This is the print version of this page. All content is copyright Indezine.com 2000-2023.
Page 105 of PowerPoint tutorials, presentation essentials, personality interviews, and PowerPoint news.
Previous Archive Page | Next Archive Page
Author: Geetesh Bajaj
Product/Version: PowerPoint
June 28, 2012
In this series of tutorials on working with videos in PowerPoint 2010, you have already learned about correction adjustments for videos, recoloring video clips, and applying Video Styles, Video Effects, Video Shapes, and Video Borders that can help you enhance the look of your inserted videos. These options will make your video clips look better and focused – and will provide you with ideas to make your video clips stand apart. Yet, there are some very basic video editing options that can be even more significant. These include how you can resize, rotate, and flip your inserted video clips. Resizing can help you change dimensions of your video clips, while slight changes in rotation values can draw attention. Flip, the last of these options though is something you will almost never use -- unless you want to do something drastically different!
Learn how you can Resize, Rotate, and Flip video clips in PowerPoint 2010.
June 27, 2012
These businesswoman silhouettes are ready to use within your PowerPoint presentation slides -- and have been provided in both black and white colors. Both variations are contained within two separate slides in one presentation that you can download. In addition, you can use PowerPoint's fills, lines, and effects to make these silhouettes appear coordinated with your slides. Copy the silhouettes graphics (clip arts) of your choice from the downloaded presentation, and paste them into your PowerPoint presentation slides. All these silhouette graphics can be used and customized with Shape Styles just like any other PowerPoint shape. You can also paste them into a Word document, an Excel worksheet, or any other program.
Download and use this presentation.
June 27, 2012
Pattern fills are the last of the various fill options for slide backgrounds we have explored to use in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac. Patterns in PowerPoint are two-color designs comprising lines, dots, dashes, checks, etc. PowerPoint includes 48 such patterns with names like Plaid, Weaves, Shingle, and Zigzag. This tutorial builds upon what you have already learned in the Format Slide Background tutorial, and shows how you can use pattern fills for your slide background.
Learn how to apply pattern fills as slide backgrounds in PowerPoint 2011.
June 26, 2012
Being part of several groups and forums means that I get to know about the problems that everyday users face with their PowerPoint and presenting skills. Some topics end up being discussed repeatedly, and bring forth many opinions that differ, overlap, or even agree with each other. One of these is the debate about whether you should use bullet points in PowerPoint or not -- and that is indeed a Pandora's box, so we will leave that one aside for today! Another topic that gets discussed is the use of PowerPoint to create printed slides on paper -- these printed slides are circulated to an audience before the presentation begins -- needless to add, most of these slides are not projected and very rarely are these presentations given to an audience that comprises more than a handful of people.
Read this issue of our weekly newsletter.
June 26, 2012
Once you insert a video in your slide, you can crop it in almost the same way you crop a picture. Before you crop though, you must ascertain whether PowerPoint's Crop option will help create a better result for your inserted video. The Crop option allows you to remove not-required areas of a video -- for example, if the subject of your video is a person speaking who is surrounded by a large, distracting background of other people or moving objects, you may want to crop the video so that the cropped video now focuses more on the speaker, and gets rid of all the extra distractions. Note that cropping a video does not trim the timings of the video playback in any way – in fact trimming is a completely different option that will be explored in another tutorial. In the following tutorial, we will explore how you can crop a video clip.
Learn how crop a video clip in PowerPoint 2010.
June 25, 2012
Tom Bunzel specializes in knowing what other presenters need and how to make technology work. He has appeared on Tech TV's Call for Help as "Professor PowerPoint", and is a featured speaker at industry events each year. Tom is also a "technology coach" and does presentation and video consulting in southern California. Tom's new eBook, Presence of Mind: Journey to a New Operating System is now available online. You can also visit his site, The Presentation Professor and his BunzBlog blog. In this conversation, Tom discusses how you should create a new presentation from scratch, and also his new book
Read this conversation with Tom Bunzel.
June 25, 2012
In this series of tutorials on slide background fills, you have already explored various slide background styles available in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: you have learned about solid, gradient, picture, and texture fills for slide backgrounds. When you use texture fills for your slide backgrounds, you need not limit yourself to only the default textures that PowerPoint offers. You can always explore some custom textures such as our own Ppted Background Texture Collection. Also some pictures lend themselves better to being used as textures, especially if they are seamless. In this tutorial you will learn how to use custom textures for your slide background fills.
Learn how to use custom texture fills for your slide backgrounds in PowerPoint 2011.
June 23, 2012
Silhouettes are amazing, and yet so practical to use. They don't tell too much and yet that is sometimes just what you need. Here are some businesspeople silhouettes ready to use within your PowerPoint presentation slides. In the sample PowerPoint presentation that you will download, you will find these silhouettes in both black and white colors, contained within two separate slides. You will also find one more slide that contains some variations of these businesspeople silhouettes applied with some fills, lines, and effects, which will help you to start with. You can edit them further using PowerPoint’s fills, lines, and effects to make them appear coordinated with your slides.
Download and use these silhouettes in your presentations.
June 22, 2012
YouTube Video Wizard is a PowerPoint add-in that enables you to insert YouTube videos into a PowerPoint slide using just the YouTube video URL that appears in the browser address bar. This is much easier than following the official Microsoft process of inserting online videos -- and Microsoft's suggested option only works in PowerPoint 2010 or later. YouTube Video Wizard, on the other hand works in almost all Windows versions of PowerPoint. YouTube Video Wizard is from Shyam Pillai, a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP who creates several PowerPoint add-ins.
June 22, 2012
When you insert a video clip within a PowerPoint slide, you'll find it placed as a traditional rectangular shape. And while that's exactly what most users expect, it does seem safe and conventional. However, PowerPoint 2010 does allow you to have your video playing in different shapes such as a circle or oval, or a wave, a triangle, or any of the shapes that PowerPoint includes. Just the fact that a video can be placed within a shape is no reason to forego the conventional rectangle -- do remember that most other shapes may crop out important parts of your video clips.
Learn how add shapes for videos in PowerPoint 2010.
June 21, 2012
Tom Kuhlmann is VP, Community for Articulate, where he manages the Articulate user community. He also writes the Rapid E-learning Blog which is published weekly to over 95,000 readers. Tom has developed and managed e-learning courses for both large and small organizations. He's passionate about learning technology and his core focus is on helping people succeed and grow. He is known throughout the industry for his practical, no-nonsense approaches to e-learning. He's also a frequent speaker at ASTD and e-learning industry events. He has a Master's in Education Technology from Pepperdine. In this conversation, Tom discusses the new Articulate Storyline product.
Read this exclusive conversation about Articulate Storyline.
June 21, 2012
When you want to change the default look of your slide background, you can explore the various slide background styles available in PowerPoint. Other than these styles, you can certainly explore specific options that we have already covered: solid, gradient, or picture fills for slide backgrounds. In addition, you can also choose a texture fill for your slide background. Texture and picture fills for slide backgrounds have so much in common; the same picture can be used for both a texture or a picture fill -- the main difference is that while a picture background results in your slide using a single picture as a backdrop, using a texture background can result in the same picture being tiled across the slide background -- imagine a wallpaper on your room's wall with repeating motifs. Also some pictures lend themselves better to being used as textures, especially if they are seamless.
Learn how to apply texture fills as a slide background in PowerPoint 2011.
June 20, 2012
These businessman silhouettes are ready to use within your PowerPoint presentation slides -- and have been provided in both black and white colors. Both variations are contained within two separate slides in one presentation that you can download. In addition, you can use PowerPoint's fills, lines, and effects to make these silhouettes appear coordinated with your slides. Copy the silhouettes graphics (clip arts) of your choice from the downloaded presentation, and paste them into your PowerPoint presentation slides. All these silhouette graphics can be used and customized with Shape Styles just like any other PowerPoint shape. You can also paste them into a Word document, an Excel worksheet, or any other program.
Download and use this presentation.
June 20, 2012
In this series of video tutorials, we have already covered how to apply Corrections, Recolor, Video Styles, and Video Borders to your inserted videos to enhance their appearance. However, you are certainly not limited to the options mentioned above -- PowerPoint 2010 does seem to spoil you as far as choices about working with video files are concerned -- so you can now apply Video Effects! Video Effects let you apply various effects such as shadows, glows, bevels, 3-D rotation, etc. to the selected video.
Learn about applying Video Effects in PowerPoint 2010.
June 19, 2012
What does positivity has to do with presentations? The answer is just one word: Everything.
Positivity includes all the emotions associated with being nice -- these are sincerity, genuineness, truthfulness, and trust. When you have an aura of these qualities around yourself -- and your slides sync these qualities too, then you can be a better presenter even if you lack some of the other qualities associated with better presenting. These positive qualities are not the icing on the cake because they do not add decoration -- rather positivity is the sugar you add to the cake itself.
June 19, 2012
There are plenty of options in PowerPoint to make your slide background look great. Other than the default slide background styles, you can also explore solid, gradient, picture fills, texture fills, and pattern fills for your slide backgrounds. Among these alternatives, picture fills can look the most spectacular, but they can end up looking the most distracting as well. Clearly, there has to be some careful thought before you decide on a picture that's suitable as a slide background.
June 18, 2012
The 12 different text effects contained within this sample presentation can be used with any text in PowerPoint 2007, 2010, or higher versions in Windows (and also PowerPoint 2008, 2011 or higher on Mac). These text effects vary all the way from simple hashed line fills to thicker sketchy lines. All these text effects are created specially to replicate the hand drawn look. Some text effects may work better only when applied to larger text -- play around and test which one works best for you. None of these effects are suitable for body text -- use them mainly for your slide titles. Use the Format Painter button to click on any of the sample text, and then click on the text where you want to copy these effects.
Download and copy these text effects to use them in your own presentations.
You May Also Like: Show Emotion: by Claudyne Wilder | think-cell version 9: Conversation with Markus Hannebauer
Microsoft and the Office logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
