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 organization 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'd like to insert a different SmartArt graphic
here that shows the departments that work with our clients.
To insert a SmartArt graphic, we can click the Insert SmartArt Graphic command 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 the dialog box appears.
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 layout,
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 amount 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 layout 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 SmartArt 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 becomes 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, select one of the
existing squares adjacent to where you want to add the 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 add
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 Bullet command.
The text in the shape moves and a bullet appears beneath it with the insertion point.
Now you can just enter your text. Press the Enter key to display the next bullet
in the list and enter your text. You can do this over and over again for any
shape that needs additional text in list format. I'll just add a bulleted list to the other
two shapes later.To reorder information, just click the Right to Left command 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 Promote 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.