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Page 081 of PowerPoint tutorials, presentation essentials, personality interviews, and PowerPoint news.
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Author: Geetesh Bajaj
Product/Version: PowerPoint
September 08, 2011
Sometimes you want your text box to be placed in an exact position on your slide. Yes, you can select a text box and move it around by dragging it with your mouse -- and then let it go wherever you want it placed -- but for all practical reasons, this process is just visual and not accurate enough. Thankfully, PowerPoint provides a way to accurately position any text box just where you want it located. While this tutorial shows you how to reposition a text box (or a shape), it can be used to reposition text placeholders too, especially in the Slide Master.
Learn how to reposition your text boxes accurately on a slide in PowerPoint 2010.
September 07, 2011
Last week I received a graphic of a CD from Ellen Finkelstein -- who created it for a promotion -- the amazing part was that Ellen used PowerPoint to create the image of the CD -- of course although this looks like a CD, you can use it for a DVD or Blu-Ray disc as well! In this tutorial, you will learn how a slide program like PowerPoint can be used as a very capable drawing program.
Learn how to use default shapes in PowerPoint 2010 to draw a CD or DVD.
September 07, 2011
SmartArt is the successor to the Diagrams option in PowerPoint that let you insert organization charts and some simple diagrams. Certainly, SmartArt is much more involved than its predecessors -- yet it is quite easy to get started with this feature since almost everything you do is wizard driven. In this tutorial you'll learn how to insert a SmartArt graphic within PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
Learn how to insert SmartArt graphics in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
September 06, 2011
Sound files of various types such as MP3, WMA, or WAV files can be used in PowerPoint 2010, which automatically embeds them into your presentation. This means that you no longer have to worry about linked files getting misplaced or lost like you had to in previous versions of PowerPoint. Even then, it is a good practice to keep your sound files in the same folder in which you save your PowerPoint 2010 presentation -- even before you insert them as we show you.
Learn how to insert sound (audio) clips in PowerPoint 2010.
September 05, 2011
Tell me if this situation sounds familiar... You’ve engaged a presentation designer for an important pitch (or you’re that designer being engaged.) You’ve got a lot of content and strategy to create in a short amount of time—so much so that you know you’ll be writing up until the very last minute. So, you ask your designer to “create a template” that you can “drop” your content into. It sounds reasonable, as does downloading or purchasing a stock PowerPoint template that seems to fit the subject matter of your presentation. But here’s why the insistence on creating and using a “PowerPoint template” is often a waste of time and resources, and often entirely counter-productive to effective presentation.
Read this post by Nolam Haims.
September 05, 2011
We have already explored all the Shape Effects that show up in the Shape Effects gallery of PowerPoint 2011 for Mac. In addition, PowerPoint 2011 also provides you with an extra effect called Soft Edges that is not directly accessible from the Shape Effects gallery. To get to Soft Edges, you will have to choose the Glow effects options as we will show you later in this tutorial. The Soft Edges effect adds an eaten-up, feathered edge to any selected shape. Soft edges work best with larger shapes, especially if you use some of the larger soft edge variations available.
Learn how to apply Soft Edges to shapes in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
September 02, 2011
Ellen Finkelstein is a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP and author of several PowerPoint, Flash, and AutoCAD books -- she just launched announced the second incarnation of Outstanding Presentations Workshop, her free webinar series that allows everyone to learn from renowned presentation experts. In this conversation, Ellen talks more about this new webinar series.
September 02, 2011
Among the first few activities that any new PowerPoint user undertakes is inserting a picture in their PowerPoint slide. To most of you, inserting pictures is mundane -- an activity that's simple. But behind this simple task, there are options you may not be aware of. You know that a picture located in any of your folders can be inserted on a slide. But, have you wondered about the relation a picture on the slide has with the original picture located in your folder? By default, PowerPoint retains no relation -- even if you delete or move the original picture file you inserted, the copy on your slide will still be retained since PowerPoint saves the picture as a part of the file it creates. However, there are options in PowerPoint that let you maintain the relation between the original picture and the inserted picture -- for example, you can make changes to your original picture and PowerPoint will update the copy on the slide!
Learn about the advanced options available for inserting and/or linking pictures in PowerPoint 2010.
September 01, 2011
The 3-D options to rotate or bevel shapes in PowerPoint 2011 are surprisingly powerful -- in fact they are good enough to be compared to a basic 3-D program! As part of this series of tutorials, you have already learned how you can use most of the Shape Effects available in PowerPoint 2011. This tutorial builds upon the options explained in the Apply 3-D Rotation to a Shape tutorial.
Learn how to edit the 3-D Rotation attributes of a shape in PowerPoint 2011 with advanced controls.
August 31, 2011
While PowerPoint 2003 and previous versions provided you with an option to recolor your pictures easily, this option was removed in PowerPoint 2007 and also did not make it to the subsequent PowerPoint 2010. This was indeed one of the very cool options in PowerPoint and many long-time users were not too amused with its absence. Yes, if you have a copy of PowerPoint 2003 or an older version installed, you can easily still recolor the pictures in that version -- and then bring that content to any of the newer PowerPoint versions -- but doing that often can be cumbersome and boring -- especially now that PixSwap, a third-party PowerPoint add-in brings back the Recolor option to PowerPoint 2007 and 2010.
Read the Indezine review of PixSwap.
August 31, 2011
When you insert a drawing or illustration in PowerPoint 2003, it may not always match the look and feel of the other slide objects such as text color or other visuals -- or it may not look good against a particular slide background. Fortunately, the Recolor Picture option can help.
Learn how to recolor pictures in PowerPoint 2003.
August 30, 2011
If you haven't seen all our other tutorials on Shape Effects available in PowerPoint 2011, then this page is self sufficient on its own. On the other hand, if you have been following all our tutorials in this series, you know that we have covered all the Shape Effects apart from 3-D Rotation and Soft Edges. In this tutorial, you will learn to add a 3-D Rotation effect to your shapes. This will make them look three dimensional and prominent.
Learn how to apply the 3-D Rotation effect to selected shapes in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
August 29, 2011
Tired of the same old curved lines and world globe PowerPoint backgrounds? Want to impress your next crowd with something new? Why not make your own artistic PowerPoint background? Find a picture with some texture in it. The best way is to search for Creative Commons images at Compfight and use terms like wall, sky, or denim.
Learn more in this guest post by Bruce Gabrielle.
August 29, 2011
Adding pictures to a PowerPoint slide is a great way to add some visual detail. There are two ways to insert a picture on your slide in PowerPoint: You use a layout that includes a content placeholder, or you insert a picture within a slide irrespective of its layout. Whichever option you choose depends upon your choice -- we cover both of them in the following steps.
Learn how to insert a picture on a slide in PowerPoint 2010.
August 26, 2011
Hermann Narez is a graphic designer for PhotoSpin, Inc., a royalty-free stock photo company. He currently heads up the Design Services department, develops and designs print, web, and e-marketing campaigns, and maintains brand consistency across multiple print, web, and e-marketing channels. In this conversation, Hermann discusses the importance of using pictures in slides.
August 26, 2011
Bevel options for shapes in PowerPoint 2011 are aplenty. Most of the time, the Bevel preset effects may work for you as explored in our Apply Bevel Effects to Shapes in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac tutorial. Yet, those presets are merely the tip of the iceberg -- PowerPoint's advanced Bevel effect options provide customizations for contour, contour color, depth, depth color, and materials used in the Bevel effects. And if all that 3-D terminology had you in a dizzy, don't worry -- this simple tutorial explains every option within the 3-D gamut as far as Bevels are concerned. Do note that advanced Bevel options are available in the 3-D Format area within PowerPoint -- so for reasons of sanity, just imagine that Bevel and 3-D Format are the same attribute with two different names -- we use both terms interchangeably in this tutorial!
Explore the advanced Bevel (3-D Format) options available for shapes in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
You May Also Like: Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the Water -- Better Box Thinking: Guest Post by Jerry Weissman | Pivot Tables in PowerPoint: by Kasper Langmann
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