Presentation Software - Impress

Q1. What is OpenOffice Impress?

Ans.1: OpenOffice Impress is a free and open source digital presentation software by OpenOffice that allows us to explain or present any topic easily and effectively by creating a presentation that consists of text, picture, audio, video and animation effects.

Q2. What do you mean by views in Impress? Explain the different views available in Impress briefly?

Views in OpenOffice impress allow us to have a look of presentation from different perspective and work with it in different ways. Following are the presentation views availabe in Impress:

1. Normal View: It is the default view in Impress. Normal view is used to create, edit, design and animate a presentation.
2. Outline View: This view displays only the text entered in the placeholders. It doesn’t displays any picture, drawing shapes or any kind of formatting effects. This view is useful when want to have a quick overview of entire presentation.
3. Slide Sorter View: This view displays a thumbnail (miniature) view of all the slides in presentation. This view is useful when we want to see maximum slides of presentation at same time on the screen. Slide sorter view can also be used to rearrange the slides and set the timing etc.
4. Notes Page: This view allows us to add addition notes to the slides. These notes are visible only to presenter to help him recall the things he needs to explain while on that slide. These notes are not visible to the viewers.
5. Slide Show view: Slide show view is used to present the final presentation to the audience. Slide show view displays each slides on full screen one after another with all animation and transition effects applied to slides.
6. Handout Page: This view displays the slide with the its notes (if any). This view is most often used to take printouts of the slides with their detailed notes. The slide appears at the top of the page and presenter’s notes appear below.

Q3. What is use of Slide Master?

Ans.3: Slide Master is a useful feature of OpenOffice Impress that controls the appearance of entire presentation. It helps us to format the presentation quickly. Any change made in a slide layout in slide master is automatically applied to all the slides which are using the same slide layout in presentation. Thus it saves our time and efforts as we don’t need to make changes in each slide individually. Instead we do make changes in slide master and all the slides will reflect the changes. Slide master can also be used to create custom slide layouts.

Q4. What do you understand by Animation? How are they useful in a presentaton.

Ans.4: Change in an object’s appearance such as its shapes, size, color and position over a period of time is called Animation. Animation effects are useful in presentation as they help to make the presentation more interesting and also helps to draw viewer’s attention towards important topic on the slide.

Q5. How can you apply animation effects to your presentation?

Ans.5: Use following steps to apply animation effects in your presentation:

1. Click on Slide Show menu and choose Custom Animation option from the menu that appears.
2. Custom Animation takspane will appear at the right side of Impress window. Select the object on the slide whom you want to animate.
3. Now click on Add button in Custom Animation taskpane. Custom Animation dialog box will appear with a list of animation effects. Choose the desired animation effect and click on OK button.
4. Animation effect will be applied to the object selected on the slide.

Q6. What are transition effects?

Ans.6: Transitions are the visual effects that controls how a slide enters and exits a slide show. These effects are visible when a slide changes to other slide. Transition effects are very useful in making the presentation attractive and engaging.

Q7. Write down the steps to create hyperlink on a text in Impress?

Ans.7: Use following steps to insert hyperlink on a text in your presentation:

1. Select the text on which you want to apply hyperlink.
2. Click on Insert menu and choose Hyperlink option.
3. Hyperlink dialog box will appear. Type the url (address) of the link in URL field to whom you want to link your text
4. Click on on Apply button and then OK button. Hyperlink will be inserted on the selected text

Q8. Write down the shortcut key for the following:

1. Run a slide show: F5
2. Insert hyperlink: Ctrl+K
3. Insert a new slide: Ctrl+M

Notes by Mr. Mithun Adhikari (Lecturer in Computer Science)