Create a presentation with free Impress tool

Adding images
Whether you’re delivering a presentation live to an audience or creating a document for others to read, you’ll want to avoid too many large blocks of text. Breaking the slideshow up by adding images is a good way to retain people’s interest.

As with the two-column layout, the layout ‘Title, Clipart, Text’ has space for a title and two columns but only one of these will contain text, while the other contains a placeholder for an image. Select this layout, then double-click on the image placeholder and a window will appear for you to choose an image. Most types of common image file are supported.

There are also layouts that let you add charts and graphs. If you need to present numerical information, such as demographics or sales data, a graph is a good way to represent this information on a slide. Select the layout ‘Title, Chart’ to create a slide with a box for a title and the entire space beneath it filled with a chart. Other layouts such as Title, Text, Chart will create a two-column layout, and you can place the chart on the left or right.

Double-clicking on the chart placeholder will switch Impress to full-screen editing, with some dummy information filled in. In this viewing mode you can return to the standard view by clicking anywhere outside the slide.

By default, Impress will have created a bar chart but you can change this to a pie chart, line graph, scatter graph and so on, either by right-clicking on the chart and selecting Chart Type from the menu, or by clicking on the Chart Type icon in the top left of the screen.

For some of the graphs, you can tick a box that switches the graph to a 3D display, which is more visually appealing than a flat 2D chart. For horizontal bar charts and vertical column charts, you can switch the style of 3D columns from square boxes to cylinders, cones, or pyramids.

The most important aspect of editing charts, of course, is adding your i nformation. In the same full-screen editing view, right-click on the chart and select Chart Data Table. An editing window with rows and columns that looks similar to Microsoft Excel will appear.

The first column, called Categories, labels each item on the graph’s X axis, which is used for each bar in a bar chart, or section of a pie chart, while the text above each column of data (called a Series in Impress) contains the data that you wish to compare in each category, for example revenue, costs and profit.

These labels usually appear in a legend that displays next to the chart. The icons at the top allow you to add and remove rows and columns and change the order in which they appear. Fill in the labels and the data, but be aware that certain charts work better for only a few series of data. Squeezing a chart into a single slide can shrink the text used in labels, but you can make the font larger by double-clicking on some text within the graph. In the window that appears, select the Characters tab to adjust the font.

You can also embed documents created with other applications in an Impress slideshow. Choose a slide layout with an Object placeholder, then double-click on it to bring up a window rather cryptically titled ‘Insert OLE Object’. All the Open Office document types are listed, but if you select Further Objects, click OK, you can choose from a longer list of file formats, including PDF files and Microsoft Office documents.

If the document you wish to include is stored on your computer, make sure the Create From File option is selected, then click Browse. Select the file you wish to include then click OK, and it should appear in your slide.

Share your presentation
Once your slideshow is complete, you’ll want to share it with friends or family. You might have the computer hooked up to a projector or large screen, but if not the easiest way is to create a file that can be sent via email.

Impress can export your slideshow in a number of formats, including PDF and as a Microsoft Powerpoint file. This is very handy as many people will have either Powerpoint or Microsoft’s free Powerpoint viewer installed.

Impress doesn’t support the newer Microsoft formats that were introduced with Office 2007, but it supports the older types of file that can be opened by any version of Office. To export a document as a Powerpoint presentation, left-click on the file menu, then choose Save As. In the dropdown box called ‘Save As Ty pe’ select ‘Microsoft Powerpoint 97/2000/XP’, enter a filename then click OK.

Open Office Impress may be free but it has everything you need to create and share great-looking presentations. Slideshows that combine images, words and charts are powerful tools whether you want to explain a concept or simply share your words and pictures with friends and family and they are easy to create too, so why not give it a go?

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