July 2007 Meeting: 'Creating a Family History Presentation in Powerpoint’ by Paul Brooks

Paul began by reminding the audience that humans have managed for thousands of years without software, but that a Powerpoint Slide Show could enhance a talk if well constructed. He explained the limitations that might be imposed by equipment and software available on the night. He also mentioned the free software, Powerpoint Viewer, which now allowed presentations to be shared (read only) with those who could not afford the true, but expensive, Powerpoint software.

Paul went throught the basic concepts and terminology, and then began a presentation, by choosing a presentation design, and then used the slide master option to adjust the defaults. He then created a set of 5 slides : 1 - Introduction - 2 - bullet points - 3.- text and clip art - 4 - inserted photograph and text box - 5 - screen shot.

He explained the various options to edit, sort and view the slides, and how to move and resize images and text boxes. An example of a transition was made, preset animation was added to the bullet points, and a custom animation was added to the clip art. Autoshapes were added, adjusted and animated.