Customizing the Work Area

Customizing the PowerPoint work area makes designing relational presentations much easier. Upon opening PowerPoint, a blank slide show containing one slide will be displayed. We now will make sure your view of PowerPoint looks similar to the example below. Note, however, that the picture shown is PowerPoint 2003. If using PowerPoint XP, your imagery and colors will look somewhat different.

Making Slide Thumbnails Visible

Check that you have the slide thumbnails displayed and have the same slide layout as above.

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Choosing the Right Slide Layout

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Displaying Useful Toolbars

Finally we will display a couple of additional toolbars. On the Tools menu, click Customize, and then select the Toolbars tab. Place a check mark next to the following toolbars: Standard, Formatting, Drawing, and Picture.

Moving the Drawing Toolbar

Notice that the Drawing toolbar appears at the bottom of the screen by default. It's a good idea to pull this toolbar to the top with the rest of them. Move your cursor over the vertical dotted line to the left of the word Draw on the Drawing toolbar. Notice that the cursor changes to four arrows. At this point you can left-click and drag the toolbar to the top and drop it amongst the other toolbars. Arrange the toolbars to your liking. We recommend having each toolbar on its own line so that all the icons are visible.

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