The PowerPoint® Blog

If you’ve ever found the popup toolbar distracting while presenting a slideshow in Microsoft PowerPoint, you’re not alone.

Fortunately, PowerPoint offers a setting to disable this feature, providing a cleaner and more focused presentation experience.

• Open PowerPoint
• Go to > FILE > then, select OPTIONS

From the PowerPoint Options dialog box:

• On the left column go to ADVANCED
• On the right, scroll to the SLIDE SHOW section
• Disable SHOW POPUP TOOLBAR

• Click OK to apply the changes
• Done!

Important Notes:

• App-Level Setting: This is an application-wide setting, meaning it applies to all presentations you open or create in PowerPoint. You won’t need to disable the popup toolbar for each presentation individually.
• Accessing Presentation Controls: Even with the popup toolbar disabled, you still have access to all the same presentation controls by simply right-clicking anywhere on the slideshow screen. This brings up a larger overlay menu with all the necessary options, but it’s not persistent and disappears after selecting.

By disabling the popup toolbar, you can deliver a more polished and distraction-free presentation. Should you ever need the toolbar back, you can easily re-enable it by following the same steps and checking the Show Popup Toolbar box again.

Hope this PowerPoint tutorial helped. Enjoy presenting with a cleaner interface!

-Christie @ TLC

GET credit where credit is due.

PowerPoint has file properties that list who created the presentation (really!).

Below is a the step-by-step of where to find the properties field that lists the name. But first, take a look at some of your recent presentations. Mouse over the file. Is your name listed as the Author – of your presentations? When PowerPoint is first setup, it asks for a few details about you, and automates the Authors property to use that name. Two things happen that often results in your name, not being the name listed. IT sets up your computer with a generic User Name, which is what PowerPoint uses for each presentation created. Or you opened a presentation that someone else started, which keeps the original person who started the presentation, listed as the author. So, where do you confirm your name is the name PowerPoint lists as the author for new presentations? Go to File > Options > the General tab > and the “Personalize Your Copy of Microsoft Office” section.

Is your name and initials shown? These settings are used for all presentations created on the computer (assuming Office is signed into the same profile).

But how is an existing presentation updated to your name when another name is already there?

In the presentation go to File > Info > and expand the far right list of properties. There are AUTHOR and a LAST MODIFIED BY fields. If your name is not listed in the AUTHOR field you can click the ADD AN AUTHOR and add yourself.

But, if you want to remove a name and replace with your name, there are a few additional steps. Go to File > Info > Check for Issues. Then Inspect Document > and run by clicking Inspect.

Click REMOVE ALL for the Document Properties and Personal Information and close the dialog.
Note: this action removes the existing Author listed, AND also removes other properties such as comments, Company, Last Modified, and more.

After the properties are clear, just save the file and your name (from the Personalize Your Copy of Microsoft Office fields) will be listed as the Author! Or, if the author field remains empty, click the ADD AN AUTHOR option to select your name.

There it is. How the mysterious “Author” name is added to presentations, and how you can manage who is listed as the author of your presentation!

Troy @ TLC

PowerPoint unfortunately does not have the capability to animated individual cells, rows or columns of tables. PowerPoint offers the ability to animate a table as a whole unit. Let’s talk about a workaround to overcome this limitation. By using the Microsoft PowerPoint BrightSlide add-in (which is free and has Windows and Mac versions!) several table formatting options become available to us, specifically the ability to break apart table cells – which we can use to achieve animation needs!

First, select the table.

Right-click on the table and go to table > BrightSlide > Split Table > Split into Rows.

For this sample table, this instantly creates 4 separate tables – one for each row! Note: I have spaced them apart for this demo.

Because PowerPoint can only animate an entire table, we now have 4 tables, which can easily be animated! As example, this table now animates in one row at time, each row on click (yay!)

As a second option, going back to our original table, we can split it by columns in a few clicks. Right-click the table > BrightSlide > Split Table > and now select “Split into Columns”.

Done – 5 separate tables, one for each column!

Apply PowerPoint animations as needed; entrance, exit, emphasis. Here I have set the table to build left-to-right automatically.

And now is where things get good! Going back to our original table, right-click > BrightSlide > Split Table > Split into Cells.

20 individual tables are created instantly!

The option to animate each cell is available, as I have done in this example. BUT, if you just need to animate on a few areas of a table, use this to create the individual cells needed for the animation (works great with Morph!). The options available are limitless now.

TIP: BrightSlide also has fantastic options to “put a table back together’. The two options are “Merge as Columns” or “Merge as Rows”. We want to make a single column, select “Merge as Rows” and it will give you 4 rows in a single column.

Continue with the same steps for the other columns, then select both, and click “Merge as Columns” to place the table back together.

BONUS TIP: Duplicate that original the table, and turn it off in selection pane to always have a secret version of the original table available for any future needs.

Troy @ TLC