Ancestry Magazine

Let me show you slides from my vacation. Did you just groan? It’s a universal reaction to home movies and slide shows, especially when yours is not the family on display. Thanks to Microsoft PowerPoint, that ubiquitous reaction has migrated to the office and classroom as slide presentations are used to sell, educate, or simply bore us with things we really don’t care about.

But let’s look at the positive side—PowerPoint is a flexible medium for showing off your family photos and clever genealogy work. If you own PowerPoint, but haven’t had the nerve to try it out, you can explore its potential right now.

Start with your abridged autobiography, locate a few digital pictures associated with your story, and let’s launch PowerPoint.

When you first open the program, you’ll see a white layout divided into sections. For now, ignore all but the “Click to add title” and “Click to add subtitle” boxes. Don’t click yet. First, you need a design.

Go to Format > Slide Design for an overwhelming list of options and select one you like. Change colors using Color Scheme options, if you wish.

Now, click the “Click to add title” box and type in your name. Then, click the “Click to add subtitle” box and type “This is your life” (yes, I know it’s hokey). Change fonts, colors, and type sizes whenever you want just as you do in a Word document—highlight text and choose Format > Font.

Add another slide via Insert > New Slide. This second slide defaults to a title with a bulleted list. Type your name in the top box, and then add a few lines of biographical information in the list.

For the third slide, select Insert > New Slide > Slide Layout and choose Title and Content (Windows) or Picture (Mac). Once inserted, you can adjust a slide with Format options. Background, colors, fade, clipart—they’re all available, you just may have to play around a little to find them. Remember, you can undo just about anything you’ve done with Edit > Undo.

Type a header in the text box above the picture box, and insert a photo by clicking the picture icon and selecting one of your photos. Once the photo appears in the box, you can resize it proportionally by dragging a corner. Select Slide Show > Custom Animation to play around with effects.

At any time, if you want to see what your show will look like, go to Slide Show > View Show; hit the escape key (ESC) to return to your layout. Keep adding more photos and slides until you’ve finished your story.

When you’re finished, choose one of the following options on the File menu to save and share your show:

1) Save to save as PowerPoint Show or Presentation to bundle everything together, making it viewable to anyone with PowerPoint.

2) If you are a Mac user, select Make Movie to create a QuickTime movie to be viewed by Mac and Windows users.

3) Save As exports the show as picture files; choose a file type like JPEG. Slides are created individually and placed in a folder to be viewed in order.

4) Save as Web Page lets viewers open the show in a browser, just like a website.

Once you become a PowerPoint pro, you may find this is a fun way to share your family photos and genealogy information with anyone in your life. Just, please, try not to bore them.

Laura G. Prescott is a professional researcher, writer, and speaker. She can be reached at www.lauraprescott.com.