Familiarize yourself with the PowerPoint workspace

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The working space, or Normal view, is designed to help you easily find and use the capabilities of Microsoft PowerPoint 2010.

This article contains step-by-step instructions to help you prepare to create presentations with PowerPoint 2010.

 Notes 

• Another part of the PowerPoint 2010 working area is the menu bar at the top, also known as the ribbon. To learn more about the PowerPoint ribbon, see Familiarize yourself with the ribbon in PowerPoint 2010.
• If you are already familiar with the workspace in PowerPoint 2007 and you want information about the new features in PowerPoint 2010, see What's new in PowerPoint 2010?

Step 1: Open PowerPoint

When you start PowerPoint, it opens in the view (view: A way of displaying the contents of a presentation and providing the user with the means to interact with it.) called Normal view, where you create and work on slides.

 Notes 

• If PowerPoint 2010 is already running, save and close any open presentations, and then exit and restart PowerPoint 2010.
• If PowerPoint 2010 isn't already running, start it.

 In the Slide pane, you can work directly on individual slides.

 Dotted borders identify placeholders (placeholders: Boxes with dotted or hatch-marked borders that are part of most slide layouts. These boxes hold title and body text or objects such as charts, tables, and pictures.), where you can type text or insert pictures, charts, and other objects (object: A table, chart, graphic, equation, or other form of information. Objects created in one application, for example spreadsheets, and linked or embedded in another application are OLE objects.).

 The Slides tab shows a thumbnail (thumbnail: A miniature representation of a picture.) version of each full size slide shown in the Slide pane. After you add other slides, you can click a thumbnail on the Slides tab to make the slide appear in the Slide pane. Or you can drag thumbnails to rearrange the slides in your presentation. You can also add or delete slides on the Slides tab.

 In the Notes pane (notes pane: The pane in normal view in which you type notes that you want to accompany a slide. You print these notes as notes pages or have them display when you save a presentation as a Web page.), you can type notes about the current slide. You can distribute your notes to your audience or see your notes in Presenter view when you give your presentation.

Step 2: Start with a blank presentation

By default, PowerPoint 2010 applies the Blank Presentation template (template: A file or files that contain the structure and tools for shaping such elements as the style and page layout of finished files. For example, Word templates can shape a single document, and FrontPage templates can shape an entire Web site.), which appears in the previous illustration, to new presentations. Blank Presentation is the simplest and most generic of the templates in PowerPoint 2010, and is a good template to use when you first start to work with PowerPoint.

To create a new presentation that is based on the Blank Presentation template, do the following:

Click the File tab.

1. Point to New, and under Available Templates and Themes select Blank Presentation.
2. Click Create.

Step 3: Adjust the size of the Notes pane

After you open the Blank Presentation template, only a small part of the Notes pane is visible. To see a larger part of the Notes pane so that you have more room to type in it, do the following:

1. Point to the top border of the Notes pane.
2. When the pointer becomes a , drag the border up to make some more room for your speaker notes, as shown in the following illustration.

Notice that the slide in the Slide pane resizes automatically to fit the available space.

Step 4: Create your presentation

Now that you have prepared the working space for you to use, you are ready to start adding text, shapes, pictures, animations, (and other slides, too) to your presentation. To learn more about how to create a basic presentation from start to finish, see Create a basic PowerPoint presentation.

Near the top of the screen there are are three buttons that you might find useful as you start to work:

• Undo , which undoes your last change. (To see a ScreenTip (ScreenTip: A short description that appears when the user holds the mouse pointer over an object, such as a button or hyperlink.) about which action will be undone, rest the pointer on the button. To see a menu of other recent changes that can also be undone, click the arrow to the right of Undo .) You can also undo a change by pressing CTRL+Z.
• Redo or Repeat , which either repeats or redoes your last change, depending on what action that you previously performed. (To see a ScreenTip about which action will be repeated or redone, rest the pointer on the button.) You can also repeat or redo a change by pressing CTRL+Y.
• Microsoft Office PowerPoint Help , which opens the PowerPoint Help pane. You can also open Help by pressing F1.

 Tip   Did you know that you can add more buttons to this area near the top of the screen? The area at the top of the screen is called the Quick Access Toolbar. You can add other frequently used commands to this toolbar to help you find them quickly. To learn more about how to add or remove commands from the Quick Access Toolbar, see Customize the Quick Access Toolbar.