Word vs. PowerPoint

[Peter T. Daniels]

I'm giving a lecture next month, only my third with a PowerPoint
presentation -- and only the first that'll have an audience of more
than about 10, so I'll be writing it out fully in advance. And with
the new Windows 7 laptop (yay!), I can even take advantage of the dual-
monitor thing and have the slide show on the projector and a working
view on the computer.

Does anyone know of arguments for or against using the Notes function
in PowerPoint to contain my entire text, vs. simply writing it in a
word processor the usual way and printing it out?

(I am assuming that I can write it in Word and paste it into PP's
Notes frame slide by slide.)

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The one advantage I can see of the Notes is that you will see only the notes
for the slide you are currently showing. Alternatively, you can print out a
notes page that has a thumbnail of your slide along with the speaker notes
and use that as hard copy.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

I've made some slides and am typing the talk in the Notes frame for
each slide as I make them. Whether I'll keep them there for the final
product remains to be seen.

It's really annoying that the simplest word processing acts (like
double-clicking to select a word) don't work. And there aren't any
templates to put my keyboard shortcuts in.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

My experience with PPT, as an "expert" Word user, have been uniformly
frustrating, and not just in the Notes pane. I gather that PPT 2007 has some
of the features I miss, but I've been using 2003 because so far most of the
presentations I've made have been for a client still using Office 2003. In
your situation, I'd be inclined to compose the text in Word and paste it
into PPT at the very least (if there's a lot of it).

I'm hoping that someday I'll become more than a total novice PPT user, but I
suspect that most PPT experts know more about Word (because everybody uses
it) than I do about PPT!

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

I've made some slides and am typing the talk in the Notes frame for
each slide as I make them. Whether I'll keep them there for the final
product remains to be seen.

It's really annoying that the simplest word processing acts (like
double-clicking to select a word) don't work. And there aren't any
templates to put my keyboard shortcuts in.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

There's _one_ advantage: I can rearrange slides and the text goes
with. That's better than having the two programs open and dealing with
both slides and Outline View.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I've never tried the technique of creating on outline in Word and then
importing it into PPT to create slides, and that's not the issue you're
dealing with, anyway, so it's irrelevant, but it's one feature to remember.

As for the Notes, if are strictly speaker notes (just for your own use, not
for handouts), the formatting is not critical provided they convey the
mental jogs you need to explicate the slide content. The speaker notes
aren't really intended to be any more formal than the 3x5 cards you might
have had before PPT existed.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

There's _one_ advantage: I can rearrange slides and the text goes
with. That's better than having the two programs open and dealing with
both slides and Outline View.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

At the risk of turning this thread into a composition class, I find I
don't do well by starting with an outline. If I just wait around,
eventually the opening sentence comes to me and then the rest of it
all follows, point from point -- and I can often then go back and
insert headings and subheadings. For this talk I have a very disparate
group of topics and making the slides for each thing I want to mention
leads me to know what is to be said about each one -- and then I can
put them into a better order. This is an hour-long Plenary Address,
which translates to 45-50 min. of talking, which translates to as much
as 6000 words.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I see you compose the same way I do, as a single continuous thread. This can
make editing very tough because any rearrangement of content breaks
transitions that have been carefully designed and requires a lot of
rewriting. I find that people who take a more methodical approach can often
see a better (or at least more organized) way of presenting content than I
do, but I think there's a lot to be said for logical development where each
idea flows out of the previous one. Given this workflow, though, I think you
have no choice but to use PPT for your speaker notes.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

At the risk of turning this thread into a composition class, I find I
don't do well by starting with an outline. If I just wait around,
eventually the opening sentence comes to me and then the rest of it
all follows, point from point -- and I can often then go back and
insert headings and subheadings. For this talk I have a very disparate
group of topics and making the slides for each thing I want to mention
leads me to know what is to be said about each one -- and then I can
put them into a better order. This is an hour-long Plenary Address,
which translates to 45-50 min. of talking, which translates to as much
as 6000 words.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

I just discovered another drawback. I picked the wrong one of the
silly preset formats and deleted the slide -- and the notes went with
it. (I'd saved all but the last paragraph, of course. None of that "I
didn't save my work for 17 hours and Word crashed can I get my file
back?" stuff.)

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Yikes. I guess I'm lucky that the few presentations I've had to prepare have
been based on text given to me by someone else, not something I was
composing from scratch.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

I just discovered another drawback. I picked the wrong one of the
silly preset formats and deleted the slide -- and the notes went with
it. (I'd saved all but the last paragraph, of course. None of that "I
didn't save my work for 17 hours and Word crashed can I get my file
back?" stuff.)

 

[Stefan Blom]

Hmm, deleting a slide would of course get rid of the notes for that slide as
well (since they are stored together)... I don't see why that would be a
surprise? Or am I missing something?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I got the impression he didn't delete the slide but just changed the layout.
When I do that, though, I don't lose any content.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Stefan Blom]

Indeed, if changing the layout deleted the note, that would be a problem!

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

I couldn't find a way to change the layout after the slide was already
in the document.

And the slide and the notes are in separate windows and never
interact, so why wouldn't they count as separate things?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The notes are for a given slide. I don't know about 2007, but in PPT 2003, I
can change the slide layout just by clicking on a different picture in the
Layout task pane.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

I couldn't find a way to change the layout after the slide was already
in the document.

And the slide and the notes are in separate windows and never
interact, so why wouldn't they count as separate things?

 

[Stefan Blom]

In PowerPoint 2007, you can click Layout on the Home tab and choose a
different page layout (and/or you can change the theme on the Design tab).