Hello and welcome to our course on PowerPoint 2013.
My name is Toby and I’m your instructor on this course.
I think there can be little doubt that PowerPoint is by far the leading presentation software
in the world, both in terms of numbers of users and in terms of the range of applications
of this presentation software.
There are other good presentation products and particularly in the area of the Mac there
are one or two strong competitors.
But in terms of overall use, PowerPoint really is head and shoulders above the competition.
In this course, we’re going to look at the latest version of PowerPoint; PowerPoint 2013.
So who is this course for?
Well, the simple answer is that it’s for anybody who wants to use PowerPoint 2013.
But there are specifically three groups of users that I’m targeting.
The first group of users are people who have never used PowerPoint before, probably never
even used presentation software before.
I am going to assume that you have a reasonable level of competence and confidence with using
Windows software, so I’m going to assume that you know how to minimize or maximize
a window, how to use a dialog box and scroll bar, and the other main components of a Windows
interface.
My aim on the course is to get you to the point where you’re a competent user of PowerPoint
2013 and you can produce good presentations and use many of the facilities of PowerPoint
with a high level of confidence.
You’ll also be aware of other areas of PowerPoint, maybe ones where you need to learn a bit more
or experiment a bit more, but you should be aware of just about all of the main aspects
by the end of the course.
The second group of users are those who’ve used much older versions of PowerPoint; versions
like PowerPoint 2000 or PowerPoint 2003.
These older versions do not use the Ribbon interface, which has been in the last couple
of version of PowerPoint and which has become an integral part of using PowerPoint.
The Ribbon interface is developed further in PowerPoint 2013, but they’re many other
features have been introduced into PowerPoint in the versions since those much older ones.
So if you’re used to PowerPoint 2000 or PowerPoint 2003, learning PowerPoint 2013
really is going to involve learning a lot of new things and these are not just things
related to the Ribbon interface.
There are many improvements and new features related to sharing, collaboration, use of
animation, and many other features.
So for people with knowledge of the older versions of PowerPoint, although some features
will be familiar, there will be many new things to learn as well.
My intention for that second group of users is to get you up to speed on the new version
and to be aware of all of the latest features and able to use just about all of them.
The third group of users are those that do have experience of the Ribbon in that they’ve
used more recent versions of PowerPoint, such as 2007 and PowerPoint 2000.
You should be aware that the Ribbon has changed a little in PowerPoint 2013 and in particular
it’s changed to accommodate touch use.
But you also have, of course, several new features and for those uses of the more recent
versions I’m really going to make sure that you can add the use of those new features
to the skills that you already have in the use of Microsoft PowerPoint.
In general, when planning and designing this course I’ve tried to achieve a good, broad
coverage of PowerPoint 2013.
Some subjects we will go into in a lot of detail, some of them will be at a fairly introductory
level, but there are very few exclusions.
One of the exclusions, however, is the use of PowerPoint VBA, effectively programming
in PowerPoint.
So we won’t be covering this as part of the course.
One of the key new features of Office 2013 in general is the accommodation of the use
of touch base devices.
And on this course I’m actually using a touch device to develop the whole course.
So from time to time when we get into any kind of new topic I’ll also briefly cover
how to achieve the same effect or perform the same action using a touch device.
However, I should point out to you that primarily I’ll be doing things with mouse and keyboard.
That is still by far the most popular way that people interact with PowerPoint in particular.
And in fact if for every single subject on the course I did it with mouse and keyboard
and using touch it would be a very long course indeed.
So generally speaking on this course, the default is mouse and keyboard.
But whenever something that is new for touch device users comes in, I’ll cover that as
a touch subject as well.
And in fact, at a couple of point in the course, I will specifically look at some of the ways
that you can particularly do things with a touch device.
Also as we’ll see a little bit later on in the course when we look at Help there are
various resources and sources available to help you if you’re using a touch device.
Let’s look now at what the system requirements are to run Office 2013.
Within the Microsoft site there is a section called TechNet and within TechNet there’s
a section here, System Requirements for Office 2013.
There are various other sources, but at the time of writing this is probably the one I
would recommend.
If I scroll down here, one section tells you what the versions of Office 2013 are.
Now I should warn you that I’m actually recording this very early on in the life of
Office 2013 and it may well be that the versions change or additional versions come on to the
market.
And this does include the versions of Office 365 which is effectively the sort of online
version of Office 2013.
But given that list of versions, just below it there are then the standard system requirements
for Office 2013.
There are hardware requirements, so the sort of computer and processor you need, the amount
of memory, the amount of hard disk space it needs.
But very importantly in the middle here we have the operating system requirements.
Now in terms of a PC or laptop operating system, you need Windows 7 or Windows 8.
Office 2013 is not supported on Windows XP or Vista.
So if you have Windows XP or Vista and you want to run Office 2013, you’re going to
need to upgrade.
It is also supported on the latest two Windows Server products, 2008 RT and Windows Server
2012.
Another significant option for running Office 2013 in general and PowerPoint 2013 in particular
is to use one of the new Microsoft Surface tablets and either the Windows RT version
or the Windows 8 Pro version offers you the opportunity to run PowerPoint 2013.
Now as I mentioned earlier on, I’m recording this quite early in the life of Office 2013
so I’m going to have to be fairly general about installation.
But let’s suppose that you’ve established that you’re going to use PowerPoint 2013,
you have a suitable device to run it on.
It may be that you’ve by now acquired a device with it already installed which is
fine.
It may be that you are installing a version.
Now there were customer preview versions in the very early days of Office 2013 then Microsoft
in late 2012 started offering a downloadable 60 day trial version, and if you’re a subscriber
via TechNet or MSDN, you can get a version via one of those sources.
So there are various ways of acquiring Office 2013 at this time.
It is also, of course, entirely possible that you’ve bought a copy of Office 2013 from
your local computer store or from an online source.
You may have purchased a copy from Microsoft and downloaded that.
Now however, you’ve acquired your copy of Office 2013 I won’t be covering any instructions
on how to install it.
The Microsoft.com website is the place to go for the installation instructions.
At the time of writing, the best instructions are on the TechNet part of that website.
And here we have installing the new Office 2013 customer preview.
These instructions came out in the middle of 2012 and a couple of versions of the software
have come out since then.
But the instructions are still good.
They’re step by step instructions with a good explanation.
The chances are that you’ll be installing Office 2013 sometime after I record this course,
so these instructions may well have been upgraded or replaced.
So check on Microsoft.com for the latest installation instructions.
Just type in, in the Microsoft.com Search box Installing Office 2013, see what it comes
up with.
But I’m going to leave the installation to you and from this point onwards I’m going
to assume that you have successfully installed Office 2013.
But let’s look at the situation that some of you may be in.
You don’t have a copy of Office 2013 at the moment.
You’re not completely committed to buying it yet, but you’d like to find out about
it so you’re following this course and you’d also like to be able to work along with the
examples and just try it out for yourself for a while.
Well, I mentioned a little while ago the 60 day trial.
At the time of recording this course the 60 day trial was still available.
It’s available via the TechNet evaluation center.
Again, if you go into Microsoft.com and search on Download Microsoft Office Professional
Plus 2013, that gives you access to the trial version which as I say at the time of recording
gave a 60 day evaluation.
The instructions for downloading are included there.
That will refer you to the later instructions for installation and so on.
And that’s a way of getting a fully fledged copy of Office 2013 that you can use for 60
days.
As you’ll see later on in the course with Office 2013, the need for a pretty much constant
internet connection is greatly increased.
Virtually all of the help for Office 2013, including PowerPoint 2013, is online help.
There is a limited version available when you’re not connected to the internet, but
it’s certainly not the full help.
And another aspect of having an internet connection is that it gives you access to the various
forums, particularly forums within TechNet and associated Microsoft sources that gives
you access to things like tracking down problems.
So if you have a problem installing Office 2013 or running it or accessing PowerPoint,
you can very often find the solution to your problem by browsing the various forums there.
But you will need an internet connection.
I think it’s fair to say that if you’re trying to use PowerPoint 2013 or any other
part of Office 2013 without an internet connection, you are really going to be quite constrained
in what you can do.
It’s by no means impossible, you can use it without, but it will severely restrict
you in certain areas.
So from this point onwards I’m going to assume that you have successfully installed
Office 2013 or at least PowerPoint 2013 and I’m also going to assume that you can locate
and identify the folder containing the sample files.
Now the sample files will be a different list to the one you can see in front of you here,
but the names will be of this style.
So they’ll have names beginning ssi-powerpoint2013.
There will be a folder with those files in it and these files are the ones that I’m
going to use to set you exercises to do from time to time and they’ll include my answers
to those exercises.
So make sure you know where that folder is and you can locate that easily because you’re
going to need that from time to time during the course.
So having installed PowerPoint 2013, probably as part of Office 2013 you should now be able
to start it.
You may be using the Start Menu from Windows 7, the Start Screen from Windows 8.
You may have setup a desktop shortcut or added it to your taskbar.
To a large extent how you start it during this course is unimportant as long as you
can get it started whenever you need to get it started.
You can see it in front of you now.
You’re color scheme may be different to mine.
You’ll certainly be a different user if you look in the top right hand corner there
you’ll see me as a user.
But basically if you can start PowerPoint now and it runs and it looks something like
this, then you’re where you need to be for the rest of the course.
We’ve actually got a couple of other things to look at quite quickly before we really
start using PowerPoint, but the important milestone here is that you can actually start
it and see PowerPoint in front of you as I can here.
So that’s it for this section.
I’ll see you in the next one.