Viewers: in countries Watching now:
In PowerPoint for Mac 2011 Essential Training, author David Rivers demonstrates how to create effective slideshows and dynamic presentations using the tools in Microsoft PowerPoint 2011. The course provides in-depth instructions for changing the look of presentations: using built-in and custom themes, formatting text, inserting tables and charts, adding pictures and SmartArt drawings, and adding animation. It also shows how to proof presentations and ready them for viewing, and gives details on the different ways to share presentations. Exercise files are included with the course.
When you're working with text in your presentation the occasion may arise where you need to find a definition for a word, or maybe you need to find synonyms, or even translate a word or two. Well, these are all reference tools that are built into the Microsoft Office 2011 Suite of Applications, and we have access to them from PowerPoint. So we're going to take a look right now using our TT_Tour presentation, and lets us go down to slide 4 for a second, where we see the Endorsement. Maybe we need to find a better word for 'standards.' We see that down at the end of a paragraph.
There are a couple of things we can do to access the built-in Thesaurus. One option is to go up to Tools and then down to Thesaurus, and notice it opens up our Reference tools, and Thesaurus is opened up at the top here. I'll just close that up for a second because we would have to type in the word standards and then find the meanings and so on and then insert the word that we want, but where would it be inserted? So, before you open the Reference tools, there is a better option. Double-click the word first to select it - you can click and drag too, if you want - and now right click or Ctrl+Click, so you'll notice we have the ability here to access our Reference tools.
We're going to go down to Look Up, across and down to Thesaurus. This opens up the exact same thing we saw a moment ago in our Reference tools, but this time the word 'standards' is already there. We see some meanings down below and some synonyms. So if the meaning of standards is values - maybe its criterions actually - you can see the synonyms that we're looking for standards here include things like benchmarks and paradigms, and all we have to do is move down and find the one that we're looking for, let's go with specifications and then click Insert, and it replaces the word that was already highlighted. Standards is now specifications, just like that.
Now when we're done with the Reference tools, we can close then up or just leave them open off to the side and continue to work on our presentation. Now let's scroll down a little bit further. We'll go to Our Story here. And you can see where it all started in 1903, beginning in Italy, and moving to upstate New York. And let's say we wanted to look for the translation for farm. Wouldn't it be nice to use the Italian word for farm here? So let's double-click farm. Now we can also access the Reference tools by clicking the Reference tools button on the toolbar.
This will show or hide the toolbox, which includes our Reference tools. You'll notice the word farm is not already there. So it's almost always best to select the word, Ctrl+Click or right- click and then go down to, in this case, not Look Up, but Translate. And when we do that, you can see now we are back in our Reference tools here with the word farm at the top. We're still looking at the Thesaurus, but down at the bottom we also have Translation. Here all you have to do is choose the languages you want to convert to and from. In this case, it's an English word so we need that in the From field.
To, we would select Italian, if you don't already have it, and there it is. There are the words that we're looking for. Now in this case we don't have an Insert button, so we would actually have to select these words and copy them if you wanted to do it that way, or just simply go over here where we see farm on our slide and type in what we see in our Reference tools. So it's now quite as automated as the Thesaurus, but it's there if we need it. The other things you'll find here in Reference tools include a Dictionary, so let's just click the little arrow next to Translation to collapse that, and we'll go to Dictionary.
If you see a message saying that online tools haven't been activated, there should be a link to do it, and then all of these functions become available to you. The dictionary, you can see with farm still selected down below. You can see the noun. You get some definitions. So if there's a word you're not sure about in your presentation, and you're going to be talking about it, you might want to look up the meanings. And once again, when you're done with the Reference tools, just close them up and go back to working on your presentation.
So it's not just checking your spelling. There is a built-in Thesaurus for Synonyms when you can't find that perfect word. You can translate words, even look up the meanings of words so you know what you are talking about when you present.
There are currently no FAQs about PowerPoint for Mac 2011 Essential Training.
Access exercise files from a button right under the course name.
Search within course videos and transcripts, and jump right to the results.
Remove icons showing you already watched videos if you want to start over.
Make the video wide, narrow, full-screen, or pop the player out of the page into its own window.
Click on text in the transcript to jump to that spot in the video. As the video plays, the relevant spot in the transcript will be highlighted.