In
a hurry?
Maybe that catnap during last week's staff meeting felt great, but while you slept, your cubicle comrade nominated you to create the highlight reel for the annual company party. You might ask, "Who watches a slideshow at a party?" But the bigger question is this: What are you going to do?
No need to panic. Just use PowerPoint's handy AutoLayout feature and select the one that matches your need.
 Title
Grab the logo off your company's Web site and plop it on a title slide along with a catchy phrase like "2006 Review." Well, that's not very creative, but you can dress it up with font colors and styles. Or add some drama with animation or sound effects. But use all of these sparingly—you only need a hint of visual pizzazz.
 Bulleted List
Use this slide to create a short list of highlights. You must be able to think of five good things that happened in the college over the last year. If you're desperate, call the folks of college relations; Andre, Alice, Bruce, CeCe, Chuca, or Robert (just kidding guys)
Change the bullets to numbering by highlighting the bulleted list and clicking the Numbering button on the Formatting toolbar. And then build up to the biggest event by making the items appear on the screen one at a time in reverse order by clicking the Reverse Text Order Effect button on the Animation Effects toolbar.
 Table
Again, tap College Relations for the latest scoop on the college’s marketing initiatives (joking again). Then insert a table slide and whip up a simple three-column table that shows a picture of each program, its name, and its newest features. You can create more visual impact by changing the border width and colors via the Tables and Borders toolbar.
 Chart
After you recreate the data or insert someone else's data, double-click the chart to select it and then select Chart > Chart Type from the menu. In the Chart type list, select Line, and then pick the Chart sub-type of your dreams.
 Organization Chart
Avoid using this slide to demonstrate your idea of a dream company hierarchy. Just make one organization chart that shows the basic structure and move on. No need to emphasize that the company recently restructured?maybe everyone just wants to forget for one day. But do change the color of the boxes to something that vaguely resembles the colors in your company logo. Select Boxes > Color from the menu in the Microsoft Organization Chart window.
 Clip Art
Here's a good place for photos of the folks who are retiring this year. Or use a Clip Art & Text slide to pair a bulleted list of their names, pictures, and achievements with an appropriate Clip Gallery image that identifies their department.
 Media Clips
Didn't someone shoot video footage of Severo and Jimmy singing Karaoke at Conference Day? so if the footage would receive a good rating and demonstrates college camaraderie, you can insert it in a Media Clip slide. But video clips require a lot of memory so just skip this slide if your video is less than stellar (which we know it is worthy of every bit of space).
 Object
A party hardly seems the time to whip out a spreadsheet, but some of the bigwigs might like to see the fine print on the financial statement. Just make sure this slide doesn't send you back to snoozeville—that's how you got into this mess in the first place. You'd be smart to use a spreadsheet that is linked rather than embedded so your slide contains the most current data available. However, if you won't be connected to the linked spreadsheet when you deliver your presentation, use a spreadsheet that's embedded in your presentation instead.
Mix and match design elements
Of course, you can and should mix and match these slide elements. In fact, PowerPoint's AutoLayout feature already contains the combinations you're most likely to need. The slide layout symbols (listed in the table below) are fairly intuitive once you understand them, so you won't have to bother memorizing the names of the various combinations. But, in case you forget, PowerPoint 97 and 2000 both display the title of the selected layout in the lower right corner of the New Slide dialog box. PowerPoint 2002 and 2003 display the title in a ScreenTip if you position your cursor over the AutoLayout for a few seconds.
And remember that those areas that say "Click to add title" or "Click to add text" are just placeholders. You literally click them and start typing; the placeholders will grow or shrink to accommodate any text that you enter.
Okay, so you found all the info that you needed and whipped together a promotion-worthy presentation. Now relax. Just don't fall asleep during another staff meeting and remember that registration for training for MS PowerPoint 2007 is already available at MyWorkshops.
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