

Making Posters with PowerPoint
Creating a research poster in PowerPoint is a multistep process. These tips will help you produce a high-quality poster for your presentation or event. NOTE: Once you have created and spellchecked your poster, save your PowerPoint file as a PDF for file submission and printing.
Things to consider before beginning
What size is the poster.
PowerPoint places a limit on the dimensions of slides; if you plan on printing a poster that has dimensions larger than 56″ you will need to create it with another piece of software like Photoshop or InDesign.
How much does a poster cost?
Get an estimate using the price calculator .
Where are the images coming from?
Images copied from the web are low resolution (72 dpi) and are not good quality for a printed poster. Minimum image resolution should be 150 dpi at actual printing size for best results.
What is the deadline?
Posters are printed Monday through Friday with a standard 24-hour turnaround time. Plan ahead to avoid high volume times for quicker turnaround.
Start with a template
Choose from a variety of styles and sizes. Download a template .

Create a new poster
Open a new document in PowerPoint.
- Go to Design –> Slide Size
- Choose Custom Slide Size
- Set Width and Height (max. 56″)
- Choose the Landscape (horizontal) or Portrait orientation.
- Click OK .
- If a message pops up telling you that “ The current page size exceeds the printable area of the paper in the printer ” just click OK .
Basic design tips
Academic posters are a summary of what you did, how you did it, and what you learned. Most are divided into four parts:
- Introduction (what you did)
- Design or methods (how you did it)
- Conclusion (what you learned)
Space is limited. Choose your words and graphics carefully.
Don’t forget to SPELL CHECK your poster before submitting for print!
Design your file at full size (100%). If your poster is 36″ wide x 24″ tall then set your slide dimensions to 36″ x 24″.
Present information the way you would normally read —left to right, top to bottom.
Use columns and line breaks to divide the poster into smaller sections. Use bullets instead of long paragraphs to summarize information.
Maintain a good contrast between the background color and the text. Consider using a light color background and a dark text. A gradient color fill background, especially black, will print poorly and is not recommended.
Someone standing 3–4 feet away should be able to read everything on your poster. Here are some suggested fonts and sizes:
Sans serif: Lucida Sans, Lucida Grande ; Serif: Palatino, Book Antiqua
- Title: 72 point
- Headings/section titles: 40 point
- Body text: 24 point
- Captions: 18 point
Limit yourself to 2–3 types of fonts in order to create consistency and unity.
A picture is worth 1,000 words. Poster content should be 60% images, 40% text . Use graphs, charts, tables, and photos to summarize and present data.
High resolution images ( 150 dpi or higher ) are required for printing high quality posters.
Color mode for best results is CMYK .
Insert images directly into PowerPoint . Don’t cut and paste, or copy and paste.
Copy and paste Excel charts and graphs into PowerPoint.
To adjust an image and retain proper proportion, hold the shift key on your keyboard, click, and drag the corners to scale . Enlarging images in PowerPoint is not recommended.
Saving to PDF
CougPrints Plus requires a PDF file set to your custom page size . To save a PowerPoint poster to PDF, follow the steps outlined in Saving PowerPoint Presentations as PDF Files .
Printing your poster
Order your poster online from CougPrints Plus by filling in the submission form and uploading your PDF file. Pick up and pay for posters at CougPrints Plus in the CUB.
Place your poster order!

4 Best Ways to Check a PowerPoint Presentation for Plagiarism
If you’re an experienced educator who deals with constant checking students’ works, plagiarism checkers are the tools which are always at your fingerprints. You obviously know how to catch copied text in Word documents. But what if you need to check a PowerPoint presentation for duplicate content?
Today, I’ll look into the odd world of plagiarism scanning and give you four different ways to check a presentation for plagiarism:
- Check PowerPoint metadata
- Use a plagiarism checker
- Check images for plagiarism
- Provide an oral pop quiz
1. Check PowerPoint Metadata
When it comes to assessing your students’ presentations, the first thing I recommend you to do is to check that the entire file wasn’t taken from the internet or somewhere else. Unfortunately, over and over again, I have to come across with students who don’t even care to import slides from one presentation to a new PPT project and dare to hand in lifted works. It’s quite simple to expose this kind of deception.
PowerPoint documents come with so-called metadata where typically useful and interesting information is stored. To check a presentation that looks suspicious, open the document, click on File , and choose Properties . From here, you can learn about the original author, who modified the document, and when it was created and edited.

This method really works but, as I already said, it helps to detect only worst offenders. To find “smarter” plagiarizers, try the other methods.
2. Use a Plagiarism Checker
Many people ask: Can powerpoint be checked for plagiarism? Although there are many plagiarism detectors on the market that can detect duplicate content, few of them can handle PowerPoint presentations. You’re a lucky man if you have access to Turnitin plagiarism checker and can use it for free as a representative of a university. This is one of the few tools that allow you to upload PowerPoint documents and check them for duplication as other file types. If you don’t have access, you can contact the sales department of Turnitin to buy it.
For those who need to check a PPT and ask Google for “ powerpoint plagiarism checker free” , a good alternative to Turnitin is PlagScan . To try how it works, you can subscribe for a demo version. With the trial, you’ll be able to scan a presentation with up to 1,000 words for free. To get started, just register and upload your PPT file.

In a minute or two you’ll get a full report that shows a plagiarism percentage, highlights the similarities in the text, and includes a list of the sources found.

PlagScan is a nice tool but if you want to check more than one presentation, you’ll have to pay for credits. Prices depend on the word count and start at $18.95 for 6,500 words.
If you want to check PowerPoint presentations without paying a fee, you can use a free plagiarism checker. However, you’ll have to spend some time on the prep work. Free tools don’t support PPT files, so you need to copy the text from the presentation and paste it into the checker box or extract the text from the presentation to, let’s say, a Word document.
For example, let’s copy the text from our presentation and check it with the free plagiarism detector by Search Engines Reports . Here what we got:

Looks good, doesn’t it?
3. Check Images for Plagiarism
This method will be most interested to those instructors who want to see unique photos/drawings in their students works.
You can fast and easy check any image for plagiarism with TinEye . Save a picture from a PowerPoint slide on your computer and upload it or simply drag and drop it into the TinEye search box. The service will compare the image with other pictures on the internet, and in a couple of seconds you’ll see the full list of resources which contain similar images.

With TinEye, you can find out where a picture came from, how it’s being used, and if modified versions of the image exist. But the most important thing is that you can see whether a picture from your student’s presentation is original or not.
4. Provide an Oral Pop Quiz
This is probably the most reliable, yet simple way to check if your students created their presentations on their own or just plagiarized them. This method goes beyond a technological solution.
The only thing you need to do is to provide an oral pop quiz at the lesson. Quiz your students on their presentations. If they can’t answer basic questions, they didn’t create it.
Final Thoughts
This article describes four different ways of checking PowerPoint presentations for plagiarism. Which one is the best? That’s really up to you to decide. If you’re a teacher, you may get some more useful tips that can make your life easier while checking students’ papers for plagiarism from this article.
I guessed I answered your question. Can powerpoint be checked for plagiarism? I don’t think that you’re going to ask it again or look for a powerpoint plagiarism checker free . If you know some other ways I can add on this list, please, let me know in the comments.

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10 little-known facts about PowerPoint [infographic]

PowerPoint is known to the world as the go-to medium for presentations.
It also has a long (and strange) history. From vector art to karaoke, this software has been used for a lot more than just quarterly earnings updates. Here are some of the lesser known facts about the famous slideware collected in one handy infographic. And when you’re finished, check out the Poll Everywhere plugin for PowerPoint and start adding live audience participation to your presentations.
Read more: Interactive PowerPoint games that engage large classrooms

PowerPoint was originally called “Presenter.” It was created in 1987 by a company called Forethought Inc. for Macintosh. Approximately 35 million PowerPoint presentations are given each day by an estimated 500 million users worldwide. 40 words is the average PowerPoint slide length.
Use control/command+a to show the pointer. This only works when you are in presentation mode. Former Talking Heads frontman David Bryne is one of many artists who use PowerPoint’s graphic tools as an art medium. Most people tune out of a presentation within 10 minutes. Many presenters use a Poll Slide to re-engage the audience, via a PowerPoint add-in from Poll Everywhere.
Embed an Excel spreadsheet into your presentation by inserting it as an object. PowerPoint can run videos and websites directly from the web with a LiveSlides plugin. Right-click on a shape or group of shapes to save your selection as its own image. This makes PowerPoint an easy vector art tool. PowerPoint Karaoke is a real thing! To play, presenters deliver a presentation without knowing what’s on the slides ahead of time.
Bonus fact: this infographic was made entirely in PowerPoint.
The hybrid work solution that enables audience engagement through live, inclusive conversations across organizations. Whether it’s remote meetings, in-person events, or hybrid workspaces, Poll Everywhere gives your audience a voice and delivers authentic feedback at scale.
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How to Convert Word to PowerPoint
Last Updated: February 20, 2022
This article was co-authored by wikiHow staff writer, Nicole Levine, MFA . Nicole Levine is a Technology Writer and Editor for wikiHow. She has more than 20 years of experience creating technical documentation and leading support teams at major web hosting and software companies. Nicole also holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Portland State University and teaches composition, fiction-writing, and zine-making at various institutions. This article has been viewed 894,384 times. Learn more...
Are you looking for the easiest way to turn your Word document into PowerPoint slides? By making a few quick formatting changes to your document, you can import the document into PowerPoint and automatically create pre-formatted slides without having to retype anything! This wikiHow article will show you the best way to convert a Microsoft Word document into a PowerPoint presentation on your PC or Mac.
Formatting the Document Before Converting

- Each section needs a title at the top, and the title should be on its own line. The title will then become the title of that section's PowerPoint slide.
- For example, let's say the first page of your Word document contains sales information that you'd like to appear on a PowerPoint slide called "Sales." At the top of that section, you'd type "Sales" as the title, since you want that to be the name of your slide. Below that would be the content of the slide. [1] X Trustworthy Source Microsoft Support Technical support and product information from Microsoft. Go to source
- Press Enter or Return after each section so there's at least one empty line between the end of a section and the title of the next slide.

- If you don't see style examples on the toolbar, click the Styles menu to view them.

- Once you change the first title to "Header 1," go through the rest of your document and do the same with other slide titles. You'll want all of the titles to be set to this style so they'll convert properly.

- Make sure you have at least one blank line between the title and the rest of the page's content.

- In the content area, press the Enter or Return key to add space between every block of text you want separated on the slide. Every individual line or paragraph will be a different bullet on your final slide.

- Text formatted with "Heading 3"

- If you delete the spaces between lines or try to add new text, it may not be formatted correctly, so always do this step last.

- Close Word when you're finished so there are no conflicts with PowerPoint in the remaining steps.
Converting to PowerPoint

- Every title you set to "Header 1" appears on its own slide, along with its corresponding content, which you set to "Header 2."
- You can now design the slides however you'd like using all of your favorite PowerPoint tools.
- Word will not automatically convert images for you—you will have to manually add the images into your presentation.

Expert Q&A
You might also like.

- ↑ https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/import-a-word-document-c926adb3-4aa9-4b13-a5d1-587c6752bda7#_outline
About This Article

1. Break the document into sections with titles. 2. Apply the "Heading 1" style to each section title. 3. Apply the "Heading 2" style to each section's content. 4. Separate each slide with a blank line. 5. Save the document as a new file. 6. Open PowerPoint and click Browse . 7. Navigate to the folder containing the Word document. 8. Select All Outlines from the drop-down menu. 9. Select the Word document and click Open . 10. Edit and save as a PowerPoint presentation. Did this summary help you? Yes No
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How To Animate PowerPoint Table
Home > All PowerPoint Tutorials > PowerPoint Animation > Animated PowerPoint Table
Learn a simple way to animate tables in PowerPoint and make your data presentation more interesting. Watch and learn from a step by step video tutorial.
Why should you animate your Power Point table?

When you show a table like this on a PowerPoint slide, you can expect two types of reactions from your audience.
- One set gets intimidated by the numbers and switches off mentally
- The other set tries to make sense of all the numbers and their relationships. They eventually end up starting up discussions that dilutes the objective of your presentation.
The only way to engage both sets of the audience is to present your information in incremental steps or builds . This also allows you comment on each data set and guide your audience understanding much more effectively than presenting all the numbers at once.
Related: Creative ways to present data

But, PowerPoint doesn’t allow you to animate your tables
Yes. The software has a limitation of not allowing you to animate your tables. So, how do you overcome this issue?
Don’t worry. There is a simple workaround.
Workaround #1 to Animate a Table in PowerPoint
You can break the table into its individual components in a matter of seconds. This puts the control back in your hands. You can choose to animate any portion of the table you want by grouping the elements you need.
Use the following steps to break and then animate a table
- Create the complete table with data. Once you have the final table with data, cut it ( Ctl + X)
- Then in Home > Paste > Paste Special option, Paste the table as a Windows Metafile

- This enables you to edit the components of the picture
- Right click on the image of the table and Group > Ungroup it

- Select and group the elements you need to appear together
- Animate each grouped section of the table.
If you want to be able to edit the table later, however, this option may not suit you. Here is another way of animating the table.
Workaround #2 to Animate a Table in PowerPoint
A Smarter option for business presenters
Here is a more elegant solution, if you want to avoid all this hard work. You may take a look at our Advance Animated Templates Pack for PowerPoint which provides you multiple options to present your ideas. We have already done all the hard work of putting together the animations.
Take a look at some of the innovative and professional animation options available. Click PLAY to view animations:
Know More About Advance Animated Templates Pack for PowerPoint
Return to Main Animation Page
Return to Top of PowerPoint Table Page
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Center for Teaching
Making better powerpoint presentations.
Print Version
Baddeley and Hitch’s model of working memory.
Research about student preferences for powerpoint, resources for making better powerpoint presentations, bibliography.
We have all experienced the pain of a bad PowerPoint presentation. And even though we promise ourselves never to make the same mistakes, we can still fall prey to common design pitfalls. The good news is that your PowerPoint presentation doesn’t have to be ordinary. By keeping in mind a few guidelines, your classroom presentations can stand above the crowd!
“It is easy to dismiss design – to relegate it to mere ornament, the prettifying of places and objects to disguise their banality. But that is a serious misunderstanding of what design is and why it matters.” Daniel Pink
One framework that can be useful when making design decisions about your PowerPoint slide design is Baddeley and Hitch’s model of working memory .

As illustrated in the diagram above, the Central Executive coordinates the work of three systems by organizing the information we hear, see, and store into working memory.
The Phonological Loop deals with any auditory information. Students in a classroom are potentially listening to a variety of things: the instructor, questions from their peers, sound effects or audio from the PowerPoint presentation, and their own “inner voice.”
The Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad deals with information we see. This involves such aspects as form, color, size, space between objects, and their movement. For students this would include: the size and color of fonts, the relationship between images and text on the screen, the motion path of text animation and slide transitions, as well as any hand gestures, facial expressions, or classroom demonstrations made by the instructor.
The Episodic Buffer integrates the information across these sensory domains and communicates with long-term memory. All of these elements are being deposited into a holding tank called the “episodic buffer.” This buffer has a limited capacity and can become “overloaded” thereby, setting limits on how much information students can take in at once.
Laura Edelman and Kathleen Harring from Muhlenberg College , Allentown, Pennsylvania have developed an approach to PowerPoint design using Baddeley and Hitch’s model. During the course of their work, they conducted a survey of students at the college asking what they liked and didn’t like about their professor’s PowerPoint presentations. They discovered the following:
Characteristics students don’t like about professors’ PowerPoint slides
- Too many words on a slide
- Movement (slide transitions or word animations)
- Templates with too many colors
Characteristics students like like about professors’ PowerPoint slides
- Graphs increase understanding of content
- Bulleted lists help them organize ideas
- PowerPoint can help to structure lectures
- Verbal explanations of pictures/graphs help more than written clarifications
According to Edelman and Harring, some conclusions from the research at Muhlenberg are that students learn more when:
- material is presented in short phrases rather than full paragraphs.
- the professor talks about the information on the slide rather than having students read it on their own.
- relevant pictures are used. Irrelevant pictures decrease learning compared to PowerPoint slides with no picture
- they take notes (if the professor is not talking). But if the professor is lecturing, note-taking and listening decreased learning.
- they are given the PowerPoint slides before the class.
Advice from Edelman and Harring on leveraging the working memory with PowerPoint:
- Leverage the working memory by dividing the information between the visual and auditory modality. Doing this reduces the likelihood of one system becoming overloaded. For instance, spoken words with pictures are better than pictures with text, as integrating an image and narration takes less cognitive effort than integrating an image and text.
- Minimize the opportunity for distraction by removing any irrelevant material such as music, sound effects, animations, and background images.
- Use simple cues to direct learners to important points or content. Using text size, bolding, italics, or placing content in a highlighted or shaded text box is all that is required to convey the significance of key ideas in your presentation.
- Don’t put every word you intend to speak on your PowerPoint slide. Instead, keep information displayed in short chunks that are easily read and comprehended.
- One of the mostly widely accessed websites about PowerPoint design is Garr Reynolds’ blog, Presentation Zen . In his blog entry: “ What is Good PowerPoint Design? ” Reynolds explains how to keep the slide design simple, yet not simplistic, and includes a few slide examples that he has ‘made-over’ to demonstrate how to improve its readability and effectiveness. He also includes sample slides from his own presentation about PowerPoint slide design.
- Another presentation guru, David Paradi, author of “ The Visual Slide Revolution: Transforming Overloaded Text Slides into Persuasive Presentations ” maintains a video podcast series called “ Think Outside the Slide ” where he also demonstrates PowerPoint slide makeovers. Examples on this site are typically from the corporate perspective, but the process by which content decisions are made is still relevant for higher education. Paradi has also developed a five step method, called KWICK , that can be used as a simple guide when designing PowerPoint presentations.
- In the video clip below, Comedian Don McMillan talks about some of the common misuses of PowerPoint in his routine called “Life After Death by PowerPoint.”
- This article from The Chronicle of Higher Education highlights a blog moderated by Microsoft’s Doug Thomas that compiles practical PowerPoint advice gathered from presentation masters like Seth Godin , Guy Kawasaki , and Garr Reynolds .
Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story , by Jerry Weissman, Prentice Hall, 2006
Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery , by Garr Reynolds, New Riders Press, 2008
Solving the PowerPoint Predicament: using digital media for effective communication , by Tom Bunzel , Que, 2006
The Cognitive Style of Power Point , by Edward R. Tufte, Graphics Pr, 2003
The Visual Slide Revolution: Transforming Overloaded Text Slides into Persuasive Presentations , by Dave Paradi, Communications Skills Press, 2000
Why Most PowerPoint Presentations Suck: And How You Can Make Them Better , by Rick Altman, Harvest Books, 2007

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How to Make Animated Characters in PowerPoint

Marshall is a writer with experience in the data storage industry. He worked at Synology, and most recently as CMO and technical staff writer at StorageReview. He's currently an API/Software Technical Writer based in Tokyo, Japan, runs VGKAMI and ITEnterpriser, and spends what little free time he has learning Japanese. Read more...

Part of PowerPoint’s charm is being able to give objects such as images, shapes, and text boxes animations, making your presentation more interactive and engaging. When animating text boxes, you can animate all the text in the box at once, or you can animate characters individually.
Animating Characters in PowerPoint
When you select a text box and give it an animation, PowerPoint treats the text box (and all contents inside) as a single object by default.
If you want to give each character a different type of animation, you’ll have to highlight each character individually and then assign the animation to it. However, if you want all of the characters or words to have the same animation, and you just want to initiate or time the animation separately, there’s an easier way.
RELATED: How to Control When a Picture Appears in PowerPoint
In your PowerPoint presentation, select the text and then choose the animation you want to assign. To do so, move over to the “Animations” tab and select your desired animation in the “Animation” group. In this example, we will use the “Fly In” option.

Next, head over to the “Advanced Animation” group and select “Animation Pane.”

A pane will appear on the right-hand side. Find the animation effect assigned to the text box and double-click it.

A window will appear, giving you several advanced options for the animation. On the “Effect” tab, click the “Animate text” drop-down menu. Here, you can choose whether you want to animate by word or letter. Make your choice and then click “OK.”

Now you’ll see a preview of the animation take place. Notice that each character (or word) executes the animation individually. Repeat these steps as often as required for your presentation.
- › How to Change the Speed of an Animation in PowerPoint
- › 5 Ways to Highlight Text in a Microsoft PowerPoint Animation
- › How to Dim the Appearance of Text in PowerPoint
- › How to Reorder Animations in Microsoft PowerPoint
- › How to Animate Single Words or Letters in Microsoft PowerPoint
- › How to Reveal One Line at a Time in Microsoft PowerPoint
- › 1080p vs. 1440p vs. 4K Monitors: How Big Is the Difference?
- › What Is ChatGPT Plus?
Navigation menu
Making good looking equations in powerpoint presentations.
- 1.1.1 Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003
- 1.1.2 Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007
- 1.2 Entering and editing the equation
- 1.3.1 Resizing: Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003
- 1.3.2 Resizing: Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007
- 1.4 Final Processing of the Equation
- 1.5.1 Changing the text color: Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003
- 1.5.2 Changing the text color: Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007
- 1.6 Summary
Technical professionals frequently have to include mathematical equations in their PowerPoint presentations. Unfortunately, in many cases the results are not very professional looking, with everything being different sizes and misaligned. In an effort to improve things, some presenters take screen shots of equations that do look good, and then paste it onto their slide, making a grainy image of what used to be a good looking equation with a background that doesn't match the rest of the slide. We can do better.
It's not hard to make an equation in PowerPoint that looks good and makes you look good. First, we'll review how to put an equation into PowerPoint, and then how to make it look good.
Starting the equation editor
Microsoft office powerpoint 2003.
First, we'll review how to put an equation on a PowerPoint slide. First, bring up the slide that you want to have the equation and click on the text area to highlight it. Next, look at the menu at the top of the PowerPoint window and you'll find an item called "Insert". Click it and a dropdown menu will appear. Click on "Object" and a popup window will appear. If you don't see the "Object" item right away, keep the mouse on the menu and it will expand so that you can see the item. After the popup window appears, make sure the "New Item" radio button has been selected (it usually is by default), and in the middle of the window you'll see a lengthy list of things you can include, in alphabetical order. Scroll down until you see "Microsoft Equation 3.0" and double click it. Another popup window will appear that will contain the equation you make.
Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007
Note: PowerPoint 2007 lost some significant functionality compared to PowerPoint 2003. Specifically, if you want equation text other than black, you will not be able to do it in PowerPoint. To do this, create the equation in Word, including all the formatting you want. Then triple click the equation. Then right click and select Copy in the menu that pops up. Then switch to PowerPoint. On the Home tab on the ribbon, click on the arrow below the Paste icon. On the menu that pops up, select Paste Special . On the menu that pops up, select Picture (Enhanced Metafile) and click OK . If this choice is not available, click Cancel , go back to Word, and try again. When you're successful, the equation will appear in your slide, and you can move it to where you want it. We know this is an ugly workaround, but we have yet to find a better way. Hopefully, Microsoft will fix this problem in the near future, and we'll update this page.
First, we'll review how to put an equation on a PowerPoint slide. First, bring up the slide that you want to have the equation and click on the text area to highlight it. Next, click the Insert tab on the ribbon. Click on the Object icon in the Text group, which will bring up a popup window. After the popup window appears, make sure the "Create New" radio button has been selected (it usually is by default), and in the middle of the window you'll see a lengthy list of things you can include, in alphabetical order. Scroll down until you see "Microsoft Equation 3.0" and double click it. Another popup window will appear that will contain the equation you make.
Entering and editing the equation
At the top of the window there should be a toolbar of mathematical symbols you can use, as shown in Figure 1.

If you don't see the toolbar, you can make it visible by going to the menu at the top and clicking "View", and then clicking on "Toolbar" in the menu. This will put a check next to the item which will make the toolbar appear at the top of the window.
As an example, we'll make a variation of the equation that you made in Lab 1. In this case, we'll have the phrase "root=" and then the quadratic equation. Note the box in the Equation Editor window, and the flashing cursor. Like Word, this is where anything you type will appear.
In the text that follows, when we say to type something followed by text in quotes, you should omit the quotes. Start by typing "root=". Note that the text is relatively large script italics. Next, we want the fraction. Since you've already done this in Lab 1, we'll summarize the instructions:
On the toolbar, look for the fraction symbol in the bottom row. Select the fraction symbol out of the dropdown menu. You get a fraction with two boxes, and the top box has the cursor. Type "-b". Then select the "±" symbol in the top row of the toolbar. Next, select the square root symbol, which is in the same dropdown menu as the fraction. We need an exponential, so we select the exponential symbols from the dropdown menu next to the fraction dropdown menu. The exact item you want is the leftmost item in the fourth row. To help you select the proper item, we show the dropdown menu in Figure 2.

Some new boxes appear, and the cursor is where the exponential goes. Type the number "2" and you have the proper power. Now press the cursor down key, or click on the main box, and the cursor will move down to where you type what will be squared. Type "b". We can now finish up what goes inside the square root by typing "-4ac". Next, we'll do the bottom of the fraction. Click on the empty box at the bottom of the fraction and type "2a". You've now completed the formula.
The formula is mathematically correct, but it doesn't look very pretty. What you have should look like Figure 3.

There are multiple type sizes and styles. Also, sometimes you might see strange spacing in words. The problem is that as you type the equation, Microsoft Equation compares what you type with a list of known equations that it recognizes. It then "helps" you by separating the equation name from what comes next, which it views as a variable name. The results are frequently wrong. For example, if we use the word "Pride", Microsoft Equation will recognize this as a function called "Pr" for assigning probabilities) followed by a variable name "ide", and will produce the result "Pride". We need to fix these kinds of problems along with the rest.
We'll now clean everything up so that the result looks professional. First, let's see why things look different. Click on the word "root". Then go up to the menu at the top of the window and click "Style". Note that it there is a check next to the word "Math". Click on the "Size" item on the menu and you'll see a check mark next to the word "Full". Now click on the "b" that's part of the b 2 inside the square root. Once again, click on the "Style" item in the menu and you'll see that "Math" is checked, but when you click on "Size" you'll see that "Symbol" is checked instead of "Full". This is why this is a different size. We'll now make this the same size as everything else so that it looks better. Double click the "b" that's the wrong size so that it's highlighted. Now go up to the "Size" menu item and click on the word "Full". The check mark moves from "Symbol" to "Full", and the "b" becomes the same size as everything else, making things look much better. The result is shown in Figure 4.

You can now use this technique any time you enter an equation to make it look good.
Some people don't like the italicized script. You can change this too if you'd like. The style is what's making the equation look this way. Let's change the equation to a different style. First, select the entire equation by putting the mouse to the left of the equation, pressing the left mouse button, dragging the mouse across the entire equation, and releasing the mouse button. The entire equation will now be highlighted. Click on the "Style" menu item and select "Text" instead of "Math". Unfortunately, after changing the style, the sizes will set back to the default, and the "b" will be the wrong size again. Set the size back to "Full" as described above to fix this. The equation now looks like Figure 5.

If you want, you can try other styles, or define your own. However, the "Math" style, once you fix the size issues, usually looks very good.
Putting the result on your PowerPoint slide
Now that you have an equation that looks good, you can now easily put it on the PowerPoint slide. Just close the Equation Editor by clicking on "File" and "Exit and Return to Presentation", or just clicking on the "X" on the window in the top right corner, like any other window. You'll now return to your presentation with the equation on the slide, but probably not where you want it. Figure 6 shows a typical slide.

We'll now move the formula to the right place, and also resize it. The equation works just like any other image, so if you know how to work with images on slides you can skip the rest of this.
Resizing: Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003
If you click on the equation a box of little circles will appear around and the cursor will turn into crosshairs with arrows on them. You can now drag the equation to where you want it. Just press the left mouse button, drag the mouse to where you want the equation, and release the button. You can also stretch and resize the equation if you want. If you "grab" one of the corner circles by putting the mouse on it and pressing the left mouse button, you can make the equation bigger and smaller, releasing the mouse button when it's the right size. You can also stretch the equation in just one direction by "grabbing" a circle at the top or bottom, or one of the sides. We advise against stretching the equation because it usually ends up with a result that looks weird
Resizing: Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007
If you click on the equation a box will appear around and the cursor will turn into crosshairs with arrows on them. You can now drag the equation to where you want it. Just press the left mouse button, drag the mouse to where you want the equation, and release the button. You can also stretch and resize the equation if you want. The corners have a group of three dots framing the corner, and the edges have a group of three dots in line. If you "grab" one of the corner dot groups by putting the mouse on it and pressing the left mouse button, you can make the equation bigger and smaller, releasing the mouse button when it's the right size. You can also stretch the equation in just one direction by "grabbing" a group of dots at the top or bottom, or one of the sides. We advise against stretching the equation because it usually ends up with a result that looks weird
Final Processing of the Equation
Figure 7 shows the final product where the equation has been moved and resized, and Figure 8 shows the same slide where the equation was stretched. As you can see, Figure 7 looks much better.

Getting the Colors Right
When you make an equation, the characters will be black. This is probably acceptable for a Word document, but can be disastrous in PowerPoint, especially if a dark background is chosen for your slides. In this case you have two options:
- Choose a different slide background for your presentation, with a white background being the most desirable
- Change the color used in the equations from black to one of your choice
This section will describe how to pursue the second option.
First, all the work you've done so far is fine. All we need to do is some "post processing" to the equation to get it right. After you've gotten the equation on the slide in the right place, we'll change the color of the characters. To understand how this works, you need to know that PowerPoint considers the equation to be a special form of picture, so that's how we'll proceed.
Make sure the equation has been selected. You can tell that it has been selected by seeing the white dots around the perimeter of the equation. If you don't see the dots, click on the equation once and they will appear. Note: Do not double click on the equation, or you'll end up back in Equation Editor. The dots around the perimeter can be used to resize the equation, but right now we just want to make sure the equation is selected.
Changing the text color: Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003
Once the equation is selected, move the mouse over the equation and right click the mouse. This will bring up a popup menu. About halfway down the menu you'll see an item "Show Picture Toolbar". Click this item. A small toolbar will appear over the slide containing a number of icons. At the right end of the toolbar you'll see an icon of a can of paint being poured over a picture. If you "hover" the mouse over this icon, you'll see a "popup tip" with the caption "Recolor Picture". Click on this icon.
A popup window will occur with a title of "Recolor Picture", with your equation being shown (probably in black) on the right side of the window. On the left side of the window you'll see several lines of color bars, with each line containing a column called "Original" and "New". What these bars do is allow you to map the "Original" color into the "New" color of your choice. To the right of the "New" color is a pulldown arrow. Click on this arrow and a popup selection of colors will appear. If you like one of the colors shown, click on it. This will cause the "New" color in the bar to change to your selection, and a checkmark to appear in the box at the left end of this line to indicate that the original color is being changed. If you find the election of colors to be too limiting, when the popup selection appears, click on "More Colors..." and you'll see all the colors PowerPoint can make, arranged like an artist's palette. In the bottom right corner of this window is a box of the color you selected. Click the dot of the color you want. The box in the lower right corner will now show the old color and the new color. If you don't like your choice, keep clicking dots until you see one your like, or click "Cancel" to give up. If you find a color you like, click "OK" and you'll return to the "Recolor Picture" window. The right side of the window will now show the equation in the color you chose. If you don't like the result, just repeat this process. If you do, click "OK", and you'll return back to your slide with the equation in the color you like.
Changing the text color: Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007
This functionality is not available in PowerPoint 2007. The workaround to this lack is to create and properly format the equation in Word 2007, and then copy and "Paste Special" into PowerPoint 2007, as described at the start of this page.
You now know how you can make good looking slides with good looking equations in them. This will give you a competitive edge against others who don't know how to do this. You'll find that the same techniques can be used for many other types of objects, such as Excel spreadsheets, video files, and many others. If you want to review the full range of what you can include, go to back to the PowerPoint menu and select "Insert" and "Object" again. This time scroll through the list of types and you'll see a rich selection. All of them work the same way, as we described here.
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