PowerPoint Basics:
Toolbars

By default, PowerPoint will display the Title, Menu, Standard, Formatting, Drawing and Status bars.

Title Bar

PowerPoint has a standard Title Bar. It shows the PowerPoint icon at the far left and the current document's file name in the middle. At the far right are the window control buttons: Minimize, Maximize and Close.

The Close button on the Title Bar closes PowerPoint and all open presentations. There are other Close buttons in the Interface! Be careful what you click!!

Menu Bar

PowerPoint's Menu Bar is a fairly standard set of cascading menus - menus open from inside other menus.

A small arrow at the right of a menu item means that this item leads to a submenu. A set of 3 dots means that a dialog will open.

Open menu from keyboard: You can open a menu with a key combo, ALT + the underscored letter in the menu's name. For example, to open the View menu from the keyboard you would hold down the ALT key and press the V key on the keyboard.

No key combo is needed after the menu is open. To choose an item in an open menu, just type the underscored letter, like the N for the Normal view.

Keyboard shortcuts: Some menu commands have a key or key combo to the side in the menu, like the F5 beside Slide Show above. Such a keyboard shortcut lets you avoid the menu altogether!

The Help text box is part of all Office XP and Office 2003 programs.  You can type your question or keywords in the text box and just press Enter to get a list of possible Help topics. Click a topic and the Help dialog opens directly to that topic.

Standard Bar

The Standard Bar is not quite standard between the various versions of PowerPoint.

Missing buttons: If your PowerPoint window does not show all of the buttons, then either your window is too narrow or your Standard and Formatting bars are sharing one row. See Arrows below.

Click on a button in the image of the Standard Bar above. A short explanation about what the button does will appear in a separate window. You can switch back and forth between the windows or you can use the Next button in the new window to go through all the buttons in order.

OR

View all descriptions on one page in a new window.
  all buttons
     all buttons

PowerPoint 2003 adds a Permission button and a Research button and moves the Search feature to the File menu.

Formatting Bar

Click on a button in the image of the PowerPoint 2002/03 Formatting Bar above.  A short explanation about what the button does will appear in a separate window. You can switch back and forth between the windows or you can use the Next button in the new window to go through all the buttons in order for a particular bar.

OR

View all the descriptions on one page in a new window.

All buttons

Drawing Bar

Click on a button in the image of the Drawing Bar above. A short explanation about what the button does will appear in a separate window. You can switch back and forth between the windows or you can use the Next button in the new window to go through all the buttons in order.

OR

View all the descriptions on one page in a new window.

Status Bar

The diagonal lines in the corner of the Status Bar mean that the window can be resized by dragging its edges.

Click on a button in the image of the Status Bar above. A short explanation about what the button does will appear in a separate window. You can switch back and forth between the windows or you can use the Next button in the new window to go through all the buttons in order.

OR

View all the descriptions on one page in a new window.

Managing Toolbars

You are not stuck with the default toolbars. You can display or hide any of the toolbars. You can even customize what items are on a menu or toolbar. Surely you can find a way to make the tools you use the most easy to find!

Display/Hide a Toolbar

To see a list of available toolbars:

• Right click on a blank part of a toolbar to get a popup menu
    OR
• From the menu, choose  View  |  Toolbars

A checkmark shows which toolbars are currently displayed. Clicking a toolbar name toggles the toolbar on or off and closes the menu list. When you open the list again, the checkmark will have changed.

Dock or Float

The toolbars can be docked or floating, meaning that they can be attached to an edge of the window or they can float freely over the PowerPoint window.

You can have more than one docked toolbar in the same row. The buttons that won't fit in the window will be hidden. You'll want a big window!

Methods to dock/float:

• Drag:  
  To change docking locations,  drag a docked toolbar's handle (the vertical bar at the left end of the toolbar) to another edge of the window and drop after the bar lines up on the window edge.
   
  To float a toolbar,  drag by the handle until the bar is free of the window edge and then drop.
   
  To dock a floating bar, drag the title of the bar to the window edge until the floating bar docks.
   

• Double-click:
  
  To dock a floating bar, double-click on its title bar.
   

If there is room in the window, you can slide a docked toolbar away from the edge by dragging on the handle.
 

Arrows  

Double arrow : Indicates that there are hidden buttons. This happens when there are too many buttons to fit in the width of the window.

Down arrow : Clicking the down arrow at the right end of the toolbar opens a menu with a palette of the hidden buttons and either a command to show all of the buttons in one row or a command to show two rows of buttons.

Confusion: Which buttons are hidden when there is not enough room for all of them?

The least used buttons are hidden. As you continue using buttons, which buttons are displayed will change!

~~  1 Cor. 10:31 ...whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.  ~~

Last updated: 22 Jan 2008