Media Browser - Photos Tab in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

The Media Browser is a new feature for PowerPoint 2011, and is a central repository of all media content that you can insert in your slides, it contains six tabs, and in this tutorial, we will explore Photos, the first of these tabs. This tab provides you quick access to visual content within your iPhoto and Photo Booth collections, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Photos tab within Media Browser

The Photos tab is divided into two panes (refer to Figure 1 above), the top pane is a scroll-equipped area which enables you to navigate your album and the lower pane displays previews of your photos. Sometime the Photos tab may look like one shown in Figure 2, without the top pane it rather has a drop-down list from where you can choose a location for your media.

Figure 2: Photos tab without the top pane

To change between the views, just click the View Splitter, a small dot above where your content shows (highlighted in red in Figure 2) and drag it down so the drop-down list no longer shows. You can choose whichever view works best for you but in this tutorial we will explore the view without the drop-down list (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Photos tab

Let us now explore the options within the Photos tab of Media Browser, as marked in Figure 3, above:

A. Folder / Browser

Browse for folders from which you want to view and access photos.

B. View Splitter

Drag the dot to adjust the size of the upper and lower panes. Drag further up to change the Folder / Browser pane to a drop-down list.

C. Preview

Displays thumbnails of all photos within the chosen folder.

D. Scroll Bar

The vertical scroll bar, placed towards the right of the preview pane can be used to scroll down if you have more photos. Click one of the double-headed arrows at the bottom of the vertical scroll bar to move up and down.

E. Search

Just type in part of a filename, or some keywords in the search field to view search-narrowed, relevant photo instantly.

F. Number

Lists the number of photos in your preview pane, this value changes depending upon the folder you are browsing, and also dynamically changes when you enter a search term in the Search box.

G. Slider

Drag the slider left and right to adjust the size of the photo thumbnails in the preview pane.

Within the Photo tab preview pane, you can select a photo and right-click (or Ctrl+click) to bring up the contextual menu shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Choose display options for photo preview pane

There are three options in the list which are explained below:

i. Open in iPhoto

Choose this option to open the selected photo in iPhoto.

ii. Display as List

By default, the Preview pane chooses the Display as Icons view (a check mark denotes that you are in Display as Icons view, refer to Figure 4 above). Click the Display as List option to change the thumbnail view to a column view (see Figure 5). When the Display as List option is selected, you get a new option within the right-click menu called Show Columns. Click this option to bring up a submenu to customize the columns visible (refer to Figure 5 again).

Figure 5: Show Columns submenu

iii. Display as Icons

This option displays the photos as icons (thumbnails), refer to Figure 3, shown earlier on this page.

In addition, you can double click any photo to enlarge it in the preview pane (see Figure 6). Click the photo again to restore the preview pane to its multiple photo previews.

Figure 6: Enlarged Photo within preview pane

Inserting Photos

To insert a photo, just drag it from the preview pane into your presentation, as shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7: Photo being dragged onto a slide