Free Slide Show. by Dick Evans

Transcription

1 Free Slide Show by Dick Evans Using the free LibreOffice (OpenOffice) we will show how to create a slideshow of your pictures. This is a subject class. We will look at LibreOffice (OpenOffice) and how to create a slideshow using their equivalent of PowerPoint. We will be including an album of pictures and look at how to change the slide transitions, backgrounds, and layouts and how to add sound and animations. Then we will save it in LibreOffice and then as a PDF, a SWF, and as a PPS to open it in the free PowerPoint viewer from Microsoft. If you do not have LibreOffice or OpenOffice, locate it at ninite.com and install it. It is free and gives you all you need replacing the costly office suites from others. Once you have it installed, open it. Click Presentation 1

2 This is the work area for building a slide show. Since we are looking at creating a slideshow of our pictures we will not get into the details of a presentation. Click on Master Page and then choose a background. 2

3 Now let s get the pictures we want to use. The pictures will be inserted in alphabetical sequence, so if you have a particular order in mind it might be good to rename them to keep the order. Remember you can do that by selecting them all and then renaming the first one in the list. All the selected images will receive the same name as the first one with a numeric sequence following the name. I would sort the list of images by date and time first, then rename so they are imported into the slideshow in that order. Click Insert > Picture > Photo Album 3

4 Click Add Select the images you want to include, and then click Open 4

5 Click on the file name to view the image in the Preview window. If all looks good, click Insert Slides. The images are now in your slideshow, one image per slide. Click the Slide Sorter tab to see a different view of the slides. 5

6 Now you can see more of them at a time. Double click the first slide to return to normal view to edit that slide and add a title to your show. Let s change the layout. Then Click to add text and insert your title for the slideshow. 6

7 Now we can select what we type and change the font type and/or font size. To see what we have done so far, press F5 To move through the slides click on the screen with your mouse, use the arrow keys on the keyboard, or even the Page Up and Page Down keys. The scroll wheel will work also. Now let s work on transitioning from one slide to another. 7

8 I chose, Wipe Down, applause sound, advance automatically after 1 second, and Apply to All Slides. Press F5 to try it out. Notice the show went from beginning to end all on its own. You can get fancy and set the timing, transition, and sound differently for each slide. Now let s see how we can send this to someone else. First File > Save to keep a copy of this presentation. The name appears in the title bar showing you it has been saved. If we are just using this slideshow for ourselves, we can leave it as an ODP file. But if we want to 8

9 make it available for others and perhaps even upload it to YouTube, there are other choices. Here are a few of them: PDF Can see all the slides as individual pages. No sound or animation. SWF Can be viewed in a browser, but still no sound or animation HTM Will build a set of html files you can open in a browser and click browse through them. Still no sound or animation PPS Builds a PowerPoint show with sound and animation. However, to open this file PowerPoint or at least the FREE PowerPoint browser must be installed. There are many other possible formats, but these should take care of most of your needs. File > Save As to choose the format desired Chose PPS from the list. Then save it and try it out. 9

10 To might have to confirm you are saving in a different format from ODF. Close the Impress application or you will not be able to open the PPS file. Locate the file where you saved it and double click to open it in PowerPoint and see the results. Try the other formats to see how they work. To pass this on to someone else, simply sent the final file to a blank CD R or flash drive, or even it to them. If you are creating a CD or flashdrive with a PPS file I suggest including the setup for the FREE PowerPoint viewer on the media as well so they do not have to download it from Microsoft. 10