Windows PowerPoint 97/2000: Introduction What is PowerPoint? Microsoft PowerPoint is a tool you can use to communicate your ideas through visual aids that appear professionally designed yet are easy to produce. With PowerPoint you can create a variety of media, including black and white overheads, color overheads, 35-mm slides and on-screen electronic slide shows. In addition, you can prepare speaker’s notes and print outlines and handouts for your audience. All these components integrated into one file make up a PowerPoint Presentation. Starting PowerPoint To launch PowerPoint, click the Start button on the Windows 95 or 98 taskbar, select Programs,  Microsoft Office (if you have Office 2000 you may be able to select the icon for PowerPoint directly) and then click Microsoft PowerPoint. You might also find the PowerPoint icon on your MS Office Toolbar.  If you get the Tip of the Day dialog box, read the hint and click OK.  The PowerPoint startup dialog box appears.  To begin working with PowerPoint, you will need either to open an existing presentation or create a new presentation using one of three available options. Creating a New Presentation Whether your presentation will be in the form of an electronic slide show, 35 mm slides, overheads or just paper print outs, the process of creating a PowerPoint presentation is basically the same.  You can start with a template, a blank presentation or a design template.  To get to these basic forms, there are three options. AutoContent Wizard The AutoContent Wizard is a series of dialog boxes that gets you started with creating a new presentation using a template.  You'll start by answering questions about your presentation and end up with the ready-made slides.  To activate this on-line guide from the PowerPoint startup dialog box, select AutoContent Wizard and click OK.  If PowerPoint is  already running, select New from the File menu.  On the New Presentation dialog box, click the Presentations tab, click the icon for AutoContent Wizard and click OK.  To bypass the wizard, click instead the icon for the template you want and you'll get the slides directly. Blank Presentation The blank presentation template is a design template that uses the default formatting and design.  It is useful if you want to decide on another design template after working on the presentation content or if you want to create your own custom formatting and design from scratch. To create a new presentation based on the blank presentation template, select Blank Presentation from the PowerPoint startup dialog box and click OK.  With PowerPoint already running, you can (1) select New from the File menu, click the General tab on the New Presentation dialog box, click the Blank Presentation icon and click OK or (2) click the New button on the Standard toolbar.  The New Slide dialog box appears.