PowerPoint 2003 comes with several design templates that you can use to add an artistic design to your slides. If you want a wider variety of designs from which to choose, consider downloading additional design templates from Microsoft’s web site.

If you want a more unique design for your presentation, or if you need to include your company colors and logo on each slide, consider creating your own design template. (This is more of a mini-lesson than a quick tip, but it’s well worth the time and effort.)

Using the Slide Master

To create your own design template, you need to know how to use the PowerPoint slide master. If you’ve never used this feature before, you can access it by selecting View | Master | Slide Master. The slide master is the template on which your presentation is based. It contains background graphics, formatting for titles, bulleted lists, header/footer contents, etc.

You can use the Slide Master to make global changes in your presentation. For example, suppose the design template you selected formats all slide titles in white text, and you want all titles to be blue. You can make this change by opening the slide master and selecting blue as the font color for the title placeholder. When you close the slide master and return to your presentation, all titles will be blue.

Who Cares about the Slide Master?

You do, if you plan to create your own design template. That’s where you tell PowerPoint which background graphic to use, as well as how to format titles, bulleted lists, graphical objects, etc.

Let’s Create a Design Template

Let’s say you need to create a design template for your company. It must include the company logo, the company’s colors as a gradient background on all slides, and it must appear in the Slide Design Task Pane so that you can apply it to any new presentation you might create.

Here’s how:

1. Create a new blank presentation.
2. Select View | Master | Slide Master to view the slide master. (PowerPoint will also open the Slide Master View toolbar, which you can use to close Slide Master View.)



3. Change the background by selecting Format | Background. Use this to select a background color, a blend of two colors (gradient), a texture, or a picture.
4. Add the company logo by selecting Insert | Picture | From file…
5. Drag the logo to place it on the slide and size it appropriately.
6. Select View | Header and Footer to add the date and/or slide number to each slide.
7. Close Master Slide View.
8. Save the presentation as a design template (*.pot).



9. PowerPoint will automatically save the template in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates. Do not save the template in a different location; it needs to be in this folder in order for it to show up in the Slide Design Task Pane.
10. Close the presentation.

Using Your New Design Template

1. Create a new presentation, or open an existing one.
2. Select Format | Slide Design to open the Slide Design Task Pane.
3. Scroll through the design templates to find the one you created. (If you don’t see it, close PowerPoint and re-open it.)
4. Apply your design template to the active presentation by clicking on it.
5. You can also use the drop-down menu to apply the design to one slide, all slides, or to use it as the default design for all new presentations.

Have you ever needed to emphasize a word or phrase during a presentation? You can do so in the middle of a presentation with PowerPoint’s virtual annotation “pen.”

To use the annotation pen during a slide show:

1. Open the presentation in Slide Show view.
2. Right-click on the slide, and select Pointer Options | Ballpoint Pen, Felt Tip Pen or Highliter.
3. When you are done using the pen, press ESC. (PowerPoint will prompt you to keep or discard your annotations.)

To change the ink color of the pen, right-click during a Slide Show, select Pointer Options | Ink color, and then select the color you want.

To change the default pen color, select Slide Show | Set Up Show…, and select the pen color you want in the Show options section.

Keyboard Shortcuts

You can also access the annotation pen by pressing CTRL + P during a presentation, and return to the arrow (normal mouse pointer) by pressing CTRL + A.

Have you ever wanted to use PowerPoint to show a collection of pictures? PowerPoint contains a Photo Album feature exactly for this purpose. There’s no need to insert the pictures one slide at a time. PowerPoint will even take the pictures directly from your digital camera!

Here’s how:

1. If you want to create the Photo Album from pictures on your computer, start by copying all the pictures you want to include into one folder. It will be easier to select them later.
2. Create a new blank presentation.
3. In PowerPoint 2003, select Insert | Picture | New Photo Album.
   In PowerPoint 2007, click the Photo Album button in the Illustrations grouping on the Insert tab of the ribbon and select New Photo Album…
4. PowerPoint will display the Photo Album dialog box:



5. Select File/Disk if the pictures are in a folder on your computer. (Select Scanner/Camera if the pictures are on your digital camera.)
6. Navigate to the folder containing your pictures, hold down the CRTL key, and click on each picture you want to include. If you’re including all the pictures in the folder, press CTRL + A to select them all.
7. Click the Insert button.
8. In the Album Layout section of the dialog box, you can make each picture fill the slide by selecting Fit to Slide. You also have the option to put 1, 2, or 4 pictures on a slide, with or without titles. If you choose to add titles, you will have to go into each slide and type the titles.
9. If you select 1, 2, or 4 pictures per slide, you can also select the Frame Shape that will border each picture and a
   Design Template for the slide background.
10. Click Create.
11. PowerPoint will create the presentation with the options you selected.
12. Navigate to the first slide and edit the title and subtitle, if you wish.

When you have to create a PowerPoint presentation on one computer and show it on another, you face a number of potential problems. Are the fonts you used installed? Did you copy all the graphics and charts you needed? Does the new computer have PowerPoint and is it the right version? Microsoft has addressed these issues, but in PowerPoint 2003, they have solved it. If you use PowerPoint extensively, you’ll want to upgrade to 2003.

Package for CD has replaced the Pack and Go Wizard in earlier versions of PowerPoint. The Package for CD option includes the PowerPoint Viewer by default. You can also use the Package for CD option to package files to save into a folder on your hard drive. This is useful if you want to backup your presentation or transfer it to a USB thumb drive or zip disk.

To package a presentation for use on another computer, you’ll need a CD-R or CD-RW drive, but the process is pretty straightforward:
1. Open the presentation you want to save.
2. Select File | Package for CD…
3. In the Name the CD field type a name for the CD.
4. Files linked to your presentation and the PowerPoint Viewer are included to the package by default. To change the default options, click the Options… button.

The Options dialog allows you to:
• Add the PowerPoint viewer, so that anyone can view the presentation whether they have PowerPoint 2003 or not.
• Include any linked files so that these files are available.
• Add all TrueType fonts so that the person replaying the presentation does not have to have all your custom fonts installed.
• Set a password to open and to modify each presentation to keep the information secure.
5. Click the Copy to CD button.
6. If you are copying the presentation to a Folder or a zip disk, click the Copy to Folder... button, navigate to the folder you want to save the presentation in, and click OK.
7. After PowerPoint transfers the files, Close button.