"How to" Guideline series is coordinated by Helen
Mongan-Rallis of the Education Department at the University of Minnesota
Duluth. If you have any questions, comments,
or suggestions to improve these guidelines please me at e-mail firstname.lastname@example.org.
Intermediate Power Point Guidelines
Developed by Helen Rallis
(adapted from earlier guidelines developed by Helen Rallis
& Al Roline)
These guidelines were designed to follow the Introduction to Power Point lesson
guidelines. (Guidelines to this first lesson can also be found online at http://www.d.umn.edu/~hrallis/guides/PP/PP2000Intro.html).
In this second lesson you will learn to do the following:
Overview of topics:
- Locate Clip Art on the Internet.
- Change the Color of Clip Art Images.
- Insert Images From Digital Camera Floppy Disk.
- Insert Video Clips.
- Insert Sound From a CD.
Locating Clip Art on the Internet
Power Point comes with a large clip art gallery. In the Introduction to Power
Point lesson you learned how to insert clip art from this gallery. As you become
more comfortable with using Power Point you will find that you would like to
go beyond the standard gallery and find other images. There is a wide variety
of clip art web sites on the Internet. You can find these by using most Internet
search engines and searching for free clip art. Some examples of clip
- Clip Art Connection: (http://www.clipartconnection.com/)
- Clipart.com (http://www.clipart.com/).
This site provides links to numerous other clip art sites.
- Microsoft's Clip Gallery
Live: (http://dgl.microsoft.com/mgo1en/eula.asp). Before you can accessclip
art you have to This site includes clip art, photos, sound, and motion clips
and offers the following:
- Over 100,000 additional images beyond the regular Power Point Gallery.
- A Search Tool to help you find clips.
- Image Collections on a single theme that you can download all at once.
- A Tip of the Month about how to use Microsoft clips and their site.
Once you have located clip art images that you want to use in your Power Point
Presentation, download these and save them. If you are working at your own computer,
it is a good idea to create a Clip Art folder for saving downloaded clip art.
- Go to Clipart.com (http://www.clipart.com/).
Under the list of free clip art on the right hand side of the page, click
on Valentine's Day. This will take you to a collection Valentine's
Day clip art.
- To download one of these images:
- If you are in Netscape, right mouse click (PC) or hold down the mouse
(Mac) on image then choose "save image as".
- If you are in Internet Explorer, right mouse click (PC) or hold down
the mouse (Mac) on image then choose "save picture as".
- Give the image a name that you will remember at a later date, but make sure
the name you give it is one word and ends with the extension .jpg or .gif
(use whatever extension the creator used). For example, I downloaded the following
teddy bear image, which the creator of it called "g0065.thm.jpg"
but which I renamed teddycartoon.jpg:
Once you have found the clip art images that you want, you can then insert
these into your Power Point presentation. To do this, follow the same steps
described below for inserting pictures from a digital camera floppy disk.
[Note: To copy a photograph from the Internet, follow the same steps as you
did for copying clip art (mouse click --> hold --> download --> save)]
Changing the Color of Clip Art Images
Although clip art is usually usable exactly as it was originally designed,
it it sometimes useful to be able to change the colors. For example, on a slide
in a PowerPoint presentation I wanted to show a way of classifying concepts
using a pyramid. However, I wanted just the lowest level of the pyramid to be
colored. So here is what I did:
took the PowerPoint clip art of a multicolored pyramid..
removed all the colors, finally adding red to the lowest level to focus
attention on just this level.
To change the color of clip art:
- Select the clip art and insert it onto a slide.
- Once the clip art is on the slide, double click on it --> this will open
the Format Picture dialog box.
- The Format Picture dialog box gives you a series of different sections (tabs)
to make adjustments to your picture. For now, select the Picture tab
--> then click on the Recolor button.
- This will bring up a Recolor Picture dialog box that shows the clip
art on the one side and a break down of the colors in this picture on the
other side as shown below:
||Notice that in this picture the young woman on the left
has dark hair.
- To change the color of any part of the image, click on the small downward
pointing triangle to the right of the color you wish to change --> this
will bring up a box with a limited selection of other color choices. If the
one you want isn't shown, click on the words More Colors --> then
make your selection from the range of choices shown in the color palette.
- Click on the OK button --> this takes you back to the Format Picture
box --> click on the OK button there --> done! The following shows how
I changed the image of the two young women.
||Now the young woman on the left has blond hair!
You can see the pull down color box and the new color (yellow) that
I picked to replaced the dark brown.
Inserting Images From Digital Camera
For this exercise you need to have a floppy disk with digital images taken
using the digital camera (to see directions on how to take photos with the Sony
Mavica Digital Camera you can go to the web page How
To Take Photos with Sony Digital Camera).
- Insert your floppy disk (with the images you took using the digital camera)
into the floppy drive.
- Open an existing Power Point presentation or create a new one.
- On your computer hard drive (Mac) or C drive (PC), create a new folder.
Call this folder Intermediate Power Point.
- Save your existing or new Power Point Presentation into this folder.
- Place the cursor on the slide on which you want to insert the photograph
or create a new slide for this purpose (it is usually best to use a blank
slide, title only slide, or clip art & text slide for inserting photographs).
- Click on the Insert menu --> then scroll down to Picture
--> and then click on From File.
- A dialog box will prompt you to select the picture from a particular location
on your computer. Navigate to the place where you have saved your pictures
(or, in this case, on the floppy disk -- which on a Windows computer will
be in the 3 1/2 Floppy (A:) drive) and on the Mac will show up as a floppy
icon on your desktop).
- When you open the floppy disk you will see a list of photos you took with
the digital camera. The file name for still photographs taken with the digital
camera will end in .jpg.
- Select the photo you wish to insert and click the Insert button.
This will insert the picture onto your slide.
- Once the picture is on the slide, you can use the PowerPoint picture editing
tools to edit the picture. Examples:
- reposition the picture on the slide (by dragging it
- resize it (by dragging on one of the little boxes or resizing handlebars)
- adjust it (using the Picture toolbar) to crop, adjust brightness/contrast
Inserting QuickTime Video Clips
Inserting QuickTime video clips works in much the same way as inserting photographs.
From Digital Camera:
For this exercise you will need to have a movie clip that you have taken using
a digital camera that has movie capabilities (such as the Sony Mavica). With
the Sony Mavica, to take a movie clip works in the same way as taking a photograph,
only you slide the selector on the back of the camera to movie, rather
than still. Then hold the shutter button down while you film your movie
clip. You can capture up to 15 seconds of movie footage on one floppy disk using
a Sony Mavica. Once you have your video on disk
- Insert the disk into the floppy drive.
- Open the disk and copy the movie file (it will have the extension .mpg)
to the Intermediate Power Point folder that you created in the exercise
above. You may want to rename the movie so it has a name that you will recognize
at a later date (e.g.IvyLicksFoot.mpg).
- Create a new slide. It is usually best to use a title slide, so that you
can give the video a title and then use the rest of the space on the page
for inserting the video (you can always add a text box later if you want to
insert text related to the video).
- Click on the Insert menu, then scroll down to Movies and Sound
and then click on Movie From File.
- A dialog box will prompt you to select the picture from a particular location
on your computer. Navigate to the place where you have saved your movie (in
this case, on the floppy disk -- which on a PC will be in the 3 1/2 Floppy
(A:) drive) and on the Mac will show up as a floppy icon on your desktop).
- When you open the floppy disk you will see the movie you took with the digital
camera (the file name will end in .mpg).
- Select the movie you wish to insert and click the Convert button.
- Next a box will pop up asking you if you want the movie to play automatically
in the slide show (and if not, it will play when you click it). If you do,
click on the Yes button. If you don't, click the No button.
NOTE: usually it is best to choose No. This way, when the slide appears, you
can start the video clip when you are ready (once you have talked a bit about
the contents of the slide and are ready to show the video to illustrate a
point that you are making).
- Once you complete the above steps PowerPoint will insert a link to the
video clip onto your slide. However, you won't see that this is what it did.
Instead it will look like the video is on the slide. It will show up as a
picture of the first frame in the movie, with a little movie icon to indicate
that it is a movie clip and not a regular photograph.
|*Important: unlike inserting photographs,
when you insert a movie file, all you are really doing is insert a link
to where you have located the movie clip on your computer. The clip
is never really a part of your presentation as this would make the
file too large. Instead, the location of the movie is noted in the presentation,
so when you click on it, Power Point looks to the location you specified
for the file. For this reason you must save the movie clip on the
same disk if you wish to show your Power Point from a floppy or Zip
disk. If you fail to do this, when you open your Power Point Presentation
and try to link to the movie clip, your computer will not be able to
locate the movie and link to it. If you create the presentation on your
computer hard drive and then later decide to show it from another computer
or from a disk, you will need to update the address of the movie clip
(the easiest way to do this is by reinserting the movie clip once you
have moved the PowerPoint to the new location)
- Once the frame of the movie is on the slide, you can reposition it on the
slide (by dragging it) and resize it (by dragging on one of the little boxes
or resizing handlebars). Caution: if you make the size too big the
video image will become distorted and harder to see, so you usually can have
it no larger than about 4 or 5 inches wide.
To Insert a Movie From Power Point Gallery:
- Create a new slide (title slide best).
- Click on the Insert menu, then scroll down to Movies and Sound
and then click on Movie From Gallery. [Note: In order to be
able to access the Movies and Sounds files that come with the PowerPoint Gallery
these must have been installed onto your computer when you installed the program
or you need to insert the CD on which you have the original PowerPoint program.
If these files are not on your computer and you don't have the original CD,
then when you try to insert the files from the Gallery nothing will happen
when you click on insert in the next step!]
- Select one of the video files, and click Insert. This creates a link
to the movie clip (it does not actually insert the clip). The first frame
of the movie will appear on your screen.
- As you did above, once the frame of the movie is on the slide, you can reposition
it on the slide and resize it.
Inserting Sound From a CD
a. Playing sound from a CD:
(you will need to have the CD in your computer when you show your Power Point
presentation if you choose this option)
- Insert > movies & sounds > Play CD audio track
- In the play options box that appears, select the sound track that you want
to play. You can also select what segment of the track you wish to play (set
the timer start and end point)
- Click on the OK button
- You may also choose to select the box to look the track until stopped.
b. Save CD track and insert the whole or part of the sound track into Power
- From Insert menu > movies & sounds > movie from
file (NOT sound from file)
- Navigate to the CD & click on the sound track you want to import
- Click on the convert button
- In the box that appears, give your sound file a name (songname) instead
of the default "Track 1 Movie"
- Navigate to where you want save the movie (it must be in the same
folder in which you have your PowerPoint presentation saved. If you save it
somewhere else you will run in problems with the sound file not being found.
This is especially true if you move the presentation to a zip disk or to another
- Choose one of the following options:
- Record the whole sound track. If you want to import the entire
sound track from the CD, click on the save button and the whole CD track
will be saved and a movie icon will appear on the slide. However, typically
you will include only a segment of a sound track as (a) you usually don't
want to have sound playing for that long (b) it will take up about 3-4
megabytes of disk space (which is a lot!).
- Record just a segment. To do this, click on the options
button. This will bring up the box for Audio CD import options. Use the
slide bar to select just that portion of the track that you want. To check
that this is the segement you want you can click on the play button.
Once you have made your selection, click the OK button. This will
return you to the box that asks you where you want to save your selection.
- Make sure your sound file is going to be saved in the correct location and
the click the save button --> You will then be asked you if you
want this to play automatically --> Click No (it's better to have
the sound play when you click on this icon rather than automatically when
the slide opens).
- A QuickTime movie icon on your page. Resize it so it is very small and then
move it to an inconspicuous place on the slide.
When you show your presentation, this icon will appear, To play the sound,
move the cursor over it until it "gives you the finger." Click and
the sound file will play.
c. Insert action button that links to the sound file:
- From slide show menu --> action button --> sound
- Cross hairs appear (in place of the cursor) > draw a button with this
- The action button dialog box pops up. Select hyperlink to > other
file > navigate to the sound file that you have saved in your Power
- Click on the "Use relative path link" box (so that the
hyperlink is relative to file where you have it saved).
- Click OK
- When you are in slide show mode and click on this action button it will
bring up a QuickTime player screen. You then click the play button to play
d. Record sound clip while playing the CD:
This is not a very good option as it also records all the background sound
that you and anyone else around you makes!
- Start playing the desired CD track.
- When you get to the segment/clip that you want to record, in your Power
Point presentation from Insert menu --> Movies and sound
--> record sound.
- In the box that pops up, click record.
- Press stop when you are done recording the clip you wish to insert
- Then follow the direction above under "Importing sound into Power Point."
Other PowerPoint Guidelines:
- Introduction to PowerPoint (http://www.d.umn.edu/~hrallis/guides/PP/PP2000Intro.html)
- Creating a Power Point Slide Show: (http://www.d.umn.edu/~hrallis/guides/PP/slideshow.html)
- Saving a PowerPoint presentation as a web page
to the Index of How To Guidelines