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Page 082 of PowerPoint tutorials, presentation essentials, personality interviews, and PowerPoint news.
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Author: Geetesh Bajaj
Product/Version: PowerPoint
September 23, 2011
SmartArt graphics in PowerPoint are so versatile -- once you insert a SmartArt graphic (or convert some bulleted text to SmartArt), you can add more shapes with just a click or two. This lets you expand your graphic as required. You can also go in the opposite direction and delete shapes from any existing SmartArt graphic with the same ease.
Learn how to delete shapes from an existing SmartArt graphic in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
September 22, 2011
Even if you are not aware, every presentation you create has its own Slide Master. This Master governs the default attributes like slide background, font choices, colors, and even the positioning of the placeholders in your slide. Thus if you end up with a 50 slide presentation that uses center aligned titles that you want changed to left aligned titles in a larger font size -- then you need to make this change only once within the Slide Master, and all 50 slides update at once with your new Title formatting! Also, the icing on the cake is that you do not have to format individual slides – this saves you loads of time, and you also end up with slides that are consistent in look.
Learn about the Slide Master in PowerPoint 2003.
September 21, 2011
Carmen Simon’s afternoon session was at the Presentation Summit 2011 was about the power of remembrance. Carmen emphasized that it's important to understand what your audiences remember, because audiences can only act upon what they recollect. During several past sessions, Carmen has asked her audiences about which of her slides they remember. And results can depend on various factors. Carmen's presentations and workshops help business professionals to use communication and presentation skills to increase revenue, train or motivate others, and overall to stand out from too much sameness in the industry.
September 21, 2011
While many of PowerPoint's SmartArt graphic variants are so usable, there may be times when you want to add an extra shape or two to your SmartArt -- at this point of time, we are assuming that you already know how to insert a new SmartArt graphic or convert existing bulleted text to SmartArt. Fortunately, SmartArt allows you to make these additions and edits with just a click or two. You can add one or more shapes to your existing SmartArt graphics either from within the SmartArt graphic itself, or through the Text Pane. Whether you can add a new shape to a SmartArt graphic or not depends entirely on the SmartArt variant that you are using -- some variants offer more options than the others.
Learn how to add new shapes to an existing SmartArt graphic in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
September 20, 2011
The opening keynote at the Presentation Summit 2011 was kick-started by Nigel Holmes. Nigel came from England 30 years ago, and is an amazing graphic designer. He showed his information art from the times when digital graphic design was not the norm. Nigel Holmes moved to America in 1978 to work for Time Magazine. He became graphics director and stayed there for 16 years. Despite academic criticism, he remains committed to the power of pictures and humor to help people understand otherwise abstract numbers and difficult scientific concepts, whether in print or in presentations.
September 20, 2011
Every slide that you see in PowerPoint has its own unique look -- it has a slide background, and the same fonts typically are used on all slides. You really don't have to do anything other than adding new slides and typing in your text -- all the formatting is taken care of by some magical behind-the-scenes intelligence within PowerPoint. Also if you print notes pages or handouts from PowerPoint, you will find that these are also formatted to synchronize with the look of your slides. Ever wonder how you can control all this intelligence? Well, the answer is the Masters that are contained within every PowerPoint presentation.
September 19, 2011
SmartArt is a great option that lets you quickly create editable diagrams that also work as bulleted list alternatives. You have already learned how to convert your bulleted list to a SmartArt graphic -- but once you do that, you'll discover that it is neither easy nor intuitive to edit, add, or delete text that comprised your original bulleted list. Fortunately, you can get the bulleted list back within the convenient Text Pane of the SmartArt graphic -- any edits you make in the Text Pane also show immediately in your SmartArt graphic.
September 16, 2011
The aphorism, “Don’t raise the bridge, lower the water,” has applications from the soaring heights of architectural design to the quotidian task of presentation graphics; the common denominator in both being the importance of thinking outside the box……for presenters—who usually think within the strict confines of outbound corporate marketing boxes—better box thinking involves consideration of the audience. In most of today’s unilateral and overloaded business presentations, thinking about the audience all too often goes missing in action.
Read this guest post by Jerry Weissman.
September 16, 2011
Do you want to add a sound track to your PowerPoint presentation so that it plays across slides -- so that when you move from one slide to another, the music continues playing without any interruption? A soothing background music score playing across your presentation slides can be a good move, as far is its not distracting your audience. Of course, if a live speaker is spearheading the presentation -- then it goes without question that you don't want to add a sound that spans across slides.
Learn how to loop a sound clip across slides in PowerPoint 2010.
September 15, 2011
If you want some music playing continuously without any interruption when you move from one slide to another, then you should first make sure that the music clip you are using is suitable for this purpose. A soft music clip that spans across your slides can make the flow between slides smooth, as long as the sound is not jarring or distracting for your audience. Also, if a presenter is going to speak along with the slides -- then it goes without question that you don't want to add a sound that spans across slides. Not only will this make the audience inattentive, but the speaker will be at a distinct disadvantage too. Yet, if you are showing a bunch of successive slides that include pictures -- and no speaker is accompanying the slides -- then adding a music clip to span across slides may be a good idea -- here's how you go about doing this task in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
Learn how to loop a sound clip across slides in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
September 14, 2011
Imagine this scenario: you place a text box on your slide -- then you change the color of the font, reduce or increase the font size, set autofit options, tweak the margins, etc. At this point of time you are happy with your settings. Then you add another text box in the next slide -- and you realize that this new text box needs to look the same as the text box you created earlier! No -- you do not have to change all settings again -- you change the defaults within the active presentation so that any new text box you insert has the format abilities you want.
Learn how to set a formatted text box as your default text box in PowerPoint 2010.
September 13, 2011
PowerPoint 2011 for Mac enables you to work with various types of sound files such as MP3, WMA, or WAV. However, inserted sounds are always embedded within your presentation, which is different from the default behavior in previous versions of PowerPoint which always linked sound files rather than embedding them. This has a plus side since you now no longer have to worry about linked files getting misplaced or lost. On the flip side, this can balloon file sizes. Having said that, it is still a good practice to keep your sound files in the same folder in which you save your PowerPoint 2011 presentation -- even before you insert them.
Learn how to insert audio or sound in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
September 12, 2011
Among PowerPoint 2010's newest and most magical abilities is the Remove Background option that lets you remove the background from an inserted picture. This can be a great feature if you want to remove a sky, a wall, any backdrop, or something else in a photograph so that the slide background shows through within the removed parts of the picture.
Learn how to remove a part of your picture to make a transparent background in PowerPoint 2010.
September 12, 2011
Resizing text boxes works in almost the same way as you would resize any other slide object in PowerPoint -- select it and you will see eight handles on the four corners and four sides -- you then drag any of these corners to resize. The problem with this approach is that the resized text box you end up with is not accurate. If you do not need accuracy, then you need not read the rest of this tutorial -- however there might be times when you need your text box sized exactly as the size of another slide object on the same slide.
Learn how to resize text boxes accurately on a slide in PowerPoint 2010.
September 09, 2011
OfficeOne ProTools Color Picker is a PowerPoint add-in (compatible with PowerPoint 2010, 2007, 2003, and 2002) that lets you pick up and apply the colors of lines, fills, effects, etc. to selected shapes and text in your slides. In addition, it also allows you to quickly click on an area of your slide and set that color as the background fill for your slides. Color Picker shows you the color of the pixel directly beneath the cursor on the screen so that you know what exactly you are clicking on.
Read the Indezine review of ProTools Color Picker.
September 09, 2011
With all the bad publicity that bulleted text on a PowerPoint slide gets these days, it may be a good idea to look at some alternatives -- even if you are exploring other options for only a few slides. One of the options that works great is SmartArt -- if you have some bulleted text on your slide in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac, you can easily convert it into to a SmartArt graphic with just a few clicks. Do note though that this works best when your original bulleted text does not have too much text -- just a small word or phrase in each of the bullets is something that translates very well to SmartArt.
Learn how to convert your existing bulleted text to a SmartArt graphic in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
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