Using OPEN OFFICE to create slide presentations
(article written by John Hollins ... edited on 31 Aug 2010)
I wrote a fairly long article on how to download Open Office, and how
to create text documents & PDFs, in my post for Saturday 13 March …
http://nottu3a.blogspot.com/2010_03_01_archive.html
Using OO to create slide presentations is easy …
Click on the OO shortcut on your Desktop, & then select "Presentation".
On the next page (page 1), just click on “Create”
You will now see a three column layout on the webpage.
I usually close down the right hand column, labelled as “Tasks”.
In the left hand column, I usually generate a load of blank slides as follows:
Rt mouse click inside blank slide number 1 > Copy
Use the keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + V numerous times, to create as
many blank slides as you wish. Keep the Ctrl key pressed down, as
you click on the letter V several times.
To write text … select the font style & size on the top toolbar
Click on the capital letter T on the bottom toolbar.
Click on the slide and start typing.
You can adjust the position of the text, font size
and colour as in Powerpoint (PPT)
Click on “Insert” on the top toolbar, to insert a blank slide, a duplicate slide, a picture or a table, etc, as you would in PPT.
When adjusting the size of a photo on one of your slides, keep the Shift key
pressed down while you do so, to preserve the proportions. Use reduced sized
photos, which is easy-peasy to do in Gimp …
see my website ... http://jwebdesigns.angelfire.com/ .
On the bottom toolbar, there are various shapes and an arrow key you can use.
The controls for the style & colour for the arrow key are just above the left
hand column.
You can move one slide above or below another in the left hand column, by
clicking on it, and dragging it with your mouse to a new position.
To start a slide show from the current slide on your screen, just press the
F5 key … easy-peasy.
Press the Escape (Esc) key to go back to your OO slides.
Once the first slide is up on the screen (after pressing F5) you can hide
it from view, either by pressing the letter B (black) or the letter W
(white) on your keyboard. Press the same key again, when you’re ready to
start / resume your talk. (You can do this in Microsoft PPT also).
Saving your work … File > Save as … to save your work as an ODF presentation (a dot odp file).
When using another computer for a slide presentation, make sure it’s got
Open Office on it, or you won’t be able to display your slides.
I hope this brief outline will be of some help. Overall, I find OO easier
to use than Microsoft Powerpoint 2003.
