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Page 114 of PowerPoint tutorials, presentation essentials, personality interviews, and PowerPoint news.
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Author: Geetesh Bajaj
Product/Version: PowerPoint
September 25, 2012
Sound effects that play along with slide transitions are one of those small touches that can add interest or be pesky. Whether you want to add these sound effects is entirely your call, but do remember that discretion can often be a better choice! Tread with caution since a sound playing with every slide transition can not only sound cheesy, but it can also unnecessarily distract your audience. Having said that, there are occasions where a sound effect can be wisely applied to PowerPoint slide transitions -- maybe a chime sound for just one slide? Whatever you decide, let us now show you how you can add a sound to accompany a slide transition.
Learn how to add slide transition sound in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
September 24, 2012
For those who are connecting the dots, the future of presentations is clearly focusing on the delivery of expertise supported with a limited display of content. The better slides will be designed to be viewed, not read. The images will "tease", never "please" allowing visual support to provide only enough content to lead an audience directly back to the presenter for the interpretive context. Interaction, where possible, will engage audiences by involving them in the problem, not simply offering a preplanned solution. Change will occur with interpersonal communication, the appeal to long-term memory using stories, examples and analogies, a knowledgeable presenter who comes equipped with questions for the audience that stimulate thinking, and someone who understands that the non-verbal cues must remain congruent with prepared content. Assessments that can measure skills will gain prominence as presenters seek immediate feedback from audiences in order to adapt to ever-changing conditions. Savvy speakers will understand audience preferences and find ways to meet individual needs in a variety of venues. Visually speaking, ahead of us should be the streamlined version of what preceded us!
Read more in this post by Tom Mucciolo.
September 24, 2012
Have you ever created a brand new presentation in PowerPoint and then closed it without saving it for even once? This scenario seem to be little unbelievable - because even if you accidently close your presentation, PowerPoint asks whether you would like to save the presentation or not. So just in case you did the unbelievable and discarded all your changes, there are chances that your updated presentation may be saved in some state -- also it's entirely plausible that you may have lost all your file changes to a system or PowerPoint crash. Most of the time, PowerPoint will salvage your file and offer to open it for you the next time you launch the program -- alternatively, if you don't see any files being offered for recovery, you can set the process in action manually.
Learn how to recover presentations manually in PowerPoint 2010.
September 22, 2012
A segment of a circle is defined as the region between the chord of a circle and its associated arc. This conceptual slide contains a circle with 7 segments you can use to illustrate any concept or entity comprising 7 components/elements, for example seven days of a week. Try and use pictures that complement each other -- or even strongly contrast with each other. In the sample slides you see, we used an Education theme for all the pictures within the 7 segments. Whatever choices you make, the resulting slide should have a compelling impact on your audience -- and should sync with the message of your presentation. We have used basic PowerPoint shapes to create most of these conceptual designs. Also, some of them are imported from other graphic programs and converted to PowerPoint shapes.
Download and use this concept slide in your presentation.
September 21, 2012
There are so many ways in which you can create a better chart or a diagram using nothing apart from the tools available in PowerPoint -- yet playing with all these options does take a fair amount of time. If you want something quick, and also want the graphic content of your slides to shine through, then you may want to explore our review product: CrystalGraphics Chart and Diagram Slides for PowerPoint. Charts and Diagram Slides for PowerPoint is from CrystalGraphics, a well-known vendor of PowerPoint add-ins for more than a decade. This add-in comprises over 1000 data-driven charts and editable diagrams. All the content is available as slides that you insert into your existing presentations. While the entire content is available as PowerPoint slides (in the PPTX format), the best way to use these is via a custom add-in that plugs into PowerPoint.
Explore CrystalGraphics Chart and Diagram Slides for PowerPoint.
September 21, 2012
As discussed in our Sharing and Deleting Custom Theme Fonts in PowerPoint 2008 and 2011 for Mac tutorial, you cannot create your own Theme Fonts sets from within PowerPoint 2011 or PowerPoint 2008 for Mac. However since all Theme Fonts sets essentially are a bunch of code within an Open XML file, there's nothing preventing you from opening any existing Theme Fonts file with the .XML extension, and then editing them within a text editor. Save this file with a new name in a designated folder and you actually end up creating your own custom Theme Fonts set!
Learn how to create custom Theme Fonts using XML on the Mac.
September 20, 2012
After a typical presentation, how much do attendees remember when they walk out of the room? Are there some parts of a presentation that they remember more, and if that's true, then why? What can presenters and slide designers do so that the audience can have a better memory recall about their message and content?
These were the questions we sent to Dr. Carmen Taran earlier this year. She had already pondered about these questions before, and was intrigued enough to put together a study. She calls it a major endeavor and needs real audience input now -- the purpose of her study is to find the answers to these questions. Empirically!
Learn more and be part of this study.
September 20, 2012
After spending an inordinate amount of time to create your PowerPoint presentation, your computer unexpectedly crashes or your computer just shuts off due to a power failure. Or maybe just PowerPoint crashes for any number of reasons. Of course, since you had zero warnings, your files were not saved -- you are thus left with the state of your last saved presentation. Not really because you can restart PowerPoint, and one of two occurrences might happen.
Learn how to automatically recover your unsaved presentation in PowerPoint 2010.
September 19, 2012
Countless voices will tell you that it's a sin to make your audiences suffer with slides that are populated with bullets, but ask for a solution and the voices will diminish to just one or two. And even then, you may not be able to use all the advice! So, here's one option: a no-bullets alternative for you -- this presentation is an example of how you can use a callout style as an alternative to bulleted lists. Make sure you notice ways to get in your pictures, charts, and tables within this callout style. Also this question and answer (you can just call it a "conversation ") format will help you involve your audience much better, especially if you animate the callouts and their connectors sequentially one after the other. Even better, use the Push transition effect for your slides to get the most from this style.
Download the sample presentation and use as required.
September 19, 2012
Although PowerPoint 2011 for Mac provides several Theme Fonts sets, it doesn't allow you to create custom Theme Fonts sets within PowerPoint or in any other Office program. This ability is provided in PowerPoint for Windows, but it's one of those features that's not available on Mac versions of the program. So why is it important to be able to edit and create custom Theme Fonts sets?
Learn how to share and delete the custom Theme Fonts in PowerPoint 2008 and 2011 for Mac.
September 18, 2012
Joan Babinski is vice president of marketing for Brainshark, Inc. Brainshark's cloud-based software lets users create online and mobile video presentations -- using simple business tools like PowerPoint and the phone or computer microphone -- and share and track their content. Brainshark is also the creator of the free SlideShark app for viewing, presenting and sharing PowerPoints on the iPad and iPhone. In this conversation, Joan discusses "Mad for the iPad" survey data that Brainshark is releasing today, from a survey of 1,320 iPad owners.
September 18, 2012
PowerPoint and indeed all Microsoft Office programs allow you to work with a particular slide object only if it is selected. For example, you select a shape to make changes to the shape. You similarly select a chart to edit the chart. And yes, you can select a text container object such as a text placeholder, a text box, or even a shape -- and then make changes to its position, formatting, size, etc. However, this changes the entire object -- and leaves the actual text content within that object largely unchanged. To make changes to the actual text, you first need to select the text and then make changes by using the options available within the Home tab of the Ribbon or the Mini Toolbar.
Explore various ways of selecting text in PowerPoint 2010.
September 18, 2012
Want an old fashioned PowerPoint alarm clock? Yes, it's fun but it can also be put to so many practical uses -- and none of them will wake you in the morning! And then you might want to try using an old scanner to bring in some visual imagery for your slides. We have these covered in this issue of the newsletter along with exclusive conversations and guest posts too -- read about Ellen Finkelstein's amazing Outstanding Presentations webinar series. And there are the usual lists of newly released PowerPoint tutorials for both Windows and Mac users. Have a great week.
September 17, 2012
Yancey Unequivocally is the co-founder and President at Empowered Presentations, a slide design firm based in Honolulu, Hawaii. Yancey is in the business of helping companies and nonprofit organizations get their message across. Her business has received accolades such as two first-place finishes in the World's Best Presentation Contest on Slideshare.net and a Best in Slideshow Finalist in the Microsoft PowerPoint Slidefest Contest. In this conversation, Yancey discusses how you can prepare efficiently to create and deliver a better Ignite or Pecha Kucha presentation.
September 17, 2012
Theme Fonts, Theme Colors, and Theme Effects are individual components contained within each Theme in PowerPoint – these influence how individual slides in your presentation look. Note that while all the slides differ in terms of colors, fonts, and effects applied, their text content is still the same. When you apply a different Theme to your PowerPoint presentation, the fonts, colors, and effects applied to your slides change. Unless you override this on a per slide basis, these changes show up in all slides in the presentation. The resulting slides all look consistent.
Explore how you can change the active Theme Fonts set in PowerPoint 2011.
September 15, 2012
This sample presentation includes 3 animated clocks that are equipped with old-fashioned alarm bells that ring after either 1, 2, or 5 minutes – depending upon the clock you choose! Use these in a quiz session, a quick break, or adapt them to run a longer time and use for an assignment time – or even a lunch or tea break! These clocks have been created using basic PowerPoint shapes and are made Theme aware so that when you copy them to your presentation, they appear in harmony with the overall appearance of your slide content.
Download and use these clocks in your presentation.
September 14, 2012
Tom Burton is VP Business Development at Zenler. Tom is responsible for developing North American markets for Zenler's eLearning authoring tools as well as Learning Management Systems. Tom also chips in as one of Zenler's community managers. Tom has extensive sales background and eLearning is his big area of interest and he blogs often on e-Learning. Zenler's products include Zenler Studio eLearning Authoring Tool and Zenler Online Learning Management System. In this conversation, Tom discusses how existing PowerPoint users can use Zenler Studio, and about delivering the created content through devices such as the iPad.
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