline, and Slide.

Outline View

Outline/Slides View

The Menus, The Standard Toolbar, The Formatting Toolbar, The Drawing Toolbar: Microsoft Office uses standard menus and toolbars in all their programs (PowerPoint, Word, Excel, etc). Once you are familiar with one of these programs, learning others is much easier.

Activity 6 - The Menus, The Standard Toolbar, The Formatting Toolbar, The Drawing Toolbar: 

1. Change to Slide View, if necessary. 

2. Examine the menus, File, Edit, View, Insert, and Format. 

3. Move your mouse pointer over each of the buttons on the Standard, Formatting, and Drawing toolbars. 

4. When you are through, close PowerPoint. Do not save any changes.

You will learn more about the drawing toolbar, autoshapes, the picture toolbar, tables and borders toolbar and the wordart toolbar as you progress in the course.

You have now completed this module. Take a few minutes to review and practice what you have learned.