Controlling your PowerPoint presentation

Pausing your PowerPoint Presentation

                Suppose you want to stop your presentation for awhile, and you don’t want your students to be staring at the same old slide, getting bored and antsy.

                Press the “B” key, for black.  The screen goes black and the students are more likely to look at you (where you want their attention right now.)

                When you want to return to the presentation, press the “B” key again.

                Or you can use the “W” key to switch the screen to white, and then back again.

Moving back to a previous slide

                Suppose you were clicking along and went right past a slide you wanted to show.  Do you need to go back and start over?  No.

                Right click on the slide, and you’ll be given a number of options for moving around your presentation:

• Previous slide
• Next slide
• Last viewed
• Go to slide – click on this and you’ll see the titles of all your slides, so you can pick one
• End presentation

Wouldn’t this be handy when students ask questions after your presentation?  But you must be in the presentation for this to work.  If you have ended the presentation, just restart it and right-click.

Making your PowerPoints more Active  by using a Virtual Felt Tip Pen

                Do you wish you could add more variety to your PowerPoint presentations?  Do you wish you could add answers as if you were writing on the blackboard or on an overhead?  Well you can.  Here’s how:

• 1. While in the Slide Show view (when you’re presenting your presentation), right click on your slide. Then click on Pointer Options, and then Ballpoint Pen, Felt Tip Pen, or Highlighter.
• 2. Your cursor is now a pen, and you can use it for writing, underlining, circling, and all those things you do on the blackboard (or with an overhead projector).
• 3. You can change the color of your pen by right clicking again; click on Pointer options and then Ink Color, then on the color you want.
• 4. When you’re done with the presentation, you’ll be asked if you want to keep all your markups (so they show the next time you give the presentation). Probably, your answer is “No.”

Formatting woes in Word

Ever wonder why Word won’t place words on the page as you want it to, or why Word is printing a blank page that you didn’t ask for? 

Word has a handy tool that will show you the secret formatting that is probably what is creating problems for you.  Click on the Show/Hide icon, right in the middle of the ribbon in the Home tab.   It looks like a paragraph mark: ¶

Click on it now.  Suddenly, you can see dots for spaces ∙∙∙ and  ¶  for paragraphs.  If you’ve tabbed in a few extra times, like this →    →    →  that will show, also.

These symbols won’t print, when you print your document, and if they annoy you, simply click the icon again to make the formatting invisible again.  But when you aren’t getting the results you expect, clicking the Show/Hide icon can often help you see where you went wrong.

The cursed cursor

You have been typing along, and have come to the end of your paragraph, and Word has – wrongly – decided you want to keep your indent at the same level.  But of course that’s never true, is it?  You want it back at the left margin.  And you certainly didn’t want your paragraph to be completely indented.  (And the way out of that has been sooooo  annoying.)  But finally, there is hope.

When you have been placed at the annoying new line, simply backspace.

• One backspace will leave you at the same indent as the start of the text for the previous line.
• Two backspaces will leave you at the indent directly under the number/ letter/bullet point.
• Three backspaces will take you back to the left margin.

Like this.

If you already started typing (or you’re looking at a document that already has this problem in it), all is not lost.  Click your cursor at the very start of the text you want to change, and then backspace one, two or three times (depending upon where you wanted to be).  I’ve noticed that the tab never goes in as far as previously, so you may need to tab again to match up your paragraphs.

Do you ever outline in Word?  Word calls that a “multilevel list.”  To “show” Word that you’re done with your outline, press Enter once to get to a new line, then press it once again, to convince it that you’re at the end of your list.  If you have gotten yourself a couple of levels deep into your outline, you’ll have to press Enter a few more times to get the cursor back to the left margin. 

Remember, if you’ve tabbed too far, you can hold down the Shift key while you press Tab and this will move you back one tab.

For a tutorial on this whole topic, see http://office.microsoft.com/training/training.aspx?AssetID=RC102161651033  This takes about 30 minutes, and will take you through some of the finer points.

Special thanks to Rich Pilny for asking me about this so that I investigated it further, instead of continuing to speak colorfully to my computer when it indented in ways I did not intend.

Using the right click in Word

                Ever wonder why there are two (2) buttons on the mouse?  This is so that you can do things you often want to do with text, but without having to find the right place on the ribbon and tabs.  Each Office program offers different functions when you right-click, but these can save you a lot of time and trouble.  In Word, when you right-click, you are given many options:              

You can change formatting:

You’ll notice that there are options to change font and font size, change text to Bold or Italic, change text color, change text indent, bullet point (and you can even change the bullet). 

You can even change the type Style (Title, Heading1, etc.)  by clicking on either of Styles (down at the bottom) or the A with a pen next to it at the top.

 Generally you need to click on the text you want to change, then right click.  Sometimes, you’ll need to highlight the text you want to change.

You’ll also notice that there are drop-down arrows, which provide additional choices. 6For example, if you click on the Type Style’s drop down arrow, you’ll be given a menu of the type styles, right there.

If you’ve highlighted text, you can cut, copy or paste it, insert a hyperlink, change the formatting to bullets or numbering.

If you’ve clicked on a word, you can find synonyms, or even translate it into another language.

You can even look up information about a topic on-line, by right clicking on a word, and then selecting Look Up…

Don’t get disappointed if it doesn’t work the first time.  It can take a little practice to click or highlight correctly, so Word knows what you want to do. 

Organizing Emails in Outlook

Using Folders or Colors to Organize your Emails

Using folders:

• 1. First, create a new folder to store specific emails in. Click on File, New and Folder.
• 2. Give your folder a new name, and click where you’d like to add it. Wherever you click, it will be placed under. So if you click on Personal Folders it will be under that. If you click on Inbox, it will be under that.
• 3. Drag messages you want to include in this folder from the Inbox into this folder.
• 4. Now the documents are in the new folder, rather than the Inbox.
• 5. You may create as many folders as you like, one for each project.
• 6. If you didn’t like where a folder ended up, right click on the folder, and you will have many options (as you can see to the left). You can delete it, rename it, copy it and so on. Don’t delete it if it already has messages in it, though, or you’ll lose those messages. Happily, if your folder is in the wrong place – say you put it under Inbox when you really wanted it under Personal Folders – drag the folder up to Personal Folders, and it will now appear there (in alphabetical order, of course).

Alternative to folders – Color

If you’d rather not create folders, you can right click on the Quick Click tab for messages. The first time you use a color, you’ll be given the chance to Rename it.  You can sort on color and easily put all items you’ve color-coded together. 

Sorting your inbox (and searching it):

• 1. You can easily sort your Inbox (or any other file), by clicking on Arrange By and then on a variety of choices, shown here. The default is by Date, with the most recent shown on top. You’ll notice that how it’s ordered is shown directly to the right of “Arranged by,” and this can also be changed by clicking on it.
• 2. You can search for specific text in the message or subject line by entering a word or phrase in the Search Box. To get out of the search results, just press the Escape key (or click on the Inbox in the folder list at the left.)

Reminding yourself to take action – use flags

If you right click on the flag next to a message, you can use one of the flags to remind you to take action. 

Delete messages

Finally, if you don’t need it, delete it.  When your cursor has clicked on the email, press the Delete button.  This leaves you with many fewer messages to search through.