PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Build and Edit Slides in Normal View

By Geetesh Bajaj and James Gordon from Office 2011 for Mac All-in-One For Dummies

Office 2011 for Mac includes PowerPoint, an essential tool for presentations. The workhorse editing view in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac is the Normal view. In Normal view, you build presentations by adding slides, titles, text, and rich content, and then animating them judiciously. When working with a small screen, hide and display the Ribbon by clicking the Ribbon button on the Standard toolbar. Show and hide the Standard toolbar by clicking the little button in the upper-right corner of the window.

When working in a smaller window, some Ribbon controls become smaller or their labels disappear. Use PowerPoint’s Ribbon preferences to turn Ribbon groups on and off to control overcrowding on the Ribbon.

In Normal view, you have the following options and features:

Presentation: The filename in PowerPoint is the presentation title you see at the top of the screen.
Menu bar: This is the topmost set of controls.
Standard toolbar: The Standard toolbar is at the top part of each document window, along with standard close (red), minimize (yellow), and maximize (green) buttons. The Standard toolbar is programmable via VBA and AppleScript. It’s roughly equivalent to the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) of Microsoft Office for Windows.
Show/Hide Toolbar: This tablet-shaped button toggles the Standard toolbar's visibility off and on.
Ribbon: The Ribbon is new to PowerPoint 2011. The Ribbon displays beneath the Standard toolbar.
Slide: Normal View is where you edit individual slides by adding text, sounds, moves, pictures, and graphics in layers. You can order layers and animate everything.
View buttons: Click these buttons to switch the view to Normal view, Slide Sorter view, or Slide Show view. Use the View menu for more options.
Zoom: In addition to the zoom control on the Standard toolbar, use the slider and fit to pane X button in the bottom-right corner of the window.
Toolbox: Click the Toolbox button on the Standard toolbar to display the Toolbox.
Media Browser: Click the Media button on the Standard toolbar to display the Media Browser.

Like other Office applications, you can find context-sensitive pop-up menus just about everywhere you right-click in PowerPoint.

The following list lets you in on a couple of minor secrets about using Normal view that can make working smoother:

To run the presentation starting with the slide you're working on, click the miniature screen button, the rightmost view button in the lower-left corner of your screen.
To end a running presentation, press the Escape key.
To change to Outline View in the left pane, click the Outline View button at the top of the pane.