creating professional-looking slides
with illustrations seems challenging but
PowerPoint 2007 makes using
illustrations very easy with the
addition of SmartArt graphics SmartArt
graphics are a type of illustration that
allow you to visually communicate
information that you might otherwise
include in the presentation as text this
organizational chart is a SmartArt
graphic I used to spend a lot of time
inserting modifying and aligning shapes
to make diagrams like this one look
great but with SmartArt graphics a lot
of the work is done for me I like to
insert a different SmartArt graphic here
that shows the departments that work
with our clients to insert a smart art
graphic we can click the insert SmartArt
graphic commands in the placeholder if
we are using a content placeholder with
the commands or we can just go to the
ribbon select the insert tab and click
the SmartArt command in the
illustrations group and then a dialog
box will appear as you can see you have
many options on the left there is a list
of types or categories of graphics such
as process hierarchy cycle and
relationship right now all is selected
so we can view all the types of graphics
by scrolling or select a type on the
left to see the available layouts in the
center of the dialog box to see more
details about a specific graphic just
click any layout and a larger version of
the graphic and additional text details
will appear on the right side of the
dialog box
now before you choose a type and layouts
think about what will be best for the
information you want to communicate some
types work better with some data rather
than others once you've decided the type
of graphic you need you'll want to
consider the amounts of text that you
have some layouts have more room for
text than others I think a relationship
graphic will work for this slide so I'll
just click it to display the
relationship graphic layouts now I can
just click each layouts I want to look
at more closely and then view the
details on the right there are a lot of
these that look good but I like this
converging radial layout so I'll select
it and then click OK and the graphic
appears in the document you'll notice
that two new smart art tools tabs appear
the design and format tabs let's start
by adding some text to our graphic by
default one of the shapes is selected
you can just begin typing and your text
will appear over the placeholder text in
the selected shape as soon as you start
typing the solid line that surrounds the
shapes becomes a dotted line which
indicates that the text box is active
and that you can enter text you'll
notice that as I enter my text the text
resizes and become smaller to fit the
shape now in each of the squares I want
to enter the name of a department that
works with the client just click a shape
to select it and type the information
now we do have one more department that
we need to add but there isn't a fourth
square don't worry you can modify any
SmartArt graphic just make sure the
graphic is selected and select the
design tab in the create
graphic tool there are several commands
you can use to customize the graphic to
meet your needs to add a new square
shape selects one of the existing
squares adjacent to where you want to
add a new shape then click the add shape
command a menu will appear for this
SmartArt graphic there are only two
options to add the shape before or at
the shape after the selected shape with
some SmartArt graphics you can add
shapes above or below the selected shape
I'll select add shape before and the new
shape appears now in this shape I'll
enter the department information let's
take a look at some of the other
commands in the create graphic group if
the selected layout supports bulleted
lists you can add a bulleted text list
to a shape to do this select the shape
where you want to add the bulleted list
then click the add bullets command the
text and the shape moves and a bullets
appears beneath it with the insertion
points now you can just enter your text
press the Enter key to display the next
bullets in the list and enter your text
you can do this over and over again for
any shape that needs additional text in
this list format I'll just add a
bulleted list to the other two shapes
later
to reorder information just click the
right-to-left commands and the
information in the shapes will be
reordered from right to left or left to
right
this command toggles the text back and
forth here I like it this way for this
graphic the layout command isn't active
and while the promotes command is active
it doesn't make sense to use it on this
graphic we'll work with another graphic
later where I can show you how the
promote and demote commands work the
last command in this group is the text
pane command you can click this command
to show and hide the text pane in this
pane you can quickly enter and organize
information in the graphic so if you
don't want to enter the text directly
into the shape when you create the
graphic you can enter it in this text
pane some people find it faster just to
show you that it works I'll select
public relations and change that to
media relations as I enter the text into
the text pane it appears in the graphic
you can close the pane by clicking the X
in the upper right corner or just
clicking the command again