Changing an Individual Slide
So far you have worked with the default fonts, colors, sizes that are affiliated with a
particular layout. You may need to make changes to a particular element on a slide, like
make the font larger or smaller, change the color, or style of the font. You can move an
element on a slide, like drag a bulleted list to the right side of the slide. To make
changes in a single slide, you need to work in Slide Editor View and make the active slide
the one you want to change. Click the [Selection Tool] button 
on the Toolbar and then click on
the element you want to change. You can use buttons on the Property Bar or the Toolbar, or
select items under FORMAT on the menu bar. Changes made here
only affect the active slide.
The placeholders are pre-established areas on a layout for holding a particular type of information for the slide. The placeholder can be selected in Slide Editor View and you can treat it like a graphic box in WordPerfect. That is, you can drag the box to change its position, drag a handle to change its size, press <Delete> to delete the placeholder, and cut, copy and paste the box to other slides.
Exercise 3
Since the next series of exercises are designed to allow you to explore options (and you may not like the effect of these options), you need to make a copy of your current slide set. Open the "newsletter tips" file and use FILE, Save As and save it as "Lesson 3 tips." This is the file we will use in this exercise, and your original file will remain intact.
You should be using the Corners background, taken from the Business category. If this is not the background in use, change your background using the [Master Gallery] button on the Property Bar.
Move to Slide 11, about graphic accents. You need to be in Slide Editor View. The title on Slide 11 goes to two lines, which is okay, but if you made the font smaller it would fit on one line across the slide. Click on the [Selection Tool] button on the Toolbar and then click once on the title area of the slide. It will have handles around the element. Now click on the [Font Size]
button on the Property Bar to bring up the "Font Size" list box. Change the font size to 36 point. Click on the [Foreground Fill Color] button
and select white from the color pallette.
Click on the corner of your slide and you will see the changes. Drag the title box lower so there is less space between the title and the text area.
Go to Slide 2, on Introduction. The bullets here are short lines and you could move the text to place an image to the left part of the slide. Select the bullet area and drag it to the right. If you want, place a graphic image in the left area.
Go to Slide 4, about the grid. Select the bullet area and then drag left on the middle handle at the right side. What happens to the text in the bulleted area? Click on the [Undo] button
on the Toolbar, if you want to change it back.
Save this version of "Lesson 3 tips."
Working with the Layout Layer
Every slide normally has three layers that make up the slide. The bottom layer is called the background. When you select from a gallery, you are selecting the bottom layer for your presentation. Over the background layer is the layout layer. This controls the general position and type of content for each slide. The layout layer determines the fonts and placement of the elements in a template, like the title, subtitle, bulleted chart, etc. The slide layer is the top level, and it is the layer you have been working with so far.
In Exercise 3 you changed elements in a slide that only affected that slide, because you were working in the slide layer. If you wanted to make global changes to multiple slides, you would make changes to the background or the layout layers. To select one of these other layers, you need to be in Slide Editor View, and then click EDIT on the menu bar.
You will see a checkmark in front of Slide Layer. Click on Layout Layer or Background Layer to work with one of those levels in the slide. Unlike working with the slide layer, making changes in the layout or background layer changes some or all of the slides in your set.
Exercise 4
Except on the Title slide, you have not used the subtitle placeholder for your slides. Get in Slide Editor View and find a Bullet Chart slide, like Slide 2. Click on EDIT, and select Layout Layer. A general layout will appear and the specific text for Slide 2 disappears. Select the subtitle area and press <Delete> to delete this element. Click on the bulleted area and drag it closer to the slide's title area
As another example, all the titles are centered. Select the title placeholder, then pick FORMAT from the menu bar, Justification, and select Left. The title in the box will be left justified.
Click on EDIT, on the menu bar and change back to the Slide Layer. Scroll through your slide set to view them. All bullet chart slides have been changed.
Save this version of "Lesson 3 tips."
If you start changing the layout layers, like changing headings from centered to left, you would need to make changes in all the slide templates you used. For example, in your slide set you used Data Chart, Bullet Chart, and Text templates. Each layout style will have to be edited and changed to have a consistent look in the slide set.
Working with the Background Layer
Making a change to the background will change the background in all your slides. Perhaps the most practical example of this is adding an organization logo in the corner of each slide. Although you could use INSERT, Graphics, Clipart on each page and add the image that way, it would be a lot of work. It is simpler to change to the Background Layer, add the image to the background, and have it appear on all slides.
Exercise 5
Get in Slide Editor View and change the layer to Background (select Background Layer from the EDIT menu). The corners background appears. The diagonal shapes in the top left and bottom right corners are part of the background.
Click on INSERT, Graphics, Clipart. Drag the image from the scrapbook to the bottom right corner of the background layer. If you have an organizational logo, place a copy of that image in the corner. Otherwise, use one of the images in the Clipart collection, like WORLD3 or RIBB0002. Resize the image if you wish.
Click on EDIT, on the menu bar and change back to the Slide Layer, and view your slides. Are there any places where the image is interfering with the text? These are issues you need to consider when placing items on the background. Save this version of "lesson 3 tips."
Finding Other Backgrounds
Presentations does have other backgrounds besides those found in the Master Gallery. To
find them, however, you have to be editing the background layer. When the Background Layer
is selected, several buttons appear on the property bar. Two of the buttons on the
property bar are Background Gallery 
and Master Gallery
buttons. You have already used the
Master Gallery, but the Background Gallery shows other backgrounds grouped in categories
like Blue, Gray, Teal, Red and several backgrounds from the master gallery. Just like
applying the other backgrounds, find one that appeals to you and click on [OK]. The option
in the dialog box for "Keep current graphic objects with the new background"
should normally not be selected. For example, if it were selected, when you had used the
Corners background, the diagonal shapes in the two corners are left in the new background,
which would probably interfere with the new background.
Exercise 6
Get in Slide Editor View and click Edit, Backgroung Layer to change the layer to the Background Layer. Click on the Background Gallery
Depending on how Presentations 8.0 was installed on your computer, there may be even more backgrounds available to you.
You may copy any of these folders from the Corel WordPerfect Suite 8 CD to your hard drive using Windows Explorer. Assuming E is the drive for your CD-ROM, you'll find the background folders on the CD in:
E:\COREL\SUITE8\GRAPHICS\BACKGROUNDS
Choose the folder(s) you want and copy them to
C:\COREL\SUITE8\GRAPHICS\BACKGROUNDS
Changing the Background Color
There are several items related to backgrounds not discussed in this introductory lesson, but a common question that arises is how to change the background color on the slides. Most of the backgrounds use a gradient pattern, mixing two colors. To change the color background, you have to be in Slide Editor View, and have selected the Background Layer. Then, right-click on the background and pick Page Setup from the QuickMenu; or pick Page Setup under FILE on the menu bar. A tabbed area in the resulting dialog box is for Page Color. One of the items is Fill Style, and there are four choices -- Pattern, Gradient, Texture, and Picture. Depending on which of these are selected, there are different selections under Category.
To make a gradient background a solid color, select Pattern 
, pick the solid pattern, and then
pick for the pattern color the color you wanted. Changes made here to the page color would
affect all the slides in the set.
Learning Corel Presentations 8.0