When you start a new job, you typically spend the first day getting acquainted with colleagues and finding your way around the office before you get to work. In the same way, whether you want to create a lengthy, elaborate animated presentation with sound and graphics or a simple bullet list presentation consisting of a handful of slides, your first step is to learn how to open a blank presentation and the basic structure of a typical PowerPoint presentation.
You can open a blank presentation, open presentations you have previously created and saved, or create new presentations based on templates that provide prebuilt design features. After you open a file, you can enter content for a presentation. Then, if you’ve made changes, you need to know how to save those changes and close the presentation.
As you wander around PowerPoint, you get to know the different views that you will use depending on what you want to accomplish. When you open a presentation, it opens in Normal view, where you see three panes containing a slide/outline display, the current slide, and an area for notes.
The Slide Sorter view is where you go to organize slides. When you want to see your show in action, use the Slide Show view.
PowerPoint offers you a few options for how you get started with a new presentation. For example, if you want a single blank slide with the default layout and design elements, you can open a blank presentation. But if you’d like to get a head start on your presentation, consider opening it either based on an existing presentation that contains some elements you want to reuse or applying one of PowerPoint’s predesigned templates.
Tip
If you’re more comfortable using a keyboard shortcut to open a new file, you can. Simply press Ctrl+O to display the Open dialog box or Ctrl+N to open a new, blank presentation. You should note, however, that keyboard shortcuts are no longer displayed on the File menu in PowerPoint 2007. You have to hover your mouse over a command to see any keyboard shortcut. All shortcuts that start with Ctrl are the same as in PowerPoint 2003; however, some that began with Alt have changed.
With PowerPoint running, click the Office button and in the File menu click New to display the New Presentation window.
Click the down arrow to browse the drives and folders of your computer or network to locate a file.
Double-click a folder to open it and display files. Continue to double-click folders until you find the file you want.
Click Open to open a new presentation based on the selected existing presentation.
- With PowerPoint running, click the Office button and choose New from the menu to display the New Presentation window.
If you are online, you can click a template category on the left side of the New Presentation window to display thumbnails of templates available from Office Online in that category.- Click Installed Templates to view templates installed on your computer when you installed PowerPoint.
- Click a template to see a preview and information about it on the right side of the window. In some cases, clicking a category displays a list of subcategories; click one to view template thumbnails.
See Also
Note that any template you apply to your presentation will then be accessible by clicking Themes on the Design tab. For information about applying themes to slides, see "Apply a Slide Theme".