Creating a New Presentation in PowerPoint 2016

During this Microsoft PowerPoint 2016 training tutorial video, you will learn how to create a new presentation from scratch. You will also know more about choosing from among the vast selection of templates, which now have new enhancements.

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Okay so we’re in module three and this is section two where we’re going to talk about creating a new presentation.

Now I know a lot of you may have worked in PowerPoint before and you may have actually edited a presentation someone else created but I want to show you how to create one from scratch just so you know how to do it. So what I’m going to do is flip over to PowerPoint now and show you how to create a new blank presentation. So hold on a second.

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Okay. Normally when you open PowerPoint it opens you to a new blank presentation. You can see that it’s white paper, black text. So I do have the ability to apply a design which I’ll show you in a second or if you were creating a new one from scratch here you could go to File and then go down to New this way and here you can see all of your themes or templates. So if you wanted to start with one of these you certainly could. Remember all those guidelines we talked about as far as colors and text? Think about those when you’re picking your particular theme.

So if you look at this one, for example, Main Event, that looks like something you’d use if you were trying to actually make a statement or something you want people to remember. Whereas one of these like Mesh or Damask those are a little more subtle. So just kind of keep that in mind.

Now let’s say this. Let’s say we did have a blank presentation, which by the way I could have chosen right here but because we’re already in one I’m just going to hit the Back button up at the top.

So we’re on this blank presentation and let’s say that I’ve got ten slides. It really doesn’t matter how many slides you have in here. When you go up to the tab that says Design at the top here are your designs or your themes you can pick from. Make sure to click the scroll bar to make sure you can see all of them.
Now let’s say you pick one. I’ll just start with this one. And let’s say you like this one but you really wish the background was a different color. Notice now you’ve got the Variants over to the right. Now this is a new feature in 2016. But you see how there are several different variants I can pick from? So let’s say I click on the blue and now I’ve changed that.

Now keep this in mind. If you’ve already put several slides in your presentation and let’s say you had changed your fonts for some reason. Maybe you made them larger or a different color, moved them to the right or left. Anything you had manually changed you’re going to see that a design or a theme may override that. So it’s best to pick your design or themes up front so you don’t have to go back through the whole presentation and look through all those things and make sure it looks correct.

So that’s how you’re going to do it. You can start with white paper, black text or pick a design and go from there.

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So what we’re going to do is I want to move into section three and talk to you a little bit about actually working with the slides.

Simon Calder

Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA. He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!