✔ Computer screen: Your computer screen is a suitable way to display your presentation when you’re showing it to just one or two other people.

      ✔ Big-screen TV: If you have a big-screen TV that can accommodate computer input, it’s ideal for showing presentations to medium-sized audiences – say 10 to 12 people in a small conference room.

      ✔ Computer projector: A computer projector projects an image of your computer monitor onto a screen so large audiences can view it.

      ✔ Webcast: You can show your presentation over the Internet. That way, your audience doesn’t all have to be in the same place at the same time. Anyone with a web browser can sit in on your presentation.

      ✔ Printed pages: Printed pages enable you to distribute a printed copy of your entire presentation to each member of your audience. (When you print your presentation, you can print one slide per page, or you can print several slides on each page to save paper.)

      ✔ Overhead transparencies: Overhead transparencies can be used to show your presentation using an overhead projector. It’s a little old-school to be sure, but some people still do it this way.

      ✔ Slide layouts: Every slide has a slide layout that controls how information is arranged on the slide. A slide layout is simply a collection of one or more placeholders, which set aside an area of the slide to hold information. Depending on the layout that you choose for a slide, the placeholders can hold text, graphics, clip art, sound or video files, tables, charts, graphs, diagrams, or other types of content.

      ✔ Background: Every slide has a background, which provides a backdrop for the slide’s content. The background can be a solid color; a blend of two colors; a subtle texture, such as marble or parchment; a pattern, such as diagonal lines, bricks, or tiles; or an image file. Each slide can have a different background, but you usually want to use the same background for every slide in your presentation to provide a consistent look.

      ✔ Themes: Themes are combinations of design elements such as color schemes and fonts that make it easy to create attractive slides that don’t look ridiculous. You can stray from the themes if you want, but you should do so only if you have a better eye than the design gurus who work for Microsoft.

      ✔ Slide Masters: Slide Masters are special slides that control the basic design and formatting options for slides in your presentation. Slide Masters are closely related to layouts – in fact, each layout has its own Slide Master that determines the position and size of basic title and text placeholders; the background and color scheme used for the presentation; and font settings, such as typefaces, colors, and sizes. In addition, Slide Masters can contain graphic and text objects that you want to appear on every slide.

      You can edit the Slide Masters to change the appearance of all the slides in your presentation at once. This helps to ensure that the slides have a consistent appearance.

      ✔ Title and body text: Most slide layouts include placeholders for title and body text. You can type any text that you want into these placeholders. By default, PowerPoint formats the text according to the Slide Master, but you can easily override this formatting to use any font, size, styles like bold or italic, or text color that you want.

      ✔ Text boxes: You can add text anywhere on a slide by drawing a text box and then typing text. Text boxes enable you to add text that doesn’t fit conveniently in the title or body text placeholders.

      ✔ Shapes: You can use PowerPoint’s drawing tools to add a variety of shapes to your slides. You can use predefined AutoShapes, such as rectangles, circles, stars, arrows, and flowchart symbols. Alternatively, you can create your own shapes by using basic line, polygon, and freehand drawing tools.

      ✔ Illustrations: You can illustrate your slides by inserting clip art, photographs, and other graphic elements. PowerPoint comes with a large collection of clip art pictures you can use, and Microsoft provides an even larger collection of clip art images online. And, of course, you can insert photographs from your own picture library.

      ✔ Charts and diagrams: PowerPoint includes a slick diagramming feature called SmartArt that enables you to create several common types of diagrams, including organization charts, cycle diagrams, and others. In addition, you can insert pie charts, line or bar charts, and many other chart types.

      ✔ Video and Sound: You can add sound clips or video files to your slides. You can also add background music or a custom narration.