Advanced PowerPoint:
Using a Text Outline

Step-by-Step: Text Outline

Start with: , (PowerPoint open to a blank document), resource files

Create a Plain Text Outline

1. Select and copy the text below.

   What to See and Do in New Zealand

   Volcanoes

     New Zealand is an active, growing place!

       Hot springs

       Geysers

       Boiling mud

       Volcanoes

   Rain Forests

     Warm, temperate rainforests, teeming with evergreens and giant tree ferns

     Unique wildlife:

       Giant snails

       Giant weta - a cricket-like insect the size of a mouse. Guaranteed harmless!

   
   Ocean and Beaches

     North Island's beaches match any you've seen.

       Sailing

       Fishing

       Surfing

       Sand yachts

       Hang gliders

       Jet skis

   
   Cities

     While New Zealand may be "down under", it is not "behind the times." Her cities feature all of the advantages of civilization –

       Fine restaurants

       Modern architecture

       Traffic!

   Other Recreation

       Snow Skiing

       Golf

       Hang gliding

       Bungee jumping

       Hiking

       Wine tasting - 3 world prize winners

   
   General Information

     Weather Seasons are reversed from the Northern Hemisphere. New Zealand's climate ranges from subtropical in the north to temperate in the South.

     Time New Zealand is 12 hours ahead of GMT. The sun rises first in New Zealand.

     Driving Cars drive down the left of the road, like in the UK and opposite of the USA.

   
   World Travel Inc.

     Call 54 (1) 821-6543

     We work to help you see the world. 

   This text is formatted with leading spaces without numbering to create the indentions in the outline. We don't want those numbers and letters on the slides!
    

2. Open Notepad or another plain text editor.
   (Start | Run | type notepad and click on OK.)
    

3. Paste into the blank Notepad document. The outline levels are shown by the indentions.

   

   The indentions are deeper in Notepad than in the text you copied. The default font for Notepad is a fixed-width font, also called mono-spaced. All characters have the same width. The text that you copied used a proportional font, where blank spaces and narrow characters like i and l are allowed less space than wide characters like w.
    

4. From the menu select  File  |  Page Setup .
    

5. In the Header text box, add your name and the date.

   

6. Click on OK to close the Page Setup dialog.
    

7. Save to your Class disk with the file name  nz.txt . (If you are using floppy disks, you probably need a fresh disk by now!)
   How to handle a full Class disk
    

8. Print.
    

9. Close Notepad.

Open a Plain Text Outline in PowerPoint

Let's see what PowerPoint does with a plain text outline and then how to fix what it does.

1. Open PowerPoint.
    

2. From the menu select  File | Open . The Open dialog appears.
    

3. Navigate using the Look in: list to drive A:

   Whoops! No word processing documents are showing, just presentations (assuming you have any on this floppy disk). The Files of type: box still shows Presentations. You must make a change (next step) to see the text documents.
    

4. Change the Files of type: box to show All Outlines.
    

5. Select nz.txt and click on the Open button.

   

   PowerPoint is happy to open the file and create slides, but look at the thumbnails! Each paragraph is now a slide title. Whoops. This is not what you want at all. Happily, it is easy to fix - without having to move any text!

   

Use Outline Toolbar to Demote

The outline toolbar has buttons that make it easy to manage the outline levels. You will use these buttons to demote the lines that should be bullet points.

1. Click on the Outline tab at the left to switch to that view.

   Each paragraph from the text outline has a slide icon. You must fix this mess!
    

2. Display the Outlining toolbar if it is not already in view. ( View |  Toolbars...  |  Outlining )

   

3. Click on the slide icon for Slide #3: New Zealand is.... The whole line is selected.
   
    

4. Click the Demote button, right-facing arrow at the top of the Outlining Bar.
    
   The title text from Slide 3 is now a bullet item on Slide 2. Better!
   
    

5. Continue by selecting slides 3, 4, 5, and 6 and then demoting them.
    
   Hmmm. That first bullet on Slide 2 is not really a member of the list. It is a comment. You need to remove the bullet.
    

6. In the outline, click in the first text line, New Zealand is..., of Slide 2 .
    

7. Click the Bullets button on the Formatting toolbar. The bullet is toggled off. Simple enough.
    
   These steps could be repeated for the remaining slides to gather the text onto the slides with the titles. Instead we will stop here and look an another variety of plain text outline, the tabbed text outline.
    

8. Click the Save button . The Save As dialog appears since this presentation has not been saved before. What you saved before was the text file. Use the name  nz-text.ppt .
    
   How to handle a full Class disk

Create a Tabbed Text Outline

PowerPoint recognizes tabbed text when it creates slides. If the outline uses tabs instead of spaces to indent the outline parts, the slides will turn out better!

1. Open Notepad again and open nz.txt from your Class disk.
    

2. For lines that have 2 spaces to the left, replace the spaces with one tab. (Select the spaces and press the TAB key.) The indention will be larger than before.
    

3. For lines that have 4 spaces to the left, replace the spaces with 2 tabs.
   (Select the spaces and press the TAB key twice.)
    

4. Open Page Setup from the File menu and verify that your name and the date are still in the Header box.
    

5. Click on OK to close the dialog.
    

6. From the menu select Save As. Use the name  nz-tabbed.txt  to save your revised outline to your Class disk.
    
   How to handle a full Class disk
    

7. Print.
    

8. Close Notepad.
    

Open Tabbed Text Outline in PowerPoint

1. Switch to PowerPoint.
    
2. Open nz-tabbed.txt on your Class disk.
    
3. Switch to Slide Sorter View by clicking the Slide Sorter button at the bottom left.

   

   Ah! These slides are in much better form that the ones from the first text outline. It pays to TAB!
    

4. Click the Save button . The Save As dialog appears since this presentation has not been saved before. Use the name  nz-tabbed.ppt .
    
   How to handle a full Class disk