When you open a Microsoft Word document in Microsoft PowerPoint, it will appear as a text outline in Outline View.

Although this is technically true—the text will be imported into PowerPoint, and you can immediately print slides from the document—it is also misleading. Your text will not automatically be formatted to fit onto the slides, nor will it be converted from simple text into fancy bullet lists and impressive slides. You might have the bones of a presentation once you open the file in PowerPoint, but there is a lot of work required before that skeleton will come to life.

The basic steps required to create a rough PowerPoint presentation from a Word document are simple. When you start PowerPoint, the first thing you'll see is the PowerPoint dialog box, which gives you three options for creating a new presentation, and one for opening an existing presentation. Click Cancel to close this dialog box. Then, choose Open from the File menu.

In the Open dialog box, open the File Of Type list by clicking the down arrow, scrolling through the list of file formats, and choosing All Files (*.*). Use the directory tree to browse through your files and find the Word document you want to turn into a presentation. When you've found the file, either double-click it or click it and then click Open.

The document will be opened as an outline in PowerPoint. From there, you will need to alter the document to turn it into the slides you want. The slides created from your text will be numbered and identified by small slide icons. Generally, each paragraph will be a single slide. This may or may not be how you want to divide the material. Even if it is, there will be a fair amount of work required before your paragraphs will look like the slides your boss is expecting.

Microsoft PowerPoint 's Add Design window lets you choose the look you want for your presentation from casual toprofessional.

What you have at this point is a series of black-and-white slides with text that doesn't fit properly and in the same basic text format as it was when you created it in Word.

When PowerPoint opens your file and creates the outline, there will be a small window in the upper-right of the outline page titled Color. This window lets you see what your slides look like with a background design applied to it. Because the slides don't have a background until you choose one, this window is useless at this point; close it to get it out of your way. (It will reappear when you apply a background to your slides later.)



Basic Moves.

Here are some simple techniques you can use in the conversion process.

Using the Outlining toolbar. The Outlining toolbar, which appears along the left side of the window when you're in Outline View in PowerPoint, contains tools to help you quickly organize your presentation. These tools let you perform tasks such as changing the indent level of a bullet or moving a bullet or slide within the structure of the outline. You also can use buttons on this toolbar to expand and collapse levels of text on a slide and to hide or show formatting.

Editing titles and body text. To edit the text on your slides, work with the document in the same way you would if it were still in Word. You can type, delete, move text, and create text effects such as bold or underline with toolbar and menu commands similar to Word's. You can edit the text in Outline View or in Slide View. (To go to Slide View, click the Slide View icon, which is the far-left icon of the set of five in the bottom-left corner of the PowerPoint window.)

Choosing slide layouts. Before you can completely arrange the text as you want it in the outline, you'll need to choose the layout you want for each slide. To do this, select a slide, choose Slide Layout from the Format menu, and select the layout that works best for that slide. The default option is the bullet list layout. If the text for that slide doesn't have bullet points, your text will be inserted on the slide as the title. (To create bullet points where there are none, follow the steps in the section about reorganizing the material in your presentation, discussed later in this article.)

Of course, not all slides need to be bullet lists. Some text can stand alone nicely, and if you want a slide with just a sentence or two on it, you can do that easily. The Title Slide format works well if there is a slide where you just want text in a standard sentence or paragraph format. It will make your text the title, and there will be a box beneath the title to insert a subtitle.

When you've chosen a design for your slides, Microsoft PowerPoint's Color preview window will show a color version of the slide you're working on in Outline View.

If you don't want a subtitle on this slide, you can change that by going to the Slide View and working with the slide. Click the subtitle box, then right-click the frame around the text box and select Cut from the shortcut menu that appears.

You then might need to move the box in which your text appears so it is centered on the slide. To do so, click the text to select it, and a box will appear around the text. Position the cursor over this box; it will turn to a four- way arrow (a "crosshairs"). When it does, press and hold the left mouse button while you drag the box into position. When you have the text positioned where you want it, release the mouse button.



Initial Formatting.

At first, the outline will not bear much resemblance to the presentation you have in mind. With just a few steps, though, you can turn the plain text outline into, if not a polished presentation, at least something that looks like it could be turned into slides someday.

Removing unwanted material. There might be blank slides between paragraphs or at other points in the outline, depending upon the formatting of the original document. Generally, anywhere that you pressed ENTER when you typed the Word document, PowerPoint will begin a new slide. So, for example, if you pressed ENTER several times to move your text down the page, or to put a space between two sections of the document, you may have a whole series of blank slides. You'll want to remove these, unless you have material you want to insert at those points in the presentation.

To remove a slide, click either the slide icon or the number next to it, then choose Delete Slide from the Edit menu or press the DELETE key. To delete a series of slides, highlight them by clicking at the beginning of the text on the first one and dragging the pointer until all the slides you want to remove are highlighted, then delete them as if they were a single slide.

Making it fit. You might need to change the font size for the material to fit onto the slides. To see how the slides look, go to Slide View. If the text does not fit on the slide, you'll need to change the font size. To do that, return to Outline View by clicking the Outline View icon immediately to the right of the Slide View icon. Choose Select All from the Edit menu, then use the Font Size list to change the font size. If this makes the outline too small for you to read it, choose Zoom from the View menu and enlarge the view to 100% or whatever is comfortable for you to read.



Reorganizing The Material.

Here are some tips for fine-tuning your converted documents.

Create bullet lists from paragraphs. Many topics in presentations lend themselves to bullet lists. If your document is not already an outline, but is in paragraph format, you might want to remove much of the text to pare it down to an outline with bullet points.

Microsoft PowerPoint 's Slide Layout dialog box lets you choose the format that will work best for each slide; the default option is the Bulleted List.

To change a paragraph of text into a bullet list, first delete any text you don't want. Press ENTER at each place you want to begin a new bullet point. This will create a new slide; you can use the Demote button on the toolbar or your TAB key to indent the text and make it a bullet point under the previous slide text.

Rearrange bullet points. There are two easy ways to rearrange bullet points within a single slide. One is to use the Move Up and Move Down arrows on the Outline Toolbar. To do this, click anywhere on the bullet point you want to move, then click the appropriate arrow. Each time you click the arrow, the bullet point will move up or down one position on the slide.

Alternatively, you can drag and drop the text. To select the line you want to move, click to the left of that bullet point. After it is highlighted, hold down the left mouse button and drag the cursor in the direction you want to move the text. A horizontal line will appear in the outline as you move the mouse. Release the mouse button when this line is positioned where you want the bullet point to be located.

Move slides. To move an entire slide to a different point in your presentation, select the material on the slide you want to move and drag it to the location in which you want it placed. You also can do this in Slide Sorter View (which you go to by clicking the button with four small slides on it) by selecting the slide and dragging it to the space between the slides where you want to insert it. A vertical line will appear where you move the cursor; release the mouse button when the line is where you want the slide to be inserted.

Split or combine slides. To divide one slide into two or more, press ENTER at the point where you want a break between slides. To combine two slides into one, place the cursor at the end of the first slide you want to merge and press DELETE. You'll then need to use the steps listed above to position the text correctly within the bullet list.



Improve Your Look.

At some point, you'll be ready to add some personality to your presentation by choosing a design for your slides. While you don't need to do this until you're done editing the text and are ready to print your presentation or display it on-screen, it can help you get a better feel for how the overall presentation looks if you do it earlier in the process.

To select a design for your slide presentation, choose Select All from the Edit menu, then choose Apply Design from the Format menu. This will open a dialog box that lets you preview the various slide designs without applying each one to your presentation one by one.

To preview a design, click its name. After you've found one you like, click Apply. If you're in Slide Sorter View, all your slides will be formatted using this design. If you're in Outline View, the outline remains in black and white, but the Color window reappears and shows whichever slide you're currently working on in full color.



Pros & Cons Of Converting Documents.

Whether converting a Word document into a PowerPoint presentation will be easier for you than creating the presentation from scratch will depend upon several factors. First, you must consider how the Word document is composed. If you have a document that is in outline format in Word, it will convert more easily into a PowerPoint presentation than a document in paragraph format simply because it will already have bullet points typical of those in a PowerPoint presentation.

Second, ask yourself how much material is there in the Word document, and how much do you want in the presentation? For some simple presentations, or for presentations where you would need to make extensive changes in the material, it might be easier to enter the information from scratch, using one of PowerPoint's templates.

With as much reformatting as you're likely to have to do, it may be less time-consuming—and less frustrating—to start from scratch. However, if you're comfortable working in the Outline View and don't type quickly, you might find that the conversion process is your best road to a finished presentation.



Another Option.

If you want to take part of a Word document and add it to a PowerPoint presentation, or make it part of a new presentation (but not the whole thing), you can import just that section of text from Word instead of opening the Word file in PowerPoint.

To do so, open the file containing the text you want to include on your slide. Highlight the section of text you want and choose Copy from the Edit menu or use the Copy button on the toolbar. Go to the slide where you want to insert the text from your Word document and choose Text Box from the Insert menu. Place your cursor where you want one corner of the text box and drag it until you've created the text box size you want. (You can adjust it later if necessary.)

After you've created the text box, choose Paste from the Edit menu (or click the Paste button on the toolbar) to insert the material that you have copied to the Clipboard.

If you decide to convert a Word file into a PowerPoint presentation or just use pieces of it in a new presentation, you now have the tools to make that plain financial report into a presentation even your boss will be proud of.

by Whitney Potsus