This suite tool makes it a snap to prepare glitzy presentations

By John McCormick

Connecting state and local government leaders

| August 24, 1998

These tips will help you draw conclusions If your graphics needs are small, your office suite might have the right tools. Before upgrading hardware to accommodate new software, check to see if old versions running under Windows 3.x are available. Leave the high-end products to the pros. They require lots of time to learn before they give you good results. If you have a pro doing your in-house graphics, don't restrict him

These tips
will help you draw conclusions

	If your graphics needs are small, your office suite might have the right tools.
	Before upgrading hardware to accommodate new software, check to see if old versions running under Windows 3.x are available.
	Leave the high-end products to the pros. They require lots of time to learn before they give you good results.
	If you have a pro doing your in-house graphics, dont restrict him or her with low-end graphics tools.
	Organization charts and flowcharts often need regular updates, so use a specialized program.
	If you use an existing image or drawing database, make sure the new software doesnt lose important information when it imports old files. Building a straightforward presentation couldnt be simpler than it is with the presentation component of Corel WordPerfect Suite 8. Corel Presentations 8 makes it easy from the beginning: Selecting Presentation from the Microsoft Windows pull-down Start menu brings up a wizard that lets you select from several templates. Choosing one presents you with a pre-designed slide show with text and consistent backgrounds. The templates dont lock you into a tight format; they just offer design and layout guidelines. To transform it from a generic template into your presentation, click on one slide tab after another to edit the text. For the award show template, the text, which consists of lines such as Name the Award and First Accomplishment, serve both as place-holders on the slides and as hints to what information you should add. Even if youve never designed a slide show before, you will likely be able to build a sophisticated-looking presentation in a few hours. If youre confident of your design skills and want to add more lines of text or more ideas to a single slide, just write over the text and hit the return key to create additional text lines. Presentations will format the new text and add it to the slide. You can also change text fonts, alter justification, insert symbols from a supplied library that pops up if you click on the Add Symbols button, or spell-check your new text. If you dont want to work directly on the slidesa good idea if the presentation is long or complexyou need only go to the Outliner mode where the text for each slide is shown in an editable outline. You can use the Outliner mode either for reference and organization purposes or, if youre more experienced in slide show design, just enter your text. Most slide show creators will use a combination of the two editing methods, perhaps inserting most of the new text in outline mode and previewing the show, then making a few changes on the slides. But theres more to a slide show presentation than text. You could develop complex charts in QuattroPro or other programs and import them, but you can also build simple 3-D charts right in the wizard just by clicking on the Add Other Elements button, selecting Add a Chart and choosing between a data chart and organization chart. Choosing a data chart format brings up an on-slide chart prebuilt with dummy data and a spreadsheet-style editing frame in the foreground. To add your own data, key in the numbers and watch as the 3-D color chart changes shape in the background. Its a simple way to build a basic chart. But if you deal with more complex elements or will need to periodically update the presentation, you probably also will maintain a spreadsheet containing the data. If such is the situation, you need simply open another dialog box and import the spreadsheet file. Twenty-two templates come with Corel Presentations 8. If theyre too basic for your needs, you can make changes to the templates to produce a more individualized show. Adding or altering text, importing images, ordering the slides and finishing the slide show are all just as easy. Its difficult for standalone presentation programs to carve out a real niche occupied by such a colorful and easy-to-use suite component. Ordering the finished slides demonstrates the suite components power. Click on the Sorter button to the right of your slide to see thumbnail images of your presentation. To change the order in which the slides will be shown, drag and drop them into their new place in the sequence. Is the show too large to fit on one screen? No problem. Zoom out on all images at once to pack more onto the editing screen, or zoom in for a close look at any single slide. Double-click on it to open a full editing window in which you can modify the slide, add speaker notes or attach sound to the show. To see the results of sequence editing, start from any slide, highlight the image you want to appear first and click on the QuickPlay button. Corel Presentations 8 is available for Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT for $195. Corel also has WordPerfect 7 for Linux for $99. For more information, visit Corel Corp.s Web site at http://www.corel.com. Contact Corel at 801-765-4010.

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