Monthly Archives: May 2020

Presentation Bandwidth of Screen Share vs. PowerPoint Online Present

This is on the technical, and geeky, side of presentations. In our current environment of remote presenting, we have been addressing questions and supporting remote meetings non-stop. Remote presenting has lots of technical obstacles, that are now the responsibility of each presenter to deal with (vs. showing up at a conference and knowing a professional AV team was in control of everything technical and you, as a presenter, just needed to focus on getting on stage and presenting).

I am sharing a video from Microsoft that demonstrates PowerPoint specifically. In my discussions over the past year with the Microsoft PowerPoint team I have been hearing about the advances they have accomplished in remote presenting and collaboration. Well, I am a believer and integrating PowerPoint Online presenting into several virtual meeting workflows.

The big takeaway is presenting to a remote audience, using a PowerPoint presentation uploaded to (OneDrive, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams) has amazing bandwidth savings for high quality visuals, video and animation over presenting a presentation shown as a shared screen.

Troy @ TLC

By |2025-05-12T10:20:03-07:00May 26th, 2020|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

The Presentation Podcast Collaboration PowerPoint Deck

In the most recent episode of The Presentation Podcast, “Is PowerPoint Collaboration in Microsoft Teams Good?”, was much more than myself and my two co-hosts talking about the features we have seen and read about – we lived it! It was also fun watching Nolan and Sandy squirm a bit as I encouraged (forced) them into the world of a Microsoft Teams workflow 😊

For this podcast episode, we wanted our conversation to be about PowerPoint and its many collaboration features and performance that Microsoft has been talking about for the past few years. Because we (TLC Creative Services) have few clients utilizing Microsoft Teams for content editing, and Nolan & Sandy have even fewer, I decided the best way for us to talk about this was to jump in and immerse ourselves in what is soon to become a common workflow for presentation design.

Step one was setting up a Team for this project within our TLC Creative Services account. Sandy, Nolan and myself were the only people able to access the files within it (Nolan and Sandy were guests to the TLC Creative Services Teams account, able to access only this one Team).

Working on the presentation design was typical. I put together sample slide deck that we each opened with the PowerPoint desktop application. Just like client notes, our sample deck had notes for content design throughout:

There were notes inside text placeholders.

It had notes as bright colored boxes on the slide.

And there were design notes as PowerPoint Comments.

Our shared experience was great (really)! The presentation we designed was great (really)! And we all unanimously agreed that the addition of Microsoft Teams to the workflow, being the hosting service and core for the shared presentation file was a success. If you missed it, listen in on our conversation on collaborating in PowerPoint here. 

Troy @ TLC

By |2020-05-18T22:24:47-07:00May 20th, 2020|Resource/Misc|

Podcast 102

A new episode of The Presentation Podcast is available today! Troy, Nolan and Sandy share their learnings of working on a co-authored presentation, hosted on Microsoft Teams. 

…if I’m going to get dragged kicking and screaming into the world of (Microsoft) Teams, I’m happy to have you do it.
– Nolan Haims in an email to Troy Chollar

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify and Soundcloud – just search for The Presentation Podcast for “Being a Remote Presenter (with Ken Molay)” or go direct to the episode page here: https://thepresentationpodcast.com/podcast/102

By |2020-05-24T20:16:09-07:00May 19th, 2020|Resource/Misc|

How to Make Excel Use a PowerPoint Custom Color Scheme

Microsoft Office; PowerPoint, Excel, Work, etc. have many shared components. PowerPoint tends to be the most visual design app of the suite and a common request we receive is how to add the colors from a PowerPoint we developed into Excel. You will need to add the custom color scheme to your computer, see the previous post. The process is fairly easy, here is an example and the action steps:

1. In Excel, our example chart uses the standard Office color scheme (boring!)

2. In excel go to PAGE LAYOUT > COLORS

3. In the CUSTOM section, select the custom color scheme we saved from PowerPoint to the computer Office options. We are selecting the COLOR SCHEME NAME custom colors.

4. Now the excel file instantly updates charts to match the PowerPoint file!

Troy @ TLC

 

By |2020-05-20T11:46:50-07:00May 15th, 2020|Tutorial|

How to Apply a Saved Color Scheme to an Existing PowerPoint

Any PowerPoint slide deck can have any preset color scheme applied to it – and everything in that presentation that uses the color scheme for their colors will automatically update! This includes text, shapes, charts, tables and more. It is amazing when the slide content is setup to use color scheme colors – and frustrating when it does not…

Here is our example presentation, that uses a green color scheme – and the template was developed using the color scheme.

We want to update this presentation to the “blue” division. We can easily update the presentation to the “blue” color scheme (see previous blog post for how to add color schemes to PowerPoints CUSTOM list). To update the presentation to the needed color scheme, go to DESIGN > COLORS > select the desired color scheme.

As you rollover the different schemes, the color schemes preview. Ultimately we have selected the “blue” color scheme for this presentation.

[videopack id=”14012″]https://thepowerpointblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/PPT_Colors_PT_2_screencapture.mp4[/videopack]

Troy @ TLC

 

By |2021-05-17T13:02:57-07:00May 13th, 2020|Tutorial|

How to Save and Name a Custom Color Theme in PowerPoint

Any presentation can have any custom color scheme applied to it. This tutorial is how to save a custom color scheme from one presentation, or template, to your computer and then apply it to any other presentation.

1. Custom color schemes, for example from a custom PowerPoint template, is displayed in DESIGN > COLORS > CUSTOM. Note, custom color schemes that have been saved to your computer show up in this list.

 

3. To save the color scheme from any file/template, click CUSTOMIZE COLORS at the bottom of the list.

4. The CREATE NEW THEME COLORS dialog opens and displays all of the assigned colors. The only action you need is to give the color scheme a name (see previous post for tip on seeing the assigned name). 

5. Replace “Custom 1” with a descriptive name. For this tutorials we will use “Custom Color Scheme Name” and click SAVE

6. Now you will have access to the “Color Scheme Name” custom colors on your computer and can apply them to any presentation or template. 

 

Troy @ TLC

By |2020-04-24T10:44:16-07:00May 11th, 2020|Tutorial|

What is the PowerPoint color scheme name of this file?

Every custom color scheme has a name. But when the CREATE NEW THEME COLORS dialog is opened, the color scheme name is a generic “custom 1” name. It is not intuitive on finding the color scheme name, so here is a tutorial on how to see the color scheme name currently being used by a file.

— Note: I am reposting what I put online back on April 29, 2016 —

Every template has a Custom Color Scheme. And every color scheme has a custom name. For example: Here is a custom PowerPoint template I am working on, and I named the template color scheme “The Future Is Now” which is the theme name of the event where it will be used.

Template Color Scheme -1

And when I look at the color schemes available on my computer, this theme is listed – because it was created on this computer:

Template Color Scheme -5

But on any other computer, with the template open, if I look at the color schemes, The Future Is Now is not listed:

Template Color Scheme -2

To find the Custom Color Scheme name, do this:

  • Go to VIEW > SLIDE MASTER > BACKGROUND > mouse over (do not click) COLORSTemplate Color Scheme -3
  • The pop up dialog shows the current template color scheme name
    Template Color Scheme -4

Now you can edit the existing color scheme and know what name to give it.

-Troy @ TLC

By |2020-04-24T18:08:16-07:00May 8th, 2020|Tutorial|

The Design Challenge #4 Designs!

It has been a fun week designing a WOW slide – and working with a Microsoft Teams workflow! The TLC Creative design team’s entries for Challenge #4 are in and they all succeed in going from the boring bullet list to a spectacular WOW slide design.

As a reminder. the design team was tasked with not only a slide design, but to work from one shared presentation file hosted in a Microsoft Teams project channel. The design team had a fun time getting familiar with accessing PowerPoint within Teams – and not having a ‘save’ button. Here are our COVID-19 Design Challenge #4 results!

By |2020-05-02T14:47:30-07:00May 6th, 2020|Portfolio|

New Episode of The Presentation Podcast – Slide Design for Remote Presenting

A new episode of The Presentation Podcast is available today! Troy, Nolan and Sandy are joined by Richard Goring of BrightCarbon, Mike Parkinson of Billion Dollar Graphics, and Cliff Kennedy of Kennedy Speech Communications for a great episode! This conversation is about slide design and presenting techniques of remote presenting.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify and Soundcloud – just search for The Presentation Podcast for “Being a Remote Presenter (with Ken Molay)” or go direct to the episode page here: https://thepresentationpodcast.com/podcast/101

By |2020-05-06T16:17:09-07:00May 5th, 2020|Resource/Misc|

COVID Design Challenge #4

With this challenge, not only did our design team have to put together some amazing design, but they had to do it all working in Microsoft Teams! So part of this design challenge was our design team all being forced into the world of Microsoft Teams for file management (we have been using Teams for calls, meetings and presenting, but now transitioning to incorporating it file management, editing and communication). 

For our design challenge #4 a master slide deck was uploaded to the Teams project “channel”. Slide 1 was the base boring bullet list of black text on a white background. Each designer had an assigned slide, with zero design applied.

Each designer was challenged to develop their own slide with the same base content, but any layout and visuals they envisioned. Again, based on a Microsoft Teams workflow, the catch was all design had to be done from the shared presentation. No downloading, and not keeping the file connected to the Teams version!

Work from the master slide deck on Microsoft Teams. Slide 1 is the content, and everyone has a slide for design assigned. Develop your version of an original (boring) slide with images, graphics, and visual layout. Use any color scheme and font options, but no animation needed. You cannot download the PowerPoint file to your computer, you can work directly in Teams version of PowerPoint, PowerPoint online or PowerPoint on your computer – but it must always be worked on as a shared file.

Check back later this week to see what each design did to turn the boring slide content to a WOW slide!

By |2020-05-02T14:40:35-07:00May 4th, 2020|Resource/Misc|
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